Wednesdays by Anna Imhof - Short, Drama - Molly, a young mother, obsessed with luxury realty and playing the lottery, desperately wants a better life for herself and her son. Max, however, likes it as it is. 20 pages - pdf, format

Anna
what a lovely script. Loved the relationship betwen Max and his mom, and the hope she held for a better life for them both was palpable. Great read.

best,

h

Anna,

Nice story.   You really pulled me in me in with the whole mother's plight of trying to provide a better life for her son.   And who hasn't dreamt of winning the lottery?    A subject we all can relate to.   So good job on creating a "public appeal factor". You had me on the edge of my seat rooting for something good to happen.   --spoiler -- Unfortunately life had other pans.

And now for the not so good stuff.  Unfortunately the ending was very uneventful for me.   I would've like to see something more profound like maybe she wins the lottery but then Max gets hit and killed by a car while they're crossing the street, so she donates the money to charity, buys a fish and names it Max.  But that's just me.   I guess I'm just trying to inspire you to take it to a higher level.  

As for the actual writing, your formatting is good.   It was a quick and easy read.   Although you use ellipsis and exclamation marks too much.   Also I'd encourage you to add a couple  more character descriptions to make them stand out more.  Maybe give Max a Dennis the Menace hair cowlick or something    Based on your description of Molly I automatically envisioned her looking like a disheveled Keira Knightley or a younger Toni Collette.  
And that was nice.

Another thing I didn't like is that Molly came off being just a little too desparate and borderline delusional.  It'd be nice if you went into that a little more.  Why does she want to win so bad, other than  getting rich and providing for Max?  Give her a reason to act the way she is. Maybe she's got a terminal disease or she's mentally unstable?  Maybe you should show her taking antidepressants,  because something is definitely not right with her.   Just a thought.

Also a couple action descriptions and some of the dialogue is a bit odd and unbelievable at times.   Max descends, grabs two slices of toast and prepares a sandwich.  Should be bread, not toast.   Unless he toast it first.   And I don't know if it's necessary for the waiter to pull back his sleeve to check his watch.  But no big deal.   I'm nitpicking.

And now for the thing that really stood out like a sore thumb to me.  Her use of profanity.  Doesn't seem like a mother would talk to her son that way.  I realize their a low income family but it really seemed out of place, and brought the quality of the story down.

On a positive not I liked your clever call-back at the end when Molly says let's get some fish.   Made me laugh.  There's some definite flashes of creative genius throughout this story.
Just need to make it a bit more believable and iron out the kinks.   Overall I really enjoyed it.  Keep on keepin' on.

Best regards

Hi Anna,

Nice job, I enjoyed this.  Anytime you read 20 pages and they fly by, it's a good sign.  I thought the writing was very well done.

I would agree with Screenrider that a little more description of Max would be nice.  I also was able to get a vibe on Molly, but not as much on Max.  I thought this was a great:

"MOLLY (2 too pretty for this misery, kneels at an old
coffee table."

I initially had the same reaction regarding the cursing that screenrider had, but as the story went on it wasn't a big deal for me as it became obvious that their roles were really reversed.  I.E. the young son was really the voice of reason.  So, int he end, it made sense for me and wasn't gratuitous.

I thought you did a great job of describing a really sweet relationship between mother and son.  Yeah, they are down on their luck, but int he end you get the feeling that they are going to be okay by leaning on eachother.

That said, and this is probably just me, I couldn't help but dislike Molly just a little bit.  I mean, as I said earlier, she is really the child in this relationship.  Instead of wasting her money on Lotto and being delusional, she should be more concerned about saving for her kid.  Then again, despite not being able to afford it, I thought the dinner scene was very nice and showed that she really did have great affection for her child.

Anyway, good job.  I really enjoyed it.

Craig