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To Be Remembered by Anonymous3 - Adult, Short, Drama - A caring detective does his part to ensure murder victims are remembered within the community. 8 pages - pdf, format
Athazagoraphobia Fear of being forgotten or ignored and fear of forgetting
Okay - again - format wise nothing to complain about here. The 2nd I have read and good to see solid frameworks in both the first two. - especially for one week.
Again - the opening dialogue was off for me - way too professorial unless the Detective was reading from a bible or something.
SPOILERS
I would have liked more on how the phobia impacted his life - so he said kind words when people died - okay, why isn't that just nice or empathetic.
I liked the twist of a man fearing nor being remembered not being remembered - but no reason is given on why this would be true - would have liked that explored.
Good effort for one week. Needs a little more oomph.
Missus Franklin? Mrs. Williams? Why are you spelling "Mrs." 2 different ways and who is missus Franklin?
Wow...that's alot of talking head dialogue going on and none of it sounds remotely realistic. In fact, this entire setup and action seems very out of place and fake.
"VARIOUS" in a Slug? WTF? Dude...
I'm sorry, but this is not working, the writing is very poor, and I'm just not remotely into this.
Solidly written but I felt myself skimming. The dialogue felt unnatural and on the nose in parts, while others it was OK but not very compelling. I'm sure with another polish this would be sorted.
I didn't really see any evidence of a man dealing with a phobia, more like a man with a belief about human dignity, kind of like it was a mission of his rather than a reflection of a crushing phobia, but I believe this did meet the criteria of the OWC, just wasn't enough for me. You entered though! Looking at the comments in the OWC thread, a lot jumped ship on this one.
-Mark
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Hey writer. Thanks for entering! I totally know who it belongs to) Feel like noir to me at first. The dialog in the cafeteria lacks conflict for me. I know Smith is thinking that Ayers is too kind to them, the criminal folk and they don't agree on that but I think both are too mellow toward each other. And I'm thinking disagreeing upon such a small thing isn't a good platform for a conflict. There should be more, something else.
So in the end Ayers was too kind toward all the criminals and he got shot by one. I get the message of the story but I want more.
Man, bummer read. He should've spent more time with the living than trying to commemorate the dead. Not sure that I'd classify it as a phobia but it was definitely a sociological issue. There was a source of his issue and he knows what it is. I wish you shared it with us.
Good formatting and arc. Dialog was kind of wordy, but your action was well done.
Hmm, Written okay and easy to read. The phobia was a little too "deep" for me.
The story was thought provoking but I'm not certain the fear of being forgotten registered. It was more of a concern, hope, desire, or wish for others not to be forgotten.
Well enough written, you've done this before. As a standalone short drama, it had a nice feel to it, but it didn't really go anywhere in particular.
The phobia completely passed me by. I hadn't checked it out before I read the piece, and I couldn't spot any real trace of it while I was doing my reading. That's a big issue.
Anyway, it read well, but didn't have much going on in the plot department, and the phobia seems to have gone walkies.
Nice idea, but I wish that we could have got more of Ayer's fear through his actions, not a discussion over dinner. Took away from the potential tragedy at the end since you only really see his "phobia" in a conversation.
I kind of got sidetracked by the whole "criminals repeating the cycle" commentary in it, that didn't seem to connect with the overall theme anyway. Other than him getting shot by a criminal..
Also, for someone who has a phobia of being forgotten, he did not seem to try and rectify it in life at all. Even his co-workers don't care that he died. What did he do to merit this?
However, it was a good read and great concept with just a couple easily fixed flaws. Good job!
One of the better scripts for sure, but not really about a phobia. More of a story about a lonely man that isn't fully explored.
There's also no way a police officer shot on duty, and a good one at that, would have one guy at his funeral. The whole department and probably the mayor would be there.
Not a bad story, but it didn't really have any oomph to it. The tone was pretty steady, writing was good. The phobia didn't have enough to do with the story, and we really didn't find out out why Ayer's has this phobia to begin with. Did something happen in his past? Hmm. We don't know, and I think it's so necessary in a story like this to give it some balance. Otherwise, it feels thrown in.
I thought the writing was good overall. So was the dialogue. Maybe some tweaks needed but a pretty good job. It didn't feel enough like Ayers has a phobia. It was obvious that he wanted to be remembered, but wanting something and being freaked out if you can't have it are two different things. He needs more story. I know that's hard to do in such limited pages, but the reader needs to know more about him, and the stakes need to be higher.
He just doesn't have an extreme need to feel remembered as shown in the script. It seems like if he's not remembered, he will continue to sulk about it. Bring emotion to it. Maybe a flashback showing something tragic happening to a family member who died too young before they had time to be remembered. There needs to be some type of emotional stake. And it's kind of hard to believe that Ayers wouldn't be cared about by his co-workers. He seems like a quiet guy who wouldn't ruffle any feathers. Fellow detectives would care unless he gave them reason not to.
This is a good idea for sure, but unfortunately I don't feel that Ayers had a phobia of being forgotten. I thought he was about to get into it and explain to his partner about it but you sidestepped that and instead he just waves him off saying he would wish it on no man. Would've preferred a little more depth in this scene and others. For an example .... maybe in the abandoned house scene have Ayers attempting to find identification of the two even if there isn't any. Have him believe there's a way to identify them and react to his failure at doing so. This may work well with getting more of his phobia into the story, what would he do when the two deceased go unidentified?