The Devil in Disguise by S.A.Goodman (guk) - Short, Drama - The new millenium is upon us, and a man and woman sit down to discuss the balance of power.  But who cares about humanity more.... God or the Devil?  (7 Pages) - pdf, format

I haven't seen the writer here before and hope he/she comments.

Very YING/YANG thing going here. I am not sure of what needed to be said though.

It come across IMO as two equals who do a hand off with seemingly no regard for life of creation.

Kind of like the ORICAL getting to hold the ARCHETECHS keys in the matrix or something.

Can’t say I cared for it story wise.

I would like to go into formatting etc... if the writer shows up.

Shawn.....><

Gotta tell ya, I'm pretty put off by the whole "God & Devil" sit down for a chit chat I've been seeing lately.  I remember a movie, an old one, "Night Train To Terror" that deals in this exhausted concept.  It wasn't good then and it isn't good now.  I'm reserving my full comments for when the writer comes in and tells me why it's so good, though.

Hi,

Read your short. I liked the premise. But I do think they went in circles discussing who's good and who's bad without strengthening their points. Maybe some examples would add texture otherwise it's just not supported statements.

Devil says "I'm good and you're bad but people think otherwise" and God says "Yes, haha".

Also the fact that Devil is good and God is bad is given to us from the very beginning (and you also gave that in your logline) - I'm just thinking we have to discover it on our own and be owed by it, would be more fun the way I'm suggesting perhaps. --just a suggestion, it's your story.

Hi

First thanks to all three who have replied, appreciated   I'll try keep my reply short, although is a lot to say.

I am pretty new to writing, and still in process of learning, and this is one of my early works, so I know isn't that good but hopefully isn't that awful either.

I don't think it has come across the way I had imagined in my head sadly, which is often the case.  I had this idea of it being a little longer than just 7 pages it ended up being also.  I really wanted/tried but I think didn't do well in attempting, was put across both sides of the story, but should have been over 2 parts or 2 short stories, one from each character point of view.  In the end I think I rushed it too much and didn't catch what I wanted correctly.

My idea I had, was a concept of two individuals of man and woman (God and Devil) sat in Purgatory, and saw them more as a brother and sister, than the concept of the Devil being banished from Heaven by God.  They discuss what has happened on Earth for the past hundred or thousand years.  

I saw it as like a handover of power as mentioned.  Every hundred or thousand years, the balance of power is handed over to the other to do what they wish without any interference from the opposite end.

My thoughts were to try and make people think about who is good and who is evil, and have everyone make up their own minds.

Like Shawn said in the first reply, it was correct in some way in that neither seemed to have any regard for life of creation.  I saw it as the two characters almost playing a game of cards or chess, and not really caring about the objects their using, just about who is better than the other.

I agree also that I gave away too much, with my thought of the Devil being good, and God evil from the start, when I should have tried to just put points across and had people decide for themselves reading it.

Often I have lots of ideas for stories and ideas, but where I struggle badly is transfering that idea or story I have in my head, into a script or story wise written down in words and get it across.  Quite often it doesn't come across the way I vision it in my mind.

If anyone has any thoughts on it more, or on the formatting, I would be grateful as I am still learning about writing scripts and have several other longer stories wrote I need to look back over after advice on my formatting etc, before consider posting up on the site.

Thanks to anyone who replies with advice/comments.

Steve

Guk,
First off, Welcome to the boards.

I see you have writtin some other things according to your sig. I hope to see them here as well.

I think you nailed part of your situation regarding the hiccup in your script when you mentioned the passing of power over form one to amother.

There is no greater/lesser value to the equation. They are equal. So why should  a reader cheer for either. They both have the exact intent only with differient names.

You need to make them stand out from one another, otherwise you could do something, hell anything to either of them and no-one would care.

There has to be a leader and a follower. That, my friend is why one is called God and the other the Devil. One created the other.

The pergatory vision didn't come across either IMO. The black/white, good / evil didn't translate.

Pergatory was not defined as it is depicted (biblically) only a room. Make it come alive if that is where you want it. Remember, according to certin religions, this is a place for additional treatment for the admission to heaven. It cannot simply be a room of black and white. It's too generic.

Hope this helps and thanks for showing up. Hope to see more of your work my friend.

Shawn.....><

I thought this was really weak, dude. I appreciate your ideas and intentions but I think your execution failed.

Visually, it's dull. The black and white thing didn't work for me. I did like the idea of a room divided in such a way but not with such simplistic features. The characters also did nothing. Literally just talk. I'm one to let extensive dialogue slide, a lot more than these other guys. Had the dialogue actually been interesting, I may not have been as concerned. But it's not.

You mention you wanted people to think about who is good and who is evil. But there's nothing to think. In your scenario, the Devil is blatantly good and God is blatantly evil. The Devil didn't even seem like a Devil. She just seemed to pose existential questions that God would shoot down. Basically a stand-in for an atheist, agnostic, whatever. Nothing diety-like at all.

God was the biggest problem here. If you want to portray God as evil, okay. But there's a million more interesting ways you could have done this. Ways that facilitate actual conflict. I pretty much knew how God was going to respond every time. He likes fucking with people for no reason and thinks it's funny. That's it.

Basically, you downplayed pretty much every aspect of your scenario. Naturally, everything about it is boring.

I suppose I'm coming off as harsh. I think I've backed up everything I've said but regardless, if I am coming off as such, it's also in part because like Balt, I'm getting sick of the whole "God and the Devil get together and discuss humanity" schtick. It's a flawed concept to begin with as it's all dialogue and no action. Maybe if you placed the two among on Earth among actual humans, it'd be different but no one ever does that. Another thing is nobody ever has the guts to right anything subversive or incendiary. They try to keep it neutral, probably because they're posting on a message board.

Sorry, dude. What can I say? I won't bash you for choosing the concept you did but you really gotta step it up. Make something interesting happen for starters.

Now that I see you are active:

1.  Your script opens up like a punch in the face -- It's format is wrong from the get go.  Everything is so tight and compact, it's as if you tossed all your thoughts into a garbage disposal then dumped them into a trash compactor.  It's got no breathing room at all.  I got claustrophobic just reading it.

2.  This one kind of goes along with my 1st complaint of the script.  There are no scenes.  It's just one scene.  One loooooooong, 8 page romp.  This lends to why it feels so close quarters.  

3.  Take the title off the top of page one.  You already gave us a proper title page, why be redundant?

4.  Don't bold your scene headers.

5.  Don't handle your dates and times like you have done.  There is a very clear and clever way of doing this now within your scene header slug

INT. PURGATORY - DAY (DECEMBER, 31st 1999)

That is absolutely being used today in replace of the :SUPER, which you didn't even format for anyways.

6.  You have a wealth of things going on in this script that hinders its flow and they all deal with wording.  You're not very economical when you write or describe and this could be a huge problem for future work if you're not told now about it.  Things like: the entire 1st page make your script too weighty.  I rewrote your 1st page and had it condensed into 3 action slugs.  I'd post it here in public forum if you'd like or I can send it to you.  I say this because I don't want to make it look like I'm being too big of a prick.  It's the tiny details you have.  The stuff that doesn't matter.  It's the entire set up of white wine, red wine... It's the black table/white table.  It's the way god is dressed.  It's the way she's dressed.  It's all of it, man.  Very little of that stuff is needed and if it is you can trim it down, as I did, to convey the absolute most visual parts of the scene so we can continue on with the story of what's going on, rather than the story of what God and the Devil are wearing, drinking and sitting in.  See what I mean?

7.  Your dialog is stiff and riddled with clich�d cheese.  In one instance you said Millions of lives had been lost and then two chains later say Billions.  The banter between the two goes on and on and on and just covers the exact same ground as it did when it started.  There is really nothing here but a conversation.

8.  The entire last page, like your 1st, is just as off putting format wise.  The way you handle it seems very rushed and sloppy.  The Clock thing in particular.

In the end, the concept isn't new.  We have no real resolve.  You have made it to where it doesn't matter how good the world is or what the world does, they're still fucked because both sides of supposed "GOOD/EVIL" are bad.  God's bad.  Devil's bad.  World's sad.  There is just nothing new here.  And 100 years seems an odd mixture for these two also.  Some of us on earth would get on the cusp of having experienced both sides of power (God's & Devil's) but the majority born into the world would never live to see the shift.  And while that doesn't really matter here because all we have is you TELLING us what's happened rather than SHOWING us what's happened.

Maybe you should write for TV.

First, thanks to Ledbetter. James McClung and Baltis- for taking the time to have a look at my script and replying as well as offering your thoughts on the story/formatting etc.  Like I say, I'm still kind of learning so any kind of comment, harsh or otherwise is better than nothing at all I believe, and hopefully helps me learn from my mistakes and where going wrong to make future writings look that bit better.

At the start when I had the idea of this, my personal thoughts, were to show God as the worst of the two.  It was to show that he created the world, and life within it, but also with that he also helped bring things like Famine, Wars, murders, and other things that would take place, and he didn't stop it happening.  Then with that the idea to have people think, would this world be better off then if the Devil created it and everything inside?  

Then as I started writing, my ideas changed and I think thats where some things went wrong, like trying to put two points across in a short space of time and just never work in the end at all and kind of just crashed and burned a little.

Also I think I got a little worried about what people would think of it also, in making the devil look the better or more concerning for life of the two.  A little silly maybe I know, but maybe I held back in some things I thought about saying in case it offended anyone who did read it.

I understand that their has to be a leader, and a follower.  And that God created the Devil.  I tried to think or re-imagining that instead as of two people who were born/created at the same time, and have them play out as more of a brother and sister than one who created the other.  Like a little twist on the originality.

As for Purgatory, my idea, which I went with was just a single room where they would sit down and talk, split into two as it would maybe suit just a short story better.  But, as stated, maybe just having two people sat in a single room throughout was not a good idea.   I could have, as suggested, played the thing out over several different settings, or have the back drop of the room allow to show images of what happened as they talk about it.

Apologies for it being another God & Devil scenario again, I just had this idea in my head and ran with it.  I think in the end I hit a brick wall and just didn't get myself over the top so to speak to keep running and make something out of the idea I had.

Apologies also for title on top of first page, I never thought about it being up twice with a title page also there which did the job anyway.

Bolding my scene headers, unfortunately something I have grown a little accustomed to recently and a bad habit, something I need to eradicate.  Not sure why, i think coz it made them stand out more for my own eyes, and done on everything I have wrote so far which I'll go back and sort, so thanks for that advice as never much thought about it personally.

The dates, another thing I was very unsure of how to do right.  Thanks for informing me of how it's best to put that in a script as a few in other scripts wrote/writing where that is done also and will need to change.

I was going to go with every 1,000 years or something similar, and I don't know why, but I think I started to think, what the hell has happened in the last 1,000 years I could talk about?  Like mainly major incidents.  I had a quick check online searching, and unfortunately I think I give up too easily and decided, what the hell.. i'll make it a 100 years instead, much easier to find out about.  Like said, very rushed unfortunately and just not very thought out more or planned my end.

The Telling and Showing again is like i said, should have been played out i think walking around seeing it happening behind than just talking about it happening.  Of course, seeing something happen in front of your eyes is much more dramatic than having two people talking about it.

I understand I believe where your coming from with your comments though about the little things I have put in, and that's something I will need to go and think about in other ones I have written before I even consider posting up, where I believe I have put too much in, which doesn't really need to be there.

I have several other longer scripts, wrote or working on still which I want to really try and get a lot of the basics right or better before I consider posting them up.   I know they still probably won't be perfect and things still found wrong with them, but if the basic elements are there, then the rest can be slowly improved on as I go along.

Baltis-, if you could post up here what you rewrote of that 1st page, or send me it I would really appreciate it, either way I don't mind.  It would be good learning to see where I can look to improve my writing.  And thanks for taking the time to do that.

This could be more interesting if you presented God and the Devil as not being just good or evil, but as agents of Order and Chaos.  The chaos God could have given World War II as a good example of his power over people.

He could say something about Hitler promoting the blond, blue-eyed beast when he himself wasn't one, etc.  Nuclear weapons and environmental disasters also happening on His watch.  That sort of thing.  The Devil has to create a lot of Order just to correct these historical nightmares.

Just my opinion.  Richard

Interesting take on the subject, brother and sister.

Not very bright, are they? The only reason the man had more deaths was because the population grew during his tenure.

Does God become the Devil every 100 years?

Guk

I can't say I'm too enamoured to see yet another God v Devil scenario but this had some interesting qualities to it, a slightly different slant. Persaonally, I don't believe in either so I can it back and just take it as a piece of fiction...and for that it was entertaining to read your notions on the balance of power.

The blurred lines between good and evil, the tragic similarities present in both is a confusion I presume bore out of out current existence and if there is a god, how could he/she let so much bad sh?t happen, whether it be inflicted naturally or by the hand of human kind? I ask myself the same question.

The dialogue did go around in circles and a felt repetitive a little. You coulda probably gotten the same point across in 4 or 5 pages while some of the prose read awkwardly. For example:

GOD
Evil with a capital D.

"He smiles at the joke he makes with the name."

-- No need to explain the joke here, we get it.

Still, I can't argue with the overall idea here, regardless of the somewhat roundabout expression. With our history both recent and ancient it’s hard to fathom where all this unrelenting faith in the divine goodness of a higher power comes from. As Bill Hicks would say "Beliefs are odd"

I can't distinguish much of a difference in the first 10 years so here is to the rest of my life under Lucifer's control!

Col.

Hi Guk,

I wanted to read this primarily because of everyone's comments and that the theme of this story was on God & the Devil, and that I wrote a similar script to this.

Thank God it's not the same in story but is similar in the characters'ish.

I thought this story did go on for longer than it should have.  I also didn't like the fact the characters appearance was of 21.  I always pictured God as older and wiser looking.  The Devil can be any age as he/she is always trying to trick.

Your characters don't ever mention God or the Devil's names so people are left guessing and if filmed, they will be guessing until the brother & sister part.  I did like your evil with a capital d line.  The closest to a give away.

Also, knowing how devastating famines are to countries growing up in Ireland, I see multiple famines killed over 100million people in China over a 100 years in the 1800's, so that leads me to believe that is by the Devil and a lot worse than what God did in the 1900's.

I wonder if this short was the inspiration behind the bold slugs thread?

All the best,


Javier

hi, thanks to TheRichcraft, cloroxmartini, colkurtz8 and jayrex for taking the time to have a look at my script, appreciate it  

Like I said before, I wanted to put my own little twist on the idea of God and the Devil, and for me I thought about what about them being a brother and sister.  I know God created the Devil, but just like to change things sometimes and wondered what if maybe they were created together out of the same mold.  And that then would lead for them to take turns over time in changing the courses of history etc.

My idea was for every 100 years, one would take over the world and do what ever they wanted without being stopped by the other, as long as it never ended in totaly destruction of humanity, or else what could they play with anymore?

colkurtz8, you kind of got my thoughts in some way, in that my personal belief was similar in that with so much stuff happening, wars, murders, destructions of societys and lands, then why does God not step in and stop if.  Not trying to get too religious on anyone though, just my own personal thoughts on life sometimes.

The evil with a capital D, I liked personally and as stated maybe didnt need the little statement after to make people understand the meaning I was getting across.

jayrex, apologies if it comes across a little similar to your own idea/script you wrote.  I havent read it unfortunately, but may have a look at it just to see your own ideas on the characters.

As for the ages of them, Im still unsure on that a little myself of what to make them.  I wanted them to be reasonably young, as we all picture God as later in age in pictures etc, and like before with the brother/sister thing, i wanted to shake it up a little with my own ideas and have them portrayed as late teens/early adulthood.  Then possibly could explain a little about how they are so nieve and still not fully comprehending the consequences of their actions, as many teenagers do early in life.

I never wanted to use the names God and Devil in the script, thats why just also placed them as a Man and Woman.  Also if I used two men, would have to distinguish them as called Man #1, Man #2 or something, whereas the other identifies them easier.

Since I got some replies, I have gone back and tried looking at it again, and started a newer approach to the story idea.  The only problem I'm fighting myself over now, is that I feel it comes across more bizarre and corny?  More like a 'Wheres Wally' edition of a script story lol.

I have only written about 7 pages so far, and looked at the years 1900-1950 I think Im upto.  This version though, has them sat in a small cafe, and passing time waiting for the exchange.  Instead this time of them talking about whats happened, I have tried to show in some capacity (albeit this is where im fighting wether coming across right or not) the major incidents in the 100 years happening around them but more in a cryptic way.  Its like trying to identify the incidents through the images you read and imagine happening,

Heres a little example of what I mean, if can identify the 5 historic moments I have tried to hide in the story.  I think a little easy if know history (which I didnt as I looked up to help me online).

Quoted Text A man in a corner sits, as he raises his hand and smoothly runs his fingers along his small black moustache, each curling up at the corner of his mouth. His other hand holds a soft paperback, the cover is a dull pale green, a small picture in the centre showing several boats in between walls. A colored man runs past a window outside.  Several white males dressed in white outfits run after him, carrying weapons in their hands. Down the street outside, as they run past, a man plays some jazz music on his saxophone.  Passers by throwing money into the case on the floor. The same man inside the diner as before, sneezes and coughs once more.  He pulls out a bottle from inside his pocket, opens and throws several pills into his mouth, taking a drink from his cup to wash them down.

I'm still working on it here and there, while working on other stories im trying to develop also, with the 'Cursed' series my major development Im working on, with 5 episodes wrote (not yet shown to anyone or posted though).

Guk,
I am a fan of well-crafted religious debate, but yours comes off lacking confidence.

As you have responded in your posts, you became unsure of your purpose or throughline and floundered.  When I encounter a situation like that, I "select all," "delete," and immediately go into a page-one rewrite to refigure my story.  It's daunting when you do it, but having gotten the initial "here's my first thoughts on paper," you see more clearly what was important from your first attempt and can condense it and get to the meat of the story.

Perhaps there should have been more of an argument element to the discussion.  I don't mean yell, but rather each party challenging the the others' methods and then giving rebuttals.  I can see the devil trying to persuade God that her methods make people happier in appealing to their natural instincts while God insists that he lets people make decisions and find out the consequences. Just a thought...

Also, why is God handing over power?  Your interpretation of his character would suggest that he would find a way to shortchange the devil out of her chance.

The age of your character should correspond to the age of human civilization.  If we are in the 21st century and they are only 21, then they were born well after the Israelites and everything else in the Old Testament.  The OT goes back to like 4000 BC.  What if your characters were in their 60s?  What kinds of perspectives would they have?  Mistakes they never learned from?

Overall this piece feels like a tired conversation, as others have observed.  Nothing is really established with finality and there is no real arc to the conversation-just killing time before arbitrarily swapping spots.  Sharper dialogue wouldn't hurt either.  Give them distinct voices and catch phrases.

What makes your piece different?  Find that element and expand it.  Make it the keystone of your piece and you will find the right direction for your script.