After the Barbeque by dn061903 - Short, Drama - After a family barbecue, a woman's dark secret is revealed.       A July, 2006 One Week Writing Challenge Entry - pdf, format 8)

This was pretty good. I didn't know where it was going at first, but by the end of it, it works. The dialogue was pretty good. It's tough to come up with good dialogue in a really short screenplay because you don't have a lot of room to expand a conversation. That problem shows up in this screenplay when Carol reveals her secret (I don't want to spoil it for those who are going to read it). I think she was a little too up front with it and said it too quickly. I can guarantee that most people in her situation probably wouldn't mention it so quickly in a conversation like that. But, like I said, something like that is hard to pull off in a short screenplay. That's really the only moment that I felt didn't come naturally in the story. The ending caught me totally off guard and I really liked it actually. It gives everything the characters said previously a nice twist. It works really well within the story and it's pretty unpredictable. Good work, whoever you are.

I liked this one.

SPOILERS!!

It seemed so innocent at the beginning, the nice conversation after the barbeque. I could sort of tell something was going to happen, like some sort of nasty twist. When she mentioned the killer who cuts off his victims fingers, I thought he would come up somewhere but definitely didn't expect him to come up in the form of Phil. That was a surprise that made me smile.

Nice work with dialogue and twisting. Good short and quite a quick read too.

GBM

Nice effort here. It's quite dialogue-driven, but that could be considered as a side effect produced by sticking to the challenge's rules, which should lead naturally to talkie scenes.

Yet, I think you can trim the dialogue a bit, like when the characters say goodbye to each other. This way you could get sooner to the twist at the end, which is the strongest aspect of this piece.

I became surprised about Carols revelation...I don't believe that a woman would talk about her rape so easy like that...

So, I like this one, but like most of the scripts in this challenge has the same ending genre...

This one was nicely written.

SPOILERS:

As soon as there was mentioning of the serial killer with shears I kept wondering when this would come into play.

Like some others mentioned, some of the dialogue could probably be trimmed.

I liked the ending. Didn't see Phil having anything to do with it. Came as a surprise, so good job.

Pg 5, It should probably read "It always made me uncomfortable...
Well done.  8)

This was a good read. It'll probably be a tad too dialogue driven for some people but for me, I had no problem with it. For the most part, the dialogue was good. Pretty natural. You have some decent character development as well. I think this is one of the more dramatic scripts I've read thus far. Sure, there's a guy who cuts off people's fingers but it's downplayed, too much so to be a thriller and I think for something to be considered a horror, the story should be told almost entirely from the victim's perspective. This one seems pretty routed in drama and I think that's a good thing.

All in all, nothing much to complain about here. A pretty decent script you have here. Good job.

Hm, not sure what to think here. The chatter between the foursome seemed to kind of drag on to no where. Sure the big secret was shocking on page 4, but then we went back to the back and forth. I think what I ended up missing in this whole thing was how Phil and Amy know Doug and Carol. What brought them to the party? We get a sense at the end as to why they might be there, but it would be nice to see how she fits the M.O. Was everyone else at the party also fitting this description? Was it coincidence? For me, the ending just opened a world of unanswered questions.

Having these questions answered would step this up a notch. As is, it's ok. The ending is a surprise but it would have helped if this was just the final piece of an elaborate puzzle, not the first piece.

SPOILERS

What a twist. It was all nice and happy for a minute, then the drama washed in, and then happiness overcame them once more, and then, horror struck once Phil pulled out the shears and the picture of Carol.

I didn't know Phil was going to do that, heck, I didn't even know he was going to be a killer. What a twist! Some spelling errors, but nothing bad. Nice work.

Sean

This was a well done short.  Nice twist at the end with solid forshadowing.  Really had that sense of completeness.

*I'm curious as to how Phil has gotten away with it all this time.  I mean all the fingers and women that he's attacked--you'd think they'd catch him eventually, right?  Or at least his wife would get suspicious?  Who knows.  Jeffrey Dahmer killed like 15 people before being arrested.

Overall this was a very complete story.  Some of the entries for this have had excessive characters but this piece used them perfectly.  Well done!

i like the twists in the script and this one was very good. It seemed me more suspence then drama, but there was drama elements too (rape story) Was Carole speaking too soon? I don't think so. 90% (if not 99%) of the women start to speak too soon! Good very good. So far the best what i read.

I thought I would look at one of these exercise scripts and I'm just shocked. You did this in a week? I'm not good at feedback so I guess it was awesome. Cool twist at the end.

I impressed with this one for it’s bizarre twist at the end.

My first reaction during the pre-rape conversation was that this was either going to be a Stepford Wives or The Firm-type of story.

I think it was the description of the neighborhood. (You say it’s a middle-class neighborhood, but I kind of see it as at least upper-middle class.)

A couple of things come to mind as either questionable, or could be addressed to ratchet the tension/twist tighter.

Phil suggests that it won’t be long before Doug and Carol will be living “at your house right down the street.”
This might be a great opportunity for Phil to let us in on what kind of barbecue this is – “Come next year, you guys will be having the company barbecue at your house…”

Furthermore, Phil strikes me as interesting.  I waffled back and forth on how to read his character:  controlling, manipulative, condescending, maybe he truly has Doug’s best interest at heart.
He could be evil, but not necessarily; certainly a man of power and stature.

Perhaps Phil can admire Carol’s wedding ring and ask how long the couple have been married.  This might not seem that odd, since he seems to want to guide Doug and Carol’s future.  

Only later will we see that his admiration was not for Carol’s ring, but her delicate finger(s).  Haha

Amy says she’s heard that Doug and Carol are living downtown. Carol can say “yes…,” but instead have her follow with “unfortunately,” how about we see that she is not happy to be in the city.  Her expression and unease will work more effectively.

I like Carol talking about the dangers of the city, but I think it should be Amy to pipe up with “did you hear about the one who cuts off his victim’s fingers…?“

Carol can then counter that “you never get to really know anyone.”

As the conversation continues, I don’t think Phil says anything that should cause Amy to say “Phil, let it go—“

He’s not saying anything vicious or violent. He’s only adding his thoughts to the conversation.

Perhaps Phil should conclude by saying that he agrees with Carol, that you really don’t know who people are – big city, small neighborhoods.

When Carol volunteers information about her rape, I’m thinking that she might say that part of her healing is through being open about the attack.  And so she talks.

In retrospect, I would just like a bit more foreshadowing of what’s to come

Overall, I bought into the hook.  Like I said, something in the tone, your descriptions and Phil’s words made me think of the Firm.  The ending of course is nothing like the Cruise vessel.

“After the Barbecue” doesn’t hit all cylinders, but it’s a creepy, little bugger.  Nice job for a OWE!

Thiw was a very creepy story, well at least the end was.

The one problem I had with it though was how carol was able to talk about her rape so easily, or just put it out there, it seemed kinda forced, maybe Doug could have blurted it out by accident or something, but that was a minor problem.

I think the twist at the end is great, it kinda throws you for a loop.

all in all nice work :)

I thought all four characters were so bland and two-dimensional that I was forgetting who was married to whom.  They need to be better developed.

I'm under the impression that you had this twist ending in your head prior to the one week challenge and were looking for a place to put it.  It made no sense to put it here.

There is no twist to the end because this is not an ending.  It is a conclusion.  Nothing was resolved, no main character, no crisis, no problem to solve, no structure.  It is a bunch of people sitting and talking about life and their neighborhood and then a shot of the serial killer who "just happened" to be at the same barbecue.

It's a story about nothing and then, just for kicks, a shot of someone who leads to nothing.

A short is supposed to have a beginning, a middle and an ENDING.

That is the main problem with this.  Needs to be re-written, simplified and restructured.

Also, LARGE COLONIAL is not part of a proper slug.  It should read something like:

EXT.  HOUSE - DAY

(the description of the house here)

and then a minislug of the backyard.

Also, a lot of passive writing, punctuation and spelling mistakes.

Thanks for writing, good attempt but try again.