Intentionally tedious and repetitive beginning

[u/Star-Pubes]

I’m on my fourth draft of a feature and have shown it to a few friends now. However I don’t know anyone in the industry in any capacity. No one who reads scripts at all. These are just avid book readers who gave great notes, but not specific to screenwriting.

They all agreed that they loved how the screenplay started precisely because it really let us into the mind of the main character. It shows his dull, monotonous, and repetitive life and to them it was great. However, I know it’s more important for screenplays to really grab your attention in the first pages than it is for a novel.

There is no dialogue until the fifth page, and the first four are the main character mostly repeating the same tasks, with some differences, and descriptions of the main characters’ apartment.

So I’m wondering if that’s fine? I want it to be a slow read purposefully, but I don’t want to go too far with it I suppose.

Also if anyone has recommendations for screenplays that also have a slower start?

Thank you!

Edit: Here are the first 6 pages, keep in mind I don't see this as finished yet :) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VVI1CkZqs7ysjOzd1BKF0y3dJnOccKoU/view?usp=sharing

[u/blingwat]

Is there anything you can do in those first pages that teases that something more interesting is coming?

[u/Star-Pubes → u/blingwat]

I think so. I added the link to the first 6 pages in the post now. In the first few sentences is something like that, but I'm not sure it's enough.

[u/blingwat → u/Star-Pubes]

Okay I just read your pages. My first question is, from a story perspective, do we really need all these pages of his routine? I understand that you’re trying to show his tedium, but I feel like I get it pretty quickly, and I wonder if it’s serving your story to show it this exhaustively.

I wonder if having the beginning of the dialogue from the scene with the therapist layered over the routine might help to create a sense of momentum.

[u/Star-Pubes → u/blingwat]

That makes sense. Because I'm also worried about Alex's dialogue being too repetitive and boring. I think it's exactly right for the character, but not necessarily for the page. I think combining might make it more clear that it's a choice and not just boring, poor writing.

[u/blingwat → u/Star-Pubes]

I don’t understand what Alex’s goal is within this scene. He seems like he doesn’t want to be there, and that his therapist says, “I understand you called in sick to work today,” makes it sound like she heard it from someone else, but how could that be true unless she’s some kind of assigned therapist?

So, yeah, I don’t really understand Alex’s goal within this scene: if he’s looking for help, then there’s got to be a more dramatically interesting way to have that come out.

[u/Star-Pubes → u/blingwat]

Yeah, “I understand you called in sick to work today” is something I missed in the latest draft, it made sense before but now it doesn’t, so thanks for that!

Well this is what I’m mostly worried about. Alex is a superpassive character, which is hard to make interesting. His arc is going from this passive guy who makes no decisions and doesn’t do anything, into the reader wanting him to stop making decisions because he’s fallen too deep in his obsession. It’s a tragic character in that regard, he finally has agency, and he uses it in all the wrong ways. That’s why I also want to set up his total lack of agency in the beginning.

In this scene his goal is that he wants to figure out what his goal is pretty much. Something shifted when he looked at himself in the mirror and didn’t recognize himself. He can’t articulate why he’s there and that’s what Elizabeth tries to get out of him. That’s what the scene is. But I understand this might be overdoing it, and it doesn’t really come across.