Friday Night on the N19 by Ryan O'Connell - Short - Three unrelated characters sit on the bus on their way home. Flashbacks show us what they have been doing on this specific night. As the flashbacks relay back to the bus we hear a fight between two other characters taking place. The fight leads to the stabbing and death of a commuter, and the three characters we have followed do nothing to help. 12 pages - fdr, format

It'd be nice to be able to read this without having to purchase Final Draft.

If you want reviews, you need to resubmit this in .pdf format.

Hey Ryan, all you gotta do is go to "File" and click "Save as PDF".  Then everyone will be able to read it no problem.

Also, your logline tells us too much, IMO.

Ryan, I would suggest a little more proofreading before saving and submitting as a pdf.  There are some things that were probably overlooked that you would see on another pass.  Also, I get the temporal shifts, but I got lost frequently and can only guess as a reader that one character may be another character by another name.  The audience would recognize faces, but those of us reading it can only go by names.  Please name as many of your characters as possible and stick with that name throughout.  The first time a character is introduced, their name should be all in CAPS.  If you post the pdf with those technical fixes, I'll be able to understand the story more to comment further.

I read through the short, it has a good pacing, but can sometimes be confusing as to what is going on.  First format.

Many times you forget to cap characters names when they are first introduced. Mr. Fredericks is one, but you did cap at the start so you must have gotten so into the story you forgot the rest, which is good. Just a little thing to help the reader follow, and for shooting.

In your scene headings, you have INT. - NIGHT - BUS, which would imply that we are inside of night.  No big deal again, just switch your location and time of day and put a space between INT.  and the dashes.

INT. - BUS - NIGHT

Also in a few instances you forget to put DAY or NIGHT.

There are a few other little things like that to watch out for. Page 4 you say no body, which would describe that lack or loss of a corpse. (Bad joke, okay) You also describe Mr. Fredericks shoes as “smart”.

Sarcastic sticklers would ask how shoes can be smart. I know what you mean but to avoid comments like that maybe describe them as elegant, or how they make  the man appear smart, or something like that.

The Story:

I want to like this story, but everything seems to be convoluted.  It could be simple, but it’s twisted into what seems to be a few other story’s that are not necessary. What is the relevance of Mr. Fredericks and his comatosed wife?

Biggest thing: If the three strangers do nothing to help, and that’s it, then who cares about the three characters? If they don’t do anything then they are as relevant to the story as a bum the bus passes by on the street. They need to be active, or cut.

Maybe it’s something I’m not getting, but I think the biggest reason for that are the character names. The only person I followed intently were Jacob, and Frederick cause that’s all you named.

Everyone else is ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘girl’, ‘young girl’.  If you don’t give your characters names you also sacrifice there identity's and with that any connection from them to the reader.  

More than that it makes it really hard to read cause I don’t know if Man or young girl from page 3, is the same one as on page 7. I have to stop, go back and read, and it takes you out of the story.

And even if you add, “the same young girl as before” she is just a faceless passer-byer without a name. Plus it’s long winded and unnecessary when you could just put Jill, and Mark.  

I think you have a really good idea that needs to be boiled down to the necessary plot points and it would be a entertaining, tight script.

Like Robert Mckee says, if it doesn’t move the story, cut it. (paraphrasing) Only keep what is absolutely necessary to propel the story.

It sucks to cut your work, like pulling a knife out of your leg while your wife has an abortion. But enough about my weekend, the point is, its a good story that like all our work in not quite done yet.

So i would just go back and ask, “what is this story about?” Why do my characters do this, and that?  Who is the antagonist? (we know who he is but why is he like that)

I see this as a Seinfeld thriller, were the a group of people who in there separate day to day tasks, come together coincidently to solve a common goal.  Great concept, just needs some structure.