Are You Okay? by Matthew Sanders (mattlj25) - Short, Drama - A single father struggles with caring for his autistic daughter. 8 pages - pdf, format 8)

Matt-

The action descriptions are a little overwritten ("sluggishly slides, quickly bolts, etc.), and the voice overs might be a little long-winded, but I thought the structure was right-on, and most important, the story was very touching and effective.

I think every parent can empathize with this story on some personal level, so you should have a built-in target. Well done.

Hey Bogey,

Thank you for the read, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I made the mistake of posting the original draft instead of the revised version.. Don should be updating it this evening. Hopefully the revisions I made will cut down on some of those issues and make the story flow a little better.

Hey Matt,

First off, the writing and formatting are pretty good for the most part. The story was interesting and engaging. Now onto some suggestions:

On the top of page 2, Maggie's diagloue should be O.S. (off screen).

"MIKE (VO)
She’s always done that. It’s the
only sign of affection she’s ever
shown. Truthfully, I doubt that’s
even a sign of affection. More
likely, she’s just never quite
understood what "are you okay?"
even means. How can you communicate
with someone who doesn’t even
understand what communicating is?"

Eh I would leave that out or shorten it up. It's exposition.

"INT. LIVING ROOM - DAY"

Should be INT. LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS

"Maggie"

Should be in all caps, since it's the first time your introducing her.

"By the sound of her crying, you would have assumed she had a
bone sticking out."

I would omit that line completely.

"Maggie wildly screams, lashes out, and slaps Mike on the
face, cutting his cheek."

I don't think you can cut someones cheek with a slap, unless she was wearing a ring or something.

Okay, so my biggest problem with the script is the bulky action and description blocks. Like Bogey mentioned, it's overwritten. Alot of the description lines could be significantly reduced or even left out all together.

The voiceovers. Too long and unnecessary. Instead of showing us what having a child with autism is like or what it's like to have autism, you explain it to us in these long blocky voice overs. It's a cut and dried example of exposition. Most of the time voiceovers don't work for me, especially in shorts.

The story. I actually found it pretty interesting. I liked how you kind of tied everything up in the end.

SPOILERS

I actually thought Mike was going to kill himself. TBH, I think I would of preferred that ending. Why did Maggie take the entire bottle? Was she trying to kill herself? Couldn't of he just downed the pills with the whiskey instead of blowing his brains out, traumatizing his little girl?

I like happy endings, but this one is kind of sappy. Almost feels a bit forced.

Anyways, good job. This was a good short and I enjoyed reading it.

- Chong

Matt,

The voice over is too heavy, you mixed up "stares" with "stairs", and the whole thing can be tightened up a lot, BUT, this definitely made me feel something and for that, I thank you.

You're on your way to becoming a great writer.  You need to work on your mechanics, but you have a knack for eliciting emotion, and that's quite difficult.

Jordan

I'm glad I plodded through this.   Totally agree with Nomad, you've defintely compiled a bittersweet tearjerker here, but you've got do fix that prose, IMO.  Less is more.  

Nice story.

Btw, I actually liked the voice over,  but it should be V.O.

Chong:

Thanks for the read, and the helpful review. As far as the bulky VO's and overwritten action blocks… story of my life. lol.

*SPOILERS*

I was trying to find a nice balance in Mike's suicide note/Voiceover.. something that explained his actions, and gave us a window into his daily struggles. But I over delivered on both fronts, and definitely could've shown more, instead of telling.

I read somewhere once that severely autistic people tend to latch on to certain objects. So for Maggie, that object was her medicine bottle. I thought this would be a good vehicle for her overdose.. She didn't want to kill herself, she just didn't know any better. Mike knows this, so that's why he freaks when he see's the pill cap in his lap.

Jordan:

I'm so happy you got something from this. It's not perfect, and there are things I will cut in the rewrite, but overall I'm glad I was able to draw something out of you, the reader. Thanks.

SILVERBACK:

I don't actually know your name, lol but thank you for sticking with the story. And thanks for the feedback. I tend to write voiceovers more than I would prefer, but it was essential in this story, and the way I wanted to tell it.

Yeah... I got a little bored, but when the punch came it was delivered nicely. Maybe overplayed at the end... but all in all a very good story. Tightening up is all that's needed here.

Thanks Dustin, im mulling over a few ways to spice the beginning/middle up, without taking away from the overall story.

Matthew,

I had notes for this but somehow got deleted. I read it several days ago, but sort of wanted to hold off on my comments.

I liked it. I don't think I even had major things to point out really. The beginning needs to be a bit more lean, you can work on that. I am not usually a fan of sentimental stories, but this one was pretty good.

Honestly, though, there was a moment when I thought I knew what you would do after he wrote the note. I seriously thought this was going to go down really, really badly. Like after he wrote the note and fails to kill himself, he finds out about the girl swallowing the pills and tries to save her but she dies. And then the cops find the note or whatever and then they accuse him and he get executed or whatever. Sounds like something from a skanky film-noir :) Anyway, I had to get that out.

But good job on this overall.

-J.S.

Hey J.S.

There definitely was a moment where it all very well could've gone that direction lol. I actually thought about killing them both off. But I don't normally write sappy feel goods, so I made it a point to stick with my original outline.


Thanks for the comments!

In that case, I am excited to read what you normally write. :)

-J.S.

There’s too much exposition you needed to show that Maggie has autism instead of telling us through dialogue. Also how did the mother die? That’s not explained.