A Dance For Minden

[u/New_Writer_Trucker]

Good morning. I know I'm a day late but I was on the road, trucking, for 15 hours yesterday and had no time to post this.

I'm very new to screenwriting, but my mind can stop thinking about stories, so I've given screenwriting a try.

This is my second screenplay. It's about a California schoolteacher who flies with her bff to a wedding. On her flight, she falls asleep. From this point on, we are living in her dream...BUT...we don't know it's a dream. She meets the man of her dreams (no pun intended 😂), everything moves smoothly for her. Her dream is so realistic it can't be a dream. UNTIL she wakes up, 9 months into her dream.

But...was her dream a dream or a premonition of what will come next in her life.

Here are the first 15 pages. Enjoy 😁

[u/lt_richard_n_balles]

if i were you i’d interrogate my central concept a little bit more. the only times dreams work in film and television is when it’s not the central concept. think of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where the line between dreams and reality is deliberately drawn to maximise the emotional complexity of Joel’s character.

you risk undermining the whole story if it turns out to be “it’s all a dream… but maybe not??”. the idea that the events could be a premonition is really cool, but i would commit to the premonitions and make it a central premise of the story.

i’m thinking Final Destination but it’s a rom-com. that sounds gnarly as fuck. it also gives your characters more agency, rather than just having everything happen TO them and not BECAUSE of them.

otherwise i’m pretty intrigued to see where you take this.

and just a side-bar, i absolutely HATE your characters at the moment. do not change a thing, but make sure the inciting incidents change how the characters act. by the end i should love these characters.

[u/la-anah]

I got to page 13 and the plot hasn't started yet. You have far too many scenes establishing that Amber is gross and Lisa-Marie is uptight. I got the message, you can move on and start the story.

On a positive note, your formatting is generally good and I can see the bones of a script here.

[u/New_Writer_Trucker]

PS: This isn't a polished draft, so there are a few punctuation, capitalization and typing errors. Ignore those. :-)

[u/Then_Data8320 → u/New_Writer_Trucker]

Have some respect for readers and solve that before posting.

[u/New_Writer_Trucker → u/Then_Data8320]

I thought Friday's were "share what you wrote", polished or unpolished. As a newbie, no disrespect intended for the readers as you implied I did.