A Perfect Plan by George Willson - Short - A man kills his wife after robbing a bank, but now, he has to evade the questioning of the police and his nosey neighbor to finish his plan. - pdf, format 8)

This was the first or second work i read of yours. must say it was quite an enjoyable read.

The nosey neighbor reminds of quite a few neighbors i have had that were really pesky. great character,written really well, to the point that i truly despised her because of how much she reminded me of neighbors past.

The cops were fun to read, loved how he is talking about how the neighbor would say he robbed the bank next and they were all having a good laugh. great stuff.

one or two things I'm iffy on:

1.) there was once or twice there was some dialouge i thought could have been written differently, but it was more like an option then a need.

2.) the ending was kind of so-so. yeah he should have been caught but at the same time if it wasn't for that darn neighbor of his poking around in his business.

i think i might have liked it more if it ended with them finding the body under the couch, instead of him having his rights read to him. leaves a bit more to the imagination...did he escape? kill the cops? or get arrested? leaves it open to interpretation.

outside of that, it was a fun and cool read and i enjoyed it.

Good Job.

Good point on the ending. It could have ended just as well with that last paragraph with no lead away and worked at least as well if not better. Sometimes implied works better than showing.  

Hey George,

I enjoyed this. I think the way you built up the suspense was fantastic. I'll agree that the ending would be better left open but it's not a big issue for me.

The scenario is a little familiar but the tension in the dialogue between John and the officers was great.

One suggestion would be to read over your dialogue and tighten it up. On the whole, it's very good but there are parts that felt a little wooden to me. For example, the dialogue in the teaser is a bit unnecessary and 'on the nose'. It doesn't tell us anything we can't work out for ourselves and it doesn't really add to your characters. If I were you, I'd keep the teaser visual.

Other than that, it was a fun read.

Good job!

Thanks for reading. I'm not surprised the scenario might feel familiar. It's kind of a cross between Dial M for Murder and The Tell Tale Heart. Poe meets Hitchcock, you might say. Second comment on the dialogue, too. Doesn't surprise me. I originally wrote this back in 2001 as a stage play, and worked it over to its current form recently. Didn't change much of the dialogue in the process though. The teaser was added, but I essentially moved a few of the earlier lines into it. Let's just say the teaser was a required addition.

Glad you liked it.

Ahhh, I see how you would need the dialogue if it were a stage play.

Yeah, but since it isn't, it probably needs a little updating for the visual drive.

Oh, and 1000 POSTS! -- The sequel.

I enjoyed reading your script. A kind of new idea, and I thought it was interesting.
I just hate those type of nosy people, so i ended up having a hatred for the nosy neightbour.  >:(

Nice work. Looking forward to reading more of your work.

THECHILLMAN - Out.

Thanks, Chillman. Glad you enjoyed it. As for more of my work, I'm all over the place. I'm one of the more prolific writers (I've even been called voluminous). Lord knows there's a lot more of my work out there.

Does anyone have a link where I can download pdf software... or whatever it is... I want to read George's stuff, but can't.

Quoted from BigBadBrian Does anyone have a link where I can download pdf software... or whatever it is... I want to read George's stuff, but can't.

Adobe should have a free trial i think, but don't hold me to that.

Goto http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/ and select "Get Adobe Reader" near the bottom of the page and you should be able to download the free reader. PDF is about the most universal file type, and Adobe has offered their reader for free for quite some time.

Bravo! Bravo!

I'm not lying at all... I found no errors whatsoever. You are unbelievably talented. Wow. That was great. Great as the greatest of greats.

My favorite short on these boards at the moment.

I didn't think he was going to get caught though. Ha... I'm going to read some other stuff of yours. Thank you for making my day sir.

No, thanks for making mine. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Hi George,

I smelted in laughs! The cops...Dumbest !

Sorry to tell you that, it maybe, I said maybe, works better in a stage than in a screen. Doesn’t matter, I love it. Great dialogues, George! I wouldn’t think too much in order to kill the watcher!  That bitch! Sorry, they are sometimes so indispensables. I was kidding !

About the dialogues of the teaser (are they necessary?) I agreed with my antecessors the images are enough! The images tell more thousand of…. Etc, etc…

I really wanted to write in English with your nimbleness and simplicity.

I envy you George! Great piece here!

I envy him as well.

Hey George,


I thought this was a good piece, and the minimal locations really helps it out.  I'm sure a lot of people can identify with Keller since we've probably all had a nosey neighbor at one time or another.

I thought the tension between everyone was just right, and the dialogue was well written.  I too thought that he was going to get away with it for a second, and although the ending is fine as it is, it would also work with the police simply spotting the blood.

Good work!


Mike

I originally had written it with the police just spotting the blood, but one of the earliest comments that I got was that it was too convenient and not very dramatic. With Keller throwing a huge fit and jarring the hiding spot, it creates a little extra tension as well as the catalyst needed to squish some gooey out of the corpse...that really does sound sick.

Thanks for reading, Mike. Appreciate it. Gives me those wonderful warm fuzzies...even though its been a week.

And so George does the happy dance. I had submitted this to Southern Heights Entertainment for inclusion as an episode in straight to DVD anthology series they were doing. I got an email today accepting it. Be getting a contract for it in the next week or so and get some notes for revisions when they get to it (there are twelve or so episodes and they're reviewing them one by one and sending the writers notes).

Ah, my first contract. It's a good day.

I remember reading this script when I first found this website, as I am just getting familiar with this posting deal...I'd like to leave a response.  I actually thought it might be a cool affect if at some point if he heard the heartbeating, like the Poe story, like an homage (I believe that's the correct word).   Other then that I thought this was a cool idea.  

Jaykur

Hey George:  Finally got around to reading this one.  The suspense builds nicely, and the character of Ophelia is pretty easy to visualize.  Her name is perfect.  They'll probably tell you what they want on the rewrite, but I've got a couple of things to submit for your consideration:

(SPOILERS)

*  You have a teaser for a short?  Don't recall seeing that before.
*  Pg 3:  Patricia asks John, "What're you doing?"  Well, what is he doing?  You neglect to tell us.  I assume it's looking out the window or something.
*  It's a pretty big plot point, but I can't envision a couch that could accommodate a body beneath it without drawing plenty of attention to itself.  I assume you have something in mind, and this deserves a tad more description to help us see it.
*  I agree that you should end with the discovery of the body.  That last little bit adds nothing new, and in fact, is a little anti-climactic.

If it's allowed, I sure would like to see the rewrite.

Thanks for reading, Bert. Some responses to your couple of things.

The early drafts of this one did not have a teaser. When I was working on something to submit, I asked how it was to be setup, and the guy said it would have a teaser followed by a Twilight Zone-ish voiceover and then continuous from there.

I was playing with the reading voices on Final Draft 7.1.1 today that I recently came across (no details under penalty of death), and I discovered this mishap of not having John do anything action-wise. It was in an earlier draft, but it must have been chopped out when I did the teaser. Oops.

Some couches have legs that support them. My parents had a hideabed under theirs but it was open all th way to the floor when the bed was pulled out. I have seen a number of couches that wil accomodate a body beneath them. A hide-a-bed couch that is on some stubby legs would have more than enough room..and yes, this knowledge greatly disturbs my wife.

And ok, so the denoument isn't necessary.

Great script, George.  That was very entertaining.  I really was feeling the tension in the house, especially everytime Ophelia would go over to the couch or the closet.  

I was kind of pulling for John and hoping he got away with it.  (Sorry I guess I'm demented like that haha), but it really kept my attention.

Great job, George

Nice one. Formatting is great!  I like the part of where Anderson talks about 911 blocking Miss Keller's number.  I had to laugh.

Nice ending with the body being under the couch. I thought he was going to get away with murder.  Nice plot

Dan

Thanks Dan. I can relate to being behind on reads myself. I spend a ton of time writing, even though a lot of it doesn't end up posted here. It gets me all behind on reading.

On a broader note, I wish I had something positive to report on the DVD thing, but I've not heard from this character in months. I emailed and nada. Kind of a bummer. I guess their deals fell through.

This was the script of the day so I decided to give this one a read.





*************************SPOLIERS***************************


Overall I thought this was kind of a funny story, I'm pretty sure it was ment to be, at least I hope, cause it made me laugh a few times.

At first I really didn't care for the dialogue, at least until page three, then it seemed to get better.

Ophelia was a mojor bitch, but I guess she was right in the end, so...LOL

where I live we dont have locks on our doors and we basically walk into each others homes at will, and answer each others phone if we are in the same house(we have a party line so we all have the same phone number), and Ophelia reminds me of this lady that lives in our community, she is always asking a thousand questions and needs to know everything and she always walks into our house, for no reason, I think just to snoop, so I could relate to John's feelings towards her.

I liked the way the tension was built when the two police officer's arived, and then when you think John was in the clear something would happen to mess it up.

I was kinda hopin' that John would get away in the end, but the way it ended was still satisfying, but that's probably just the way I am.

all in all this was a fun read with some good laughs that had a lot of tension.

Keep up the good work :)

George,

Too bad the DVD thing didn't work out!

I liked this one.

Could be tweaked just a little bit to make it a "little more" of everything, but I like the basic idea here. Could be done on the cheap too.

You want to give this one a shot? Be ok with me after some sharpening.

Let's see what "the Boss" thinks.   ;)

I don't get what's so great about this script. It's been done over and over and much better. Format was good. But it's a tired story. No excitement here.

Well, Captainron, I suppose based on the comments you've left on other scripts, I can guess that other than your feeling that the plot is a retread (perhaps I can help here: maybe Dial M For Murder with a little Telltale Heart thrown in), you felt the script was fairly well written. Perhaps, you could let us know where you felt it really let you down. Negative feedback can be positive.

George, I figure I really haven't read much of your stuff so I gave this the once-over, and really enjoyed it.

You have really good character development right off the bat.  I can tell the kind of Person Johns wife is, and she's only their breifly.  Although you can't really tell the cops apart, they have a certain flare they both share, which makes sense because they're partners and freinds.

I don't know if you always do this, because like I said I haven't read much of your stuff, but you make your descriptions, which are usually just an extremely dull part of the script, interseting and humorous when it's applicable, I actually laughed twice just reading descriptions, which I assure you has never happened before.

I did have a few problems though.  When John reveals that he's going to kill his wife, the dialogue between them becomes cliche.  This is probably because we actually would all say about the same thing if we found out someone we trusted was about to kill us, so I was thinking you could avoid this by having it happen in a different way.  What I was thinking was that the tension between them could build into a fight which could quickly accelerate and he could just shoot her.  It wouldn't be part of the "perfgect plan" but it would rid you of that kind of cheesy dialogue.

At one point the cops tell ophelia they lost a coin toss to come over here.  I know that thats too establish that she calls in a lot, but there are other ways to do that.  I thought the whole coin toss thing was a bit corny.

I also didn't like the male pride comment, it sounded awkward, and I'm sure there's a better way to phrase it, it just doesn't seem like something a guy would say.

When they ask about Johns tools it's sort of unbelievable because the rest of the time they've been siding with john and then they suddenly side with Ophelia for no real reason.

Johns "I'm stressed" thing was a good idea, it was believable in getting the cops to stop, I think it would actually work.

I didn't like how you ended it with the cop speech.  I think you could end it on one of johns lines, a sort of "I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you...."

anyway, good job.

-Tyler

Hey George

I just read your script, it was very good indeed with a comedy feel in it. I think it could have turned like Coen movie, where they do the crime, and have some funny characters going through it.

I must confess that i really hate people like Ophelia, it doesnt matter if John did the crime or not, some people should know their place. Well congratulations George you made me hate her.

The formatting was well done, but I'd go for a different ending. Also i think that the script should have more information about John's and Patricia's relationship, because he has to really but really HATE her for shooting her.

So if you think right John says he had been doing this plan for so long, so why should he ruin the plan shooting her when he knew people could hear the sound.

I must confess that i really enjoyed your script, good job!

Regards

Nik