Better This Way by Herbert George - Short - A simple experiment devolves into chaos when a scientist travels back in time to prevent the Holocaust. - pdf, format

The 2nd script I've read about killing Hitler and the consequences of doing so... they are eerily similar.

Again a nice read and creative story and again I'll say as I replied in the other one, it's very close to a  Twilight Zone episode "Cradle of Darkness"

Good job on entering

Mark

To take down Adolf and the Nazis is a pretty big subject for a short, and all in, I think you've done a pretty good job of condensing it.

The different variants of Cassandra's character gets to be a bit confusing (no doubt intended), but she's saying that Eli should not keep jumping in order to avoid intersecting realities, and yet she's contributing to that, presumably, by jumping and chasing him? Is that intended as an ironic logic or is it simply down to the fact she's not changing anything (unlike him) and therefore it doesn't count? That's my main question - no real suggestions because it seems pretty neat and tody as it is.

The whole first page of exposition is unneeded and a little jarring. Consider replacing it with something else.

Besides the mumbling characters and the cliched 'kill Hitler' story, this actually wasn't too bad. Enjoyable and a twist at every corner which is a nice addition to keep you reading. I liked this which is enough I suppose. Seems like a nice amount of research went into it also. Good job.

Code CASSANDRA (V.O.) It�s useful to think of time not as a straight line, but as a series of strings pulled taut. [b]Like a sort of infinite harp.[/b]

The part in bold is crap. Like a sort of? Sort of is the same as saying like. They both mean the same thing. Makes the character sound young and stupid.

Code CASSANDRA This is what we believe to be a vast array of alternate universes within our measurable range. Of course the real program is a network of constantly varying equations. So what you see here is [b]basically[/b] just a pretty picture.

Get rid of the basically. It again makes her sound stupid... when she is supposed to be the one that knows. She's giving the lecture. Make her more positive, more assured.

Code Rows of computers sit in precise uniform.

Bad sentence.

The way they time jump I saw in a film not too long ago. Just googled and I see that it was Men in Black. At this juncture, I'm also thinking what was the point in the first 3.5 pages.

Code ELI Ow! Fuck. Thought the jump would slow me down more.

This line of dialogue is unrealistic and unnecessary.


Got to page 8. Completely shocked that he could kill a small boy. Even shooting the boy is just a bad a crime as anything the German's did.


I always find it amusing when it is assumed that killing Adolf Hitler would have stopped the Holocaust, as though he were solely responsible. Hitler was merely representative of many German's feelings during that period. Indeed, Hitler himself was brainwashed by the politics of the day. The Jewish betrayal during world war one was blamed on they losing the war... and people that had lost family members all blamed it on that betrayal. If it wasn't Hitler, it would have been someone else. Hitler was not by any means a catalyst, but merely the man chosen to lead as he was charismatic and had real passion. Plenty of other men could have done the same. In many ways, Hitler was an idiot. Glad to see that you have realised an approximation of that in this story.

Written well. Probably the best so far in terms of actual writing. I think I know who this is from the drag. There's a certain drag to this writer's work that I recognise. For me it moves just a tad too slowly... but at the same time is well told. The structure on this one is good. I think this is my favourite so far. It's clear some thought has gone into this one.

As I go...

Writing is good...much better than the vast majority.

A little intricate and expositional early on, but still well set up, researched, and written.

Page 3 - a little too dialogue heavy for me, and I'm not a fan of 2 unnecessary wrylies in a row.

Page 4 - OK, the setuip is over and now we're back in time.  Pretty well done overall, but for me, both characters are way too serious, although they appear to be having a conversation between 2 peeps who do know each other.  I just don't really feel much from either, and based on all the dialogue, I think I should.

I don't like Eli talking out loud to himself, as it always comes off as cheese.

Page 5/6 - Hmmm, well, now these 2 peeps sem to have more personailty, but I'm not buying it completely, and I'm also a little confused.  But, it's still reading well and holding my interest.

Page 8 - well done with the German dialogue!  Great attention to detail.

Ballsy killing of a young Hitler.  Well done!

Page 10 - misisng "me" in Eli's dialogue

Too much expostion for me, but I guess it's necessary, based on the structure you chose.

Page 12 - getting a little over the top here with teh wig and the like, but I'm still with you.

Page 13 - missing "you" in Cassandra's dialogue.

Well, it's obviously well written, well researched, and very well thought through.  Kudos for that.

Your characters grew personality as well and I have to say I';m very impressed over all.  Did I love it?  No, but I'm not really into the time jumping stories, because for me, there's too mcuh to consider and all the rules of reality are thrown out the window.

Fantastic efort, any way you look at it.  You took a cliche topic of killing Hitler, and gave it your own spin and you succeeded in all you went after.

Loads of exposition at the beginning.. in chunks. It seems in dealing with the fantastic things us scribes sometimes feel it necessary to overexplain and overkill in dialog. Sometimes you just got to say 'roll with it'. The best time travel movies don't over explain or over complicate. As a result of the early dialog, the read...slows...down...to...a...wounded...snail...

Yes, killing young Hitler was gutsy. Now kill off Himmler...well, nobody went that far. Why not?
I couldn't get into this. Tried. Failed.
Sorry. Left early.

Really enjoyed this one. Took a very cliched idea, but went down the more hardcore, time-travelling route, with the whole multiverse/ many worlds interpretation of the concept. Solid stuff.

The only thing I didn't really get, was the whole Jewish star being placed on Eli's body after he died? I mean, what was the significance of that?

I do wish that you made the ending a little bit more ironic. Maybe you could have made Cassie inadvertently cause Hitler's hatred for Jews. Maybe Hitler could have seen her murdering Eli, whilst holding the star, then this image always haunted him, etc. and made him think that all Jews are evil, etc. Just a little thought.

But decent stuff regardless.

Below are a few page specific notes:

Page 4- Didn't like it when Eli talked to himself ("Ow! Fuck. Thought the jump would slow me down more") as it sounded really unnatural.

Page 10- Eli: "Yes. Treat like I’m in grade school." Should be "treat ME".

Page 12- Didn't really like the wig part. Came across pretty corny.


Great effort here. Congrats.

I like this idea, but feel it's too small for a short.  I suppose it wasn't bad, all things considered.

This, the titanic one, and JFK are my favorites so far.

Also, how many times do we have to cut away from a gun shot only to see a flock of birds fly from a tree?  



--Steve

It feels a bit pretentious to me.
as I read I find myself not knowing what they are talking about.
I didn't understand what Casandra wanted when she talked about being authorised to have Eli in. Then she's Melanie and she's explaining Nazi's to Eli - it's a bit much of the info.
And maybe this info doesn't grab me... I don't know.
Frankly, I'm not a fan of the big kill Hitler stories. So, you shouldn't take me seriously.
But if you rewrite I think you could scale it down in terms of dialog (it reads a bit pompous and I was imagining Casandra in red leather suit for some reason).
Once you do that, I think, it'll read much better.
I wonder if you need every scene (the ones at the beginning) - don't think they pay off at the end.

As soon as I realised this was a Kill Hitler story I groaned but to be fair you’ve done a really good job. There is too much exposition, especially at the beginning. You don’t really need to explain everything so early on, the audience can piece things together if you give them enough clues.

Eli talking to himself just reads so wrong.

However, from the point he gets back in time this is where it picks up. You put together the complexities of multi-dimensional timelines in a way I could follow, was interested in and understood. That’s not easy to convey in a script at all.

I do feel something else should happen at the end, like is suggested above if the interference in time influenced Hitler in some way that would give the ending more ‘umph’.

But yeah, the writing and the technical structure is spot on – an overall very solid and good entry for me.

Mark

I was getting into the first couple of page, but at page 4 was getting a little impatient to see something more actually happen...

...And then things started to happen. I liked your approach on time travel and how everything worked into the event you chose to change. I think this was well thought out and paced nicely.

There was a bit of exposition here and there, but it kind of needed it to fit everything into 15 pages and without leaving the reader baffled, IMO.

Don't get me wrong, parts of this did confuse me, but there was enough information given that I was happy enough with the ending.

Though, if memory serves correct (I couldn't be stuffed looking it up) but didn't Adolf hate blondes with blue eyes (I don't know much about this and have never studied it, so please excuse my ignorance) because I thought you could have used Cassandra in the end, as a blonde with blue eyes, to make her presence in Adolf's life, at his young age, a detrimental vision, kind of like a nightmare for him. Without changing the actual ending - this still would have added to it by portraying that Cassandra was in fact the one who had had the impact on the way things had originally turned out with Adolf being who he was and hence the future to come - that's the kind of stuff that thinking about it could send you bonkers - the future wouldn't have been that way if they hadn't have interfered, yet the only reason they interfered was because of the future - doing my head in already.....lol.

Anyhow...good entry, well done

Renee  

Better this way

Logline - I expected at least one to go down this route, the question is whether you can be different

I liked this but...it is a little obvious that the changing something bad, makes it worse, however that's not always an issue as in some ways that's what time travel raises as an issue, ie the suggestion that mucking around in the past is not a good idea. Also the old butterfly effect, that one change can affect another etc

I could have guessed the outcome would be to let him live before I read this, but it was well put together. Indeed, I liked the explanation for this, even if we have to be told.

The inclusion of the woman added a dimension the script needed but i suppose the challenge is to make this different to what we expect.

Decent effort.

Cheers

Best so far, based on what I've read. Echoes of Butterfly Effect in that Eli keeps on making things worse every time he improves.

Writing was stand-out, and the end, whilst I didn't see it coming (in that way) was pitched spot on, with its echoes of Adolf's demise, and Adolf's appearance.

The twists were well timed, and kept the story hungry. I liked Eli missing his landing, and I liked his humane response to killing Adolf as a child. Birds worked for me and were a simple and effective reference.

Set up was well referenced (at the end), and I think there'd need to be a strong entry to eclipse this.

Ok. Very ambitious in many ways.

You used the Cassandra effect. Cassandra knows about the future but cannot change, then finally it works, she can kill Eli. So, she existed in many strings, because existence works that way.

Cool, but that's the illogical thing here, too. If Cassandra let little Adolf live, so that Göring doesn't come to power and finally Eli can't build another radical group which kills children, then it wouldn't make sense that Cassandra still kills him. Because all the strings are another version of reality, not? All the scenarios should be there the way you explained it, on another string.

Cassandra mentioned he would destroy strings/worlds with his jumps… Maybe that's the point.
I guess it's not completely logical constructed.

There's a bit overwritten. The dialogue, the document-talk for example.  The intro feels like Cassandra talks to a group of people.

No problem, cause you really done a lot with time travelling here. That was the challenge… Very fast play, much happens. Well done