[FEEDBACK] A short intro I wrote for a feature I'm working on. It's a dark comedy about two high school kids who want to rob a toy store to pay for college.

If you're aiming for a feature, I'd suggest slowing down on the exposition. We're five pages in and you've already had your characters spill out the whole plot, premise, plan and motivation for what they're about to do. Slow down. Develop the characters first. Who are they? What are their lives like? Why do we care about them? Why are they resorting to this?

Also, you told us all we need to know, so far. That's not very cinematic. Show us instead. Don't have a character tell another one 'You want to get into college, don't you?' Instead show us that character getting an acceptance letter and then stopping his eyes on the ANNUAL TUITION paragraph.

And one last piece of advice: your characters are speaking their minds too much. That's not very good dialogue. If a character is afraid of going through with the plan, the most obvious thing he can say is "I'm starting to rethink this". This is speaking your mind and it's lazy dialogue. You need to convey that the character is starting to rethink this by means of action or creative dialogue. Maybe he suddenly feels the need to have some ice cream before. Maybe he's not happy with the color of their guns. Maybe he says "I think we should do this tomorrow instead. It's raining, and I've read online that seventy-five percent of heists fail in the rain."

You get the point. Don't settle for the obvious way of conveying information.

Hope this helps.

/r/Screenwriting Thread