Melonie, notes as follows. This is the story of Sarah and her son Elijah and their encounters and subsequent removal from Earth by extra-terrestrial. I can see that you write novels and short stories and I don’t need to read your bio to know that. Your writing style is typical for novels and short stories. It is written in past tense and you write with a narrator’s voice telling us what has happened to fill in the gaps so that we can paint a picture in our minds in a haphazard manner. Writing screenplays is a different mind set to writing novels and short stories. There’s a massive difference between the way you tell a story through novelization and the way the same story is told through a screenplay. A screenplay has to be more visual because it is written to be put onto a screen so there can’t be ambiguity in what we see on the page. “Sarah sits with Elijah in his room. She is afraid to leave her young son’s side” We know nothing about how Sarah or Elijah look, we know nothing about their ages. It’s not until the second par that we learn that Elijah is a young boy. In screenwriting, the visuals, particularly concerning characters, must be painted immediately unless it’s something we can’t see at this point in time. Because screenplays are considered a blue print for the making of the movie, you must define the characters as we meet them, you can’t allow the reader to create a picture in their head only for them to learn later that their mental image is wrong so your character introductions should be, at a minimum, something along the lines of, “SARAH (early 30s) sits with her young son ELIJAH (8)”. There is a phrase you will hear a lot which is, “Show, don’t tell”. As an example, “She’s afraid to leave her young son’s side. Afraid to let him out of her sight” is telling the reader what is happening but as a screenwriter, you are writing something for an actor to interpret into actions so an audience will understand this character is afraid to leave their young son’s side without using vocalization. So how do you SHOW that Sarah is afraid to leave her young son’s side? She could be agitated, she could hold him tight, her eyes could dart to the door every time she hears a noise? Novels and short stories leave a lot to the imagination but screenplays must spell it out so you need to review every line you write and ensure that it’s not only visual but it also contains cues for the actor to use. Revisiting your very first paragraph and incorporating not only what I mentioned above but also the reading notes below and it might come out something like: SARAH (early 30s) lies on top of the covers on a child’s bed. In the bed sleeps her young son ELIJAH (8). Sarah struggles to keep her eyes open as one arm is draped protectively over her son. A creak somewhere in the house and Sarah’s eyes spring open and her head turns to the closed bedroom door. I know the above doesn’t really follow your story but the first couple of paragraphs of your story, set the mood of a tense scene where it seems as though something has happened already and Sarah is frightened that it may happen again and she stays up to protect her son while he sleeps. Notes I made as I read through. These are merely my observations, take what you want and ignore the rest: General – Incorrect formatting of sluglines. The correct format is INT. or EXT. followed by a space, followed by a location, followed by a space and a hyphen and another space, followed by T.O.D. (Time of Day) which should either be DAY or NIGHT. So your first slug should be “INT. ELIJAH’S ROOM – NIGHT” because we are inside Elijah’s room and it’s night. As I read further, I notice a lot of your slugs are EXT but the scene is interior, it’s almost like you are using sluglines as a kind of pseudo chapter name. A slugline is used at the start of each new scene. It tells us if the scene is inside or outside, it tells us what the location is and it tells us the time of day. Any scene that is interior must have an INT slug and any scene that is exterior must have an EXT slug. General – Screenplays must always be written in present tense. “SARAH sat with ELIJAH in his room” is past tense so this line should be written as “SARAH sits with ELIJAH”. Similarly, “She was afraid” should be “She is afraid”. She drew a deep breath should be, She draws a deep breath. Unfortunately your entire script is written in past tense. Good thing you’re only on your first short and you don’t have a bunch of scripts to rewrite. General – Screenplays must also be written as visuals unfold. “She turned to the window when she caught a flash of light from the corner of her eye”. This is the wrong way around for a screenplay. The flash of light is the action and the turning of her head is the reaction and in a screenplay, you can’t show the reaction before the action because it doesn’t make sense for the audience sitting in the theater. We must see the flash of light first then we can see her turning her head. General – Watch out for unfilmables. This is a phrase you’ll see a lot as well. An Unfilmable is something that can’t be filmed (obviously) and applies to ALL of your script with the only exception being some elements of character introductions. Every other part of your script MUST be able to be filmed or it shouldn’t be in the script. The line “It seemed the stars winked cruelly back at her” is Unfilmable prose and belongs in a novel, not a screenplay. It boils down to a simple rule, if it can’t be captured by a camera then it can’t be in the script. General – If you must use parentheticals, watch the formatting. Most of your parentheticals can be removed because they are obvious from what is being said and the tone of the scene and should only be used if the intent is not clear. SARAH Go away. (She whispered) Go away. Should be formatted as SARAH (sotto voce) Go away. Go away! General – Watch out for typos with spelling, grammar and punctuation. P1 – “The last she remembered it was just past 11:00”. Unfilmable. P1 – Never tell us that characters notice something but you can show us how they have noticed something by describing their actions. P2 – “His hair was a rich brown, like his absentee father’s”. Unfilmable. P2 – try not to include character actions in parentheticals. “(Elijah senses his mother’s fear and tries to comfort her and reaches up to put his hand on her cheek)” Apart from the “senses his mother’s fear which is Unfilmable, the rest is an action and shouldn’t be in a parenthetical. P3 – “It is Saturday”. Unfilmable. It’s also not required unless it’s important to your story that we know what day of the week it is. It’s fine to put that in a novel but it’s not required in a screenplay. If it’s important then show us having your character mark off a day on a calendar or turn on the news so the announcer says it or collects the newspaper from out front and looks at the front page or any number of ways to show us the day of the week but if it’s not important then don’t use it as these tings merely add to your page count and don’t help your story. P3 – Remove the superfluous “of” from “…off of work”. Sorry but this is a pet hate of mine. P3 – Again, show, don’t tell. “She looks through various paranormal societies and websites that left actual phone numbers to reach somebody and spends the morning calling them”. This paragraph tells the reader what your character has done but there is no way to actually film this. The correct format here would to be use a Series of Shots to show us how she has spent her morning. P3-4 – I have a problem with the phone conversation that Sarah had with the person from the paranormal society. Sarah never picked up the phone and she never ended the conversation. She was suddenly talking but it wasn’t until the next paragraph that we learned she was on the phone. She never ended the conversation either but suddenly started talking to her son. Visually, this doesn’t make sense. P4 – The phone conversation with Mark is written as though he were in the same room with Sarah. Don’t forget that the visual of the words in your script, is what’s seen through the lens of the camera. You can’t have Sarah, in her home and chatting on the phone then show Mark chatting on the phone without some sort of cross over. Either Mark’s voice needs to be delivered with a parenthetical of (on phone, filtered) to indicate that it’s only his voice we hear (and some writers use other methods for this) or you need a new slug showing us Mark’s office and introducing the character as he picks up or speaks into the phone then you’ll need to either cut back and forth with a new slug each time or use INTERCUT to take up less space. P4 – Dialogue must be written as it is intended to be said so, “Prof. Waters” will be spoken as Prof. Waters by the actor including the pause between prof and waters because of the full stop that’s used. If you want the actor to say “professor Waters” then you will need to write it that way. P5 – Numbers MUST be written in long form when used in dialogue. It’s how an actor has been trained to deliver numbers, so “1111 Kensington rd” must be written as “eleven eleven Kensington road” or what ever method you want to hear 1111 spoken. P6 – Story wise, Mark’s obsession with speaking to the father seems really odd to me. He seems more interested in working out how to contact the father than he is in hearing what is happening to Sarah. This doesn’t ring true to me and makes me very suspicious of something that may be coming up in this story. P6 – Abbreviations have their own formatting rules. “They have hired their own PI” reads like “They have hired their own pie”. Abbreviations must use periods after each letter such as “They have hired their own P. I.” P8 – All of the kitchen appliances were on and she couldn’t hear them from her bedroom or any other part of the house? P8 – Keep your character names consistent.. Up to this point, Dr Waters has only ever been referred to as Dr. Waters but suddenly her dialogue is delivered as Laura and she is referred to as Laura in action lines. This becomes confusing. You must make it clear that she is Dr. Laura Waters at the start or you should keep referring to her as Dr. Waters. P12 – “She didn’t like crying .. sounded like a godsend to sarah”. All of this is Unfilmable and should be removed. The first two lines tell us all we need to know at this point in time. P16 – I have a feeling it’s not aliens but some supernatural being. P17 – 11:11 pm. The same number as Sarah’s house number. Spooky. P17 – Why would Sarah hide the fact she no longer had the locator on? P22 – Why would Sarah throw her arms around the man that, up to this point in time, she believed had abandoned her and her son? This wouldn’t happen in the real world so why is it happening here? P22 – Describe the beings that don’t look like them. P22 – James’ dialogue is delivered as Jimmie. It should be James. Overall: I can see the potential in this story but I think there’s a long way to go to make it feasible. The ending is too rushed. The story has a steady pace until Sarah wakes inside the spaceship but then suddenly an enormous amount of information is condensed into about a half a page and Sarah is acting as though James went missing rather than left them several years earlier. One major question stands out, if James was taken years earlier and the aliens have continued to visit Sarah and Elijah since then, why have they waited all this time before taking Sarah and Elijah as well? This is a good exercise in writing but I recommend reading more screenplays to study formatting, story structure, character development and dialogue. Don’t forget, screenplays are completely different to short stories and novels. I hope this helps.

Thanks for this Pierre! It is really helpful, and gives me focus and direction on rewriting this story into screenplay format. You even gave me detailed points to focus on! I have all the answers to your questions - let's see if I can rewrite it now into the screenplay!

Thanks Melonie, now go write a knockout script, and don't rush it.

Don't rush it? I already have two other stories swimming in my mind for screenplay, and I haven't even figured out how to put this one in the proper format, yet. But the subject matter of this story, I'm passionate about. The abduction phenomenon - not alien invasion. So I'll work and work on this till it's right. Thanks again. I really appreciate it.

You're already off to a great start!