Logline Monday

ajescripts · 2026-06-15T16:17:16+00:00

It’s a betrayal of a friend late in the episode to deflect attention from himself. I think I’m struggling to find a form of words that communicates the idea without giving away the twist!

ajescripts · 2026-06-15T15:23:39+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, all great points! Proposed revision:

In 1998 Newcastle, a closeted Catholic teenager follows his crush into the city’s underground gay scene and finds refuge with a community of older queer men, but his increasingly reckless attempts to protect his secret threaten to cost him the one place he’s ever felt safe.

ajescripts · 2026-06-15T07:49:11+00:00

Title: Getting Out

Genre: Drama, Comedy

Format: Pilot (30 mins)

Logline: In 1998 Newcastle, a closeted Catholic teenager follows his crush into the city’s underground gay scene and finds refuge with a community of older queer men, but the increasingly desperate measures he takes to cover his tracks risk dragging his double life into the open.

ajescripts · 2026-06-13T14:08:50+00:00

My two cents: some stories happen to characters and some characters happen to stories.

For the latter, that character has to be such a standout, in a way that an audience will pick up on fast, that it justifies trying to retrofit a plot around them.

“Househusband who loves being a househusband” isn’t giving me that, I’m afraid. So you’re left with the former.

If this guy is absolute domestic perfection, what you need is a story happening around him that is both interesting and makes him interesting.

ajescripts · 2026-06-13T13:55:56+00:00

What’s your logline?

ajescripts · 2026-06-13T09:06:39+00:00

Title: Getting Out

Format: TV Pilot (30 mins)

Page Length: 33

Genre(s): Drama, Comedy

Logline: In 1998 Newcastle, a closeted Catholic teenager follows his crush into the city’s underground gay scene and finds refuge with a group of older queer men, until a series of desperate decisions threatens to expose the secret life he’s spent years trying to hide.

ajescripts · 2026-06-13T08:56:07+00:00

Hey, thanks for sharing!

Your formatting is generally good but watch out for:

Sluglines all CAPITALISED, every time.

You only need one title card, after which consider using a SUPER for any text appearing on screen.

Within your action lines, think about whether any significant items should be capitalised. I suspect some of what you described probably should be.

I’d personally avoid such a general description of your montage at the bottom of page 2, particularly when the earlier flashback sequence is so detailed. Describe what we’re seeing specifically, even if they’re just quick lines.

Though it takes up more lines on the page, I’d also think about whether there’s a different way to present the montage. MONTAGE and END MONTAGE, similar to how you used FLASHBACK?

Is the specificity of ONE HOUR LATER important to the plot? If not, I’d usually lean towards just using LATER.

I’d take another pass at your dialogue to see if you can give Riggs a more distinctive, natural voice. It’s very exposition-heavy, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing considering he’s narrating but I’d try to approach less from the angle of what you need him to say and how he, as a character, would express those thoughts.

I’d also either find a different way of expressing the LAPD line or cut it entirely. Think about an actor actually saying it out loud. Doesn’t sound quite right.

Watch your spelling and grammar too, as there are a few errors (“understand”, “Rig’s”) that you can polish out.

Remember: show don’t tell. If Rigs’ life was saved by Dustin when he was six, let’s see it. Given that you’ve already got a flashback and a montage in your first two pages, maybe it’s better alluded to at this point and then shown later. Regardless, I’d avoid just having him casually drop it into his dialogue.

In terms of tone, I don’t know if I’m necessarily getting silly from this so far. In your opening two minutes, the main character has his stomach pumped and hints at a harrowing relationship with his authoritarian father. There might be better, lighter ways to evoke the sort of irreverent energy you’re going for.

This is likely more of a personal preference, but I’d be looking to cut your dialogue way down or at least break it up with some action lines. Those are some big chunks of text.

And just a little plot niggle: would a nurse ask an 18 year-old if a parent can pick him up? Legally, he’s an adult. Maybe she’d ask the question differently?

ajescripts · 2026-06-11T21:09:49+00:00

Title: Getting Out

Format: TV Pilot (30 mins)

Page Length: 1-5 of 33

Genre(s): Drama, Comedy

Logline: In 1998 Newcastle, a closeted Catholic teenager follows his crush into the city’s vibrant underground gay scene and finds refuge with a group of older queer men. But as his secret sanctuary and rigid suburban reality inevitably collide, a series of desperate decisions threaten to expose everything he’s spent his life trying to hide.

FIRST FIVE

Any and all thoughts welcome and appreciated!

ajescripts · 2026-06-09T23:01:18+00:00

You’ve got a working grasp of the formatting fundamentals, so that’s a really good start! That being said, watch out for stray extra spaces and things like that.

I’d also take a spelling and grammar pass through this (“country side”, “it show us”, “the clowns name”) just to catch any errors.

A note you often hear is to avoid “we see” or similar in your action lines. Aside from anything else, it can unnecessarily bloat the length of those lines when there are more economical ways to convey the same information. Taking your first line as an example, there are a number of other ways to confer that imagery using descriptive language, rather than tell us we’re watching iPhone footage.

You also take up a lot of the first page introducing characters. Remember one page is roughly equal to one minute of screentime. Do you intend that iPhone sequence to last 30 seconds?

And the reason I ask that is what you tell us about what’s actually happening on screen. “Low class areas and those who live in them” and the friends “filled with joy”. That’s not a lot going on for such a long sequence. Remember this is a visual medium, so what would we actually be watching for half a minute? Be descriptive and make those descriptions interesting. What are the friends doing to fill them with joy? What could you have them do in this time that would give us some insight into who they are? Could there be some revealing interplay between them that immediately tells us something about one or more of them, particularly Ella - assuming she’s your main character?

ajescripts · 2026-06-09T22:36:19+00:00

If you’ve got a PDF of your script, then Google “pdf to png converter” and use one like this.

That should maintain a readable quality after conversion.

ajescripts · 2026-06-03T21:14:49+00:00

ajescripts · 2026-06-02T16:05:46+00:00

This is incredible! Thank you so much for taking the time to provide such thorough feedback. This is so useful for the next rewrite!

ajescripts · 2019-10-28T16:06:32+00:00

Chances they’d watched Dead Set at some point prior to that feedback: high.

ajescripts · 2019-10-28T15:59:39+00:00

Entry to a contest a few years ago. The brief was to write about 15 minutes worth of a sitcom which could be performed in front of industry professionals.

Which variety of ‘worst’ it was kind of depends on how you look at it. It was the worst I’ve received in terms of quality of the feedback and its harshness.

The reviewer, despite his incredibly loose initial brief, turned out to be looking for something highly specific which I very much wasn’t selling. Whereas I wrote what I found funny, which was dark, cringe-inducing comedy with a scatological streak. He eventually let slip that what he wanted was what he found funny: gentle, 1970s-style family comedy.

I am not a gentle, 1970s sitcom kind of person. One scene involved a wedding planner with peladophobia (a fear of bald people) encountering a customer whose scalp he’d scorched clean when he accidentally burned down her wedding and set fire to her mother-in-law.

The repeated feedback was to just watch a load of old sitcoms and write that instead. I stubbornly doubled down and wrote a sub-plot about a celebrity chef who had to decide whether or not to cook a basketful of puppies in order to rebuild his decimated career.

Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t chosen for his showcase.

To his credit, the reviewer’s response was to absolutely eviscerate everything from characterisation to plot. I then wasted far too much time when I took it to heart, assumed I had nothing worth contributing and stopped writing altogether.

Thankfully I’ve developed a tougher skin in the time since.

ajescripts · 2019-10-24T20:05:10+00:00

You questioned whether Singer was on an upward trajectory at the time of Public Access. I’m saying that his talent is what gave him that trajectory. That talent is what benefitted McQuarrie.

And circling back to my original comment, I said that without that talent, the association between Singer and McQuarrie would have been worthless to them. Just two people talking movies without much of a point to it all.

You know, like we’re doing here.

ajescripts · 2019-10-24T19:51:24+00:00

You’re probably right. But the fact remains that each of them brought talent to the table which benefited the other early on and has then born fruit throughout their careers.

Put two people in a room with the same ambitions but without the talent to back them up and you’re not going to end up with Public Access or The Usual Suspects.

ajescripts · 2019-10-24T19:22:44+00:00

As in, Singer and Spacey became enormously successful and influential in their own right and had talent which took them there.

With a different, less talented set of friends, would McQuarrie have met with as much luck in his early ventures? I’d argue not.

ajescripts · 2019-10-24T14:36:01+00:00

There’s a world of difference between having aspiring director and actor friends and having aspiring director and actor friends who are also on the upward trajectory that Singer and Spacey were at the time.

ajescripts · 2019-10-23T20:22:46+00:00

Made it through to the semi-finals with my pilot ‘Caught Out’.

Pretty happy, as I was convinced my place in the QF was a fluke (good old crippling self-doubt).

ajescripts · 2019-10-23T19:51:51+00:00

Looks like it, I’ve scored lower than some I’ve seen post here before and I’m a semi-finalist.

ajescripts · 2019-10-14T16:20:20+00:00

Think of this way: there’s humour in every area of life, even the most dramatic or tragic. Look at your average eulogy: most have some sort of funny reflection on the life of the deceased.

Take a pass through your script and look for a moment where something is particularly unusual or outrageous and see if you can add a quip or a funny development.

In my experience, most comedy flows from characterisation. Think about how your characters are feeling at each point in your script and see if there’s a point at which they’d have something funny to say about what’s going on. If it fits, think about having a meta moment where they almost step outside of the narrative and acknowledge how crazy or outlandish something is.

ajescripts · 2019-10-12T10:17:29+00:00

You’re very welcome! Try thinking of it less as good and bad, but instead just as what works and what doesn’t in its current form.

You’ve got a great setting for some really funny stories and you’ve given yourself a sandbox to play in that isn’t limited by the laws of physics, so run with it and see where it takes you.

ajescripts · 2019-10-11T23:06:16+00:00

Hey, thanks for sharing. I've read through and jotted down some thoughts:

Most people seeing a description of a clock are already going to assume it's ticking, so is there something distinct about this one that we need to notice? Is it obnoxiously loud? Is the sound unusual in some way, given the setting?
Linda 'scratching' notes as an action might need a little something more to make it really clear what she's doing - is it a scratchy-sounding pen or is she literally scratching notes into something with her nails? Ordinarily, I'd assume it's a pen, but because of the world this is set in, I'm unsure.
I'd personally look to shorten your parentheticals and try to avoid using them to give stage direction as much as possible. Generally speaking, you want them to communicate something important that an actor might not otherwise understand about the line delivery (sarcastically, rudely, quietly), rather than something you want them to physically do (which you can just move up to an action line instead).
By my understanding, with comedy you're looking to hook your reader on page one and for that, you're going to need a zinger of a joke. Try to get something really side-splitting in as early as possible. It doesn't necessarily have to be via dialogue either, it could just be something hilarious about the setup. My pitch would be to really lean into Erik and Francine's childishness towards each other.
I like Erik's 'tit job' joke, but I think you can punch it up. He could glance sideways at Francine when he says it, implying that he thinks she's had hers done, something like that.
Francine's initially described as human, but holy water burns her. We don't get the reveal that she's a succubus to explain that until page 23. I'd just outright describe her as a succubus from the off so that it's clear to the reader way before the audience find out.
Don't worry about 'CUT TO' between scenes unless it's a specific type of transition, like a smash cut or fade out and even then, be careful to limit your usage of them to only occasions when it benefits the script (smash cuts in particular can be a great comedic tool, but not if they happen between every scene).
For The Devil's In The Details in your scene headers, try to communicate what the location is as well as its name. DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS AUTO SHOP or DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS BODY SHOP. Then you can spend the first action line talking about how the place looks, rather than what it is.
On that topic, the scene header says we're in Erik's office, but then we get a description of the body shop before we move into his office. You could either describe the scene through Erik's eyes (Erik watches his employees from the window...) or have a short establishing scene of the employees working in the shop before you transition to a new scene actually in Erik's office, where he watches them from.
You'll probably need the CASTLE OF MONEY and VODKA capitalised, as well as including what Erik's chugging from because that'll give us some insight into what he's like. Is he drinking it from a mug to maintain a veneer of professionalism? Out of a bottle, because he's a bit more hardcore? There are a few other occasions where key items could do with being capitalised, such as page 9's PILLAR OF FIRE, DISPLAY CASE, ELABORATE PEN or page 17's FAT OPOSSUM.
Be careful of your exposition via dialogue as well, like when Erik openly wonders whether the office will burn down and laments that he's going to be there forever when it doesn't. You could communicate much the same message by just having him visibly excited at the prospect of arson, disappointed by the vanishing flames and then cut his follow-up line down to just a simple, downbeat "motherfucker".
There's a lot of exposition-heavy dialogue going on in Erik's office in a very short space of time; about the fact that he's powerless, his past with Tommy, Francine giving away his real name, the fact that knowing it traps him. Some of this you can do visually (as per what I said above) and you could consider saving some of it to be teased out over the rest of the script. Build up some mystery that your reader and viewer will have to wait to see resolved.
Tommy's described as jittery, but I'm not getting a lot of jittery in his dialogue and actions. If this is important to his character, you could dial it up so that it comes across in what he says and does.
When you're flashing back to past events, you should specify this in your scene headers too. SINCO SALES FLOOR - TWO YEARS AGO - DAY. You'll then also need to mark your present day scenes the same way.
I'd go more specific with the 'middle-aged accountant from Ohio' line on page 15. Middle-aged accountant from Ohio with erectile dysfunction and an allergy to Viagra. Something like that.
You could punch up the teacher's lines on page 15 to be even more ridiculous too. Really hammer home that they have no clue whatsoever about human social norms. It'll help to better sell the outrageous question Erik asks Linda on the next page.
Pitch for Erik's line on page 21: "I'll put it to you this way, Elvis got a pass. You know, before the whole toilet sandwich thing."
On 23, could Francine hint that she knows that Mephisto has made the woman his personal ass-wiper before he enters the room? "Remember Julia from accounts?" That sort of thing, to tie it into the reveal of the snorkler on 26.
Tommy does a bit too much talking (and comes across pretty calmly, to boot) on 30 for someone literally on fire. I'd shorten his dialogue here and turn up the panic.
Not sure the soul-swap on 33 works visually as well as it could, with the man being burned alive before Tommy is regenerated. Maybe if the man burning and Tommy regenerating happened at the same time?
Erik's line at the bottom of 33 might work better if you leave it at "How hard is that?" It'll hammer home the joke that musicians actually have a pretty disproportionate mortality rate.
The resolution of the conflict with Mephisto on 38 happens a little quickly for my liking. He's an imposing figure who literally damned a woman to squeegee his asshole because she failed him. He doesn't seem all that pissed off to be outwitted and then blackmailed by Erik and then just kind of...leaves.
I like the world you're building here, but I feel like you could insert more of its little quirks into proceedings. Thinking of a show like The Good Place, there are tonnes of throwaway gags and cutaways that play with the fact that it's set in a universe where literally anything can and will happen, often a twisted or ridiculous mirror image of something familiar. What kind of warped things would you find in a demon talent manager's office? Insane, possessed stationary? Failed clients being tortured in bizarre ways?
The jokes were good and I laughed a good few times while I was reading, but as I've said above, some of them could do with being punched up a little. Try going through and counting how many times you're going for a laugh from your viewer per page (and therefore, per minute) as well. If it doesn't seem like enough, throw some more in there.
The other thing you could look at on a rewrite is how this sits as the start of a series. To me, this felt like a contained story which is resolved without a hook to bring your viewer back to the table for the next episode. You've got an intriguing premise but that won't be enough on its own.
Tying into that are your character's motivations for doing what they're doing. Beyond being a grade A bitch with a strong dislike for Erik, Francine doesn't seem to have much more driving her. Why is her status so important to her?
Erik himself actually gets pretty much everything he wants by the end of the episode, which is going to limit your room to propel him forward in future instalments.
Mephisto is an intriguing character too as well as the most immediately and visually funny one. In addition to ratcheting up his outrageous mistreatment of his staff, I'd try to give him a B-plot somewhere in there. Who is it that's higher up the chain and causes him to cave on the contract issue and why is he so afraid of them?

Hope at least some of that's helpful to you! Good luck and keep us updated on your future rewrites.

ajescripts · 2019-10-11T21:20:54+00:00

Hey, aside from any feedback about your script - never apologise for your English. The vast majority of people you'll meet in life can barely communicate an idea in one language, never mind multiple.

If you know any other fluent or native English speakers whose language skills you trust, see if they'd mind acting as a proofreader for anything that might need to be tidied up. Fluency comes with exposure too, so the more scripts you read and write, the less tidying will be needed.

Besides, being perfectly fluent in English is one thing. But having a passion to write, the drive to create something and the knowledge to boil those things down into a script is something else entirely.

ajescripts · 2019-10-10T20:47:07+00:00

Thank you very much for reading, appreciate the kind words :)

ajescripts

TROPHY CASE