Hello Mark,

I finished your script today.
Overall, I'm impressed, you have a lot of good story beats in place.
You lay out the puzzle pieces well, your twists aren't outright cheats.

With all due respect for your fine effort, I'm going to lay out things plainly.
I feel that your climax greatly diminishes the emotional pay off.
We spend the bulk of the final 15 pages with ancillary characters.
Howard is reduced to a "magic eight ball" of stock answers to the doc's questions.

Have you ever watched Shutter Island?
That's a complex film with a delusional protag.
The film took about ten minutes to explain a very elaborate but deliberate ruse.
Here, you spend 12 pages with the doctor deconstructing Howard's last few days.
Twelve pages. It should only be a fraction of that time, if at all.
Those drawn out dialogue chains should be flashes at best.

You've got a real bummer of a resolution for Howard, he's a total failure.
As far as he knows, everything he's done to be good is utterly wrong.
And the redemptive conclusion comes from two characters not directly affected.
It feels like you went out of your way to avoid showing happiness to the reader.

Howard meets a bad end with the doctor.
Mary Beth ends amongst strangers and gets a long ride in a cold place.
The two folks we're supposed to be invested in, never see any positive results.
We never get to share anything good with the folks we're tagging along with. Why?

Several folks have commented on the lack of motivation for Mary Beth.
And they're right, it needs something to lend credence to you tale.
A woman at the end of her life, what could motivate her to go along?

Perhaps a grief counselor visiting her and relating the child's suicide.
Sicily took her own life believing she was taken from her real parents.
Howard shows Mary Beth Sicily's worn copy of her book, filled with the child's notes.
He believes that if she accompanies him to the reservation, they can help the family.
Sicily has three days before her spiritual journey is to begin, but she's "adrift".
As a team, Howard believes they can set the family on the path to healing.
Where in actuality, he's the one in need of more healing than anyone.
And setting this girl on the right path is the one good thing he can do in his state.

Something like that ties all your threads together into a cohesive theme.
Bringing Sicily's book back to her and setting it back into the display coffin.
Perhaps even a personalized inscription by the author and lay it to rest with her.
I have a lot of ideas about this story, but it's not mine to work on.

You've done a lot of great work here, but now it's time to rearrange the pieces.
I think this has great potential to be an emotionally compelling story.

Keep writing and rewriting!

Regards,
E.D.

Hey E.D.

Once again, thank you taking a gander.

Quoted from electric dreamer characters have lines but no intro.

Fixing that already.  I don't know why I wrote it like that in the first place.

Quoted from electric dreamer Howard and Deanna are so matter of fact, it's plays out artificial.

Hope the end of the story made a little sense as to why their dialogue seemed a little off in the beginning.  Not just their, dialogue, either, but anybody who Howard interacts with.

Quoted from electric dreamer I think I would like to see some flashback images for Howard as he reads the book. It would also help break up those large blocks of voice over for the audience.

That is a route I'm considering on doing.  Of course, you know by now he never had a sister, but I could always show flashbacks of him reading the book as a young boy and how sensitive he was to the book.  Of course, it will take some working so as not to give away the ending away that fast.  But there's definately flashback room in the (V.O.)

Right now, I've been trying out different exercises in Voiceover, (as you know from Art's Tattoo Removal).  I'm trying different approaches to them and finding unique ways to use it.

Quoted from electric dreamer And the virtually immediate acceptance is a large bitter pill to swallow.

Ehh.  One of the two main cruxes in the story.  (I think that's the plural of crux.  It might be cruxi, though)  But yeah, I need to overcome that.  The problem with that is that I cut the scene a little too early.  The scene in the first draft for that is that she does put up resistance to going with him speaking wise, but he's so cheerful at finding her, he packs her stuff for her and helps her into his car.  Then, in the end, when he flashbacks to that scene, we see that she is old and weak and she strains very hard to get out of his hands.  So, in the beginning, in his mind's eye, he thinks he's just holding her arm, helping her get in the car.  But at the end, he's a lot more forceful than we thought with the Old Mary Beth.

I know it doesn't solve the problem as you read it for the first time, because it seems like she goes so willingly, but at the end, we see she does put up a struggle.  (And I have to go back and fix the phone call from rest stop, try to make that seem a little more urgent.)

Quoted from electric dreamer I feel like you story's mid section is cutting away at key moments.

Like with Howard packing Mary Beth's stuff into the car, I did cut away from scenes before too much got revealed.  I think I wanted people to assume what happened from the scene before until what's going on now.  I am going to have to go back and write out everything that happens and see what I think from there.

Quoted from electric dreamer The law enforcement scenes seem to only service the plot. Those characters read very interchangeable to me.

I notice I have a really hard time with writing law enforcement and making them creative.  I guess, because in my mind and my experience with them, they're all so interchangable themselves.  Yeah, there's good cops and bad cops, boy cops and girl cops, but to me they all act the same.  That view of mine is where I come into trouble when I have to bring the police into my stories, (and prison guards for that matter).  I really don't want to spend time developing them since they're there only to act like a normal cop anyway.  I do have to overcome that mentality of them and add something to their character.

Quoted from electric dreamer no one has cell phones or other tech ....  establishing a pre Amber Alert time period might help out

What I wanted to give the impression of is that only Howard doesn't have a cell phone or a lap top.  (He had to go to the library to find Mary Beth)  I guess I wanted it to be a little clue that something was wrong with him.  Why would a therapist who travels to set up counselling services not have a cell phone or a computer himself.  Everybody else in the script has cell phones and all that.

Where I messed up, is that I didn't make it clear Mary Beth didn't have a chance to take her cell phone.  So her not having a cell phone made it seem like an outdated story.

Now that you mention it, though, a lot of my stories could take place in the early 90's.  I toyed with the idea of setting this story (before I even wrote it) in the 90's.  I don't like cell phones myself (I have one, but I use it for a clock.)  I hate talking on the phone in general and I despise texting, so a lot of my characters I've noticed I don't give that luxury.  With Howard, though, I think I gave him a good reason not to have one.  (I actually did job placement at Goodwill before, and only a handful of workers we had come in there had cell phones.)


And thank you very much again for the smushed words and typo.  Smushed words have always been a bad habit of mine and I know I miss a lot of them, (I even ignore some of the ones that Spellcheck picks up because they make sense to me in the moment), but I hate not picking up other typo's.  I'm a little OC when it comes to those.

      (to be continued in a few minutes........)

All right, E.D.  Back to business.

Quoted from electric dreamer I finished your script today. Overall, I'm impressed, you have a lot of good story beats in place. You lay out the puzzle pieces well, your twists aren't outright cheats.

Thank you.  That was the main thing I was worried about was coming off as if I was cheating the reader.  I know I certainly hate it when I read or watch a story like that.

Quoted from electric dreamer I feel that your climax greatly diminishes the emotional pay off.  ....  you spend 12 pages with the doctor deconstructing Howard's last few days  ....  chains should be flashes at best

I definately understand what you're saying here, and those are meant to be seen as only flashes.  (a couple seconds of the scene at most.)  I use 12 pages to tell it in words, (which is my fault for writing it like that,) but the way I played it out in my head and I think onscreen it might end up 4 minutes if that.  But I definately understand what you mean about how out it diminishes the emotional pay off and I should go a different way with the ending.

Quoted from electric dreamer You've got a real bummer of a resolution for Howard, he's a total failure.

This is hard to explain for me.  Lol, I've tried writing an answer to this four times now and backspaced every time.  Maybe it has to do with that I feel I do my best writing when I'm depressed and things have gone to shit in my life, or maybe it has to do with that I'm such a happy person in real life and nothing gets me down (on the outside) that writing is a release for a lot of my anger and depression.  When I write when I'm depressed, I try to tell it like it is and how I see things in that miserable moment.  That's how I end up with these stories that just seem miserable.

The base of this story comes from an actual dream I had, and even though this story is based on only what happened in a few moments, I wanted the sad feeling of that moment to last throughout the entire story, all the way to the end.  I don't know why, it's just the way it came out.  That's how I felt about it.

The dream I had was that I was on an Indian reservation, and there was a dead little girl.  She was in a hole and her family had set her on fire.  The girl's mother was handing me possessions of the girl to throw down into the fire with her.  One of the things she handed me was a dark blue book.  I recognized the book in my dream, but, for the life of me, couldn't remember where I knew the book from.

That's where the dream ended.  I couldn't remember the name of the book in my dream, but, working the story around the dream, that title is what I came up with.

That eerie, depressing feeling in the dream is the feeling I wanted to convey throughout the story.  I just knew i didn't want to give this a happy resolution.


However,

Quoted from electric dreamer Perhaps a grief counselor visiting her and relating the child's suicide. Sicily took her own life believing she was taken from her real parents. Howard shows Mary Beth Sicily's worn copy of her book, filled with the child's notes. He believes that if she accompanies him to the reservation, they can help the family. Sicily has three days before her spiritual journey is to begin, but she's "adrift". As a team, Howard believes they can set the family on the path to healing. Where in actuality, he's the one in need of more healing than anyone. And setting this girl on the right path is the one good thing he can do in his state. Something like that ties all your threads together into a cohesive theme. Bringing Sicily's book back to her and setting it back into the display coffin. Perhaps even a personalized inscription by the author and lay it to rest with her. I have a lot of ideas about this story, but it's not mine to work on.

There are some very remarkable ideas in there that are making me second guess the depressing, no happy resolution ending.  I did initially toy with the idea of making Mary Beth and Howard actually brother and sister, but you said some things that are giving me some great ideas of where the story could go.

In about a month I'm going to come back to 'but you can learn to play' and I thought I was just going to do a couple touches here and there, but I think I might PM you about a couple of the ideas you've suggested if you don't mind, and do a total thorough rewrite.

Thank you very much for everything you've suggested along the way and at the end.  I'm glad that overall you enjoyed the story.  I'm also glad the story got to you enough that it gave you some clever ideas of the directions you would have gone with the story.  Like I said, I'll PM you when I come back to this if you don't mind and get some thoughts.

See you around.

-  Mark

Quoted from rc1107 Hey E.D. Hope the end of the story made a little sense as to why their dialogue seemed a little off in the beginning.  Not just their, dialogue, either, but anybody who Howard interacts with.

Yes, it does, that was a mid-read note, so we're good there. :)

Quoted from rc1107 That is a route I'm considering on doing.  Of course, you know by now he never had a sister, but I could always show flashbacks of him reading the book as a young boy and how sensitive he was to the book.  Of course, it will take some working so as not to give away the ending away that fast.  But there's definately flashback room in the (V.O.) Right now, I've been trying out different exercises in Voiceover, (as you know from Art's Tattoo Removal).  I'm trying different approaches to them and finding unique ways to use it.

That's one way to go with the flashes, personally, I'd make it more internal for Howard.
We see what he sees in his deluded mind's eye, shadows of his stolen sister.
Make us closer to Howard as he "relives" the anguish of it all.

Quoted from rc1107 Ehh.  One of the two main cruxes in the story.  (I think that's the plural of crux.  It might be cruxi, though)  But yeah, I need to overcome that.  The problem with that is that I cut the scene a little too early.  The scene in the first draft for that is that she does put up resistance to going with him speaking wise, but he's so cheerful at finding her, he packs her stuff for her and helps her into his car.  Then, in the end, when he flashbacks to that scene, we see that she is old and weak and she strains very hard to get out of his hands.  So, in the beginning, in his mind's eye, he thinks he's just holding her arm, helping her get in the car.  But at the end, he's a lot more forceful than we thought with the Old Mary Beth.

I have faith you can find a better way than force to fix this motivation snafu.
You can find the sincerity in Howard's delusion to appeal to Mary Beth's kindness.
It's a tough nut to crack, but all the more rewarding for you and the reader.

Quoted from rc1107 I notice I have a really hard time with writing law enforcement and making them creative.  I guess, because in my mind and my experience with them, they're all so interchangable themselves.  Yeah, there's good cops and bad cops, boy cops and girl cops, but to me they all act the same.  That view of mine is where I come into trouble when I have to bring the police into my stories, (and prison guards for that matter).  I really don't want to spend time developing them since they're there only to act like a normal cop anyway.  I do have to overcome that mentality of them and add something to their character.

I think you'll find these characters will become less important in later drafts.
As you strengthen Howard and Mary Beth, those plot points will fade.
As we spend less time with the police, it will become easier to give them some color.
Less pages = less color, but still something, like a divorce, etc.

Quoted from rc1107 The base of this story comes from an actual dream I had, and even though this story is based on only what happened in a few moments, I wanted the sad feeling of that moment to last throughout the entire story, all the way to the end.  I don't know why, it's just the way it came out.  That's how I felt about it. The dream I had was that I was on an Indian reservation, and there was a dead little girl.  She was in a hole and her family had set her on fire.  The girl's mother was handing me possessions of the girl to throw down into the fire with her.  One of the things she handed me was a dark blue book.  I recognized the book in my dream, but, for the life of me, couldn't remember where I knew the book from.

Wow, why this dream isn't in your script is beyond me.
It says so much by saying nothing, potent stuff.
I know it's a very personal thing, but dig deep and get it on the page.
That's primal stuff, pal. Lightning in a bottle. And primal draws folks in. Always.

Quoted from rc1107 There are some very remarkable ideas in there that are making me second guess the depressing, no happy resolution ending.  I did initially toy with the idea of making Mary Beth and Howard actually brother and sister, but you said some things that are giving me some great ideas of where the story could go. In about a month I'm going to come back to 'but you can learn to play' and I thought I was just going to do a couple touches here and there, but I think I might PM you about a couple of the ideas you've suggested if you don't mind, and do a total thorough rewrite. Thank you very much for everything you've suggested along the way and at the end.  I'm glad that overall you enjoyed the story.  I'm also glad the story got to you enough that it gave you some clever ideas of the directions you would have gone with the story.  Like I said, I'll PM you when I come back to this if you don't mind and get some thoughts. See you around. -  Mark

Hey Mark, it was my pleasure, thank YOU for posting your script.
Yeah, hit me up anytime, I love to spitball.
I'm starting a new feature and I should have the first draft done in a monthish.
So, I may be even available to work on some pages, if you're game.
This story has got that thing, I'd be down for a potential collab, if that interests you.
So, let's touch base on this again after your story's had time to marinate.
Thanks for the detailed replies, it's always appreciated.

Regards,
E.D.