Mama Bear by 8252017MEC - Short, Drama - When two young women marry and adopt a baby the haters gather like vultures. However, they fail to take into account the love the women have for each other and the innate ferocious defensiveness of a Mama Bear.  10 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi,

So the story of hate. And a gruesome one.
Didn't get what happened to the baby and I was curious about that.

I liked the way you ended it, all the repetitions. But perhaps it's too many repetitions, just a few dialog lines would be enough.

Neil is the name of their baby?

A bit of exposition at the beginning in the dialog for me - when Claire tells Zora how they are a Muslim and a Jew. The newspaper heading could do the trick I think.

The rapists show no consistency - they are all against lesbians but up to rape a baby. I don't mean they are good but usually that type pretends they are good ones. And then I'm not sure if you need a baby here at all.

2: The dialogue exposition's pretty clunky here -- especially when the newspaper's right there! It should be easy enough to show their relationship, history, and religions without dialogue...these things all have very well-established visual markers.

6: "What the fuck dude" is a very odd thing to ay in this situation. Though it's of course true that people say odd things in traumatic situations.

8: "Sure is...honey!" Okay. These are not believable responses.

A strange and silly work with no consistent tone -- just kind of a mashup of different horror sub-genres. But baby rape and one-liners shouldn't go together in anything except perhaps a Troma film. Too over the top to take seriously, too serious-minded to have fun with. There's nothing wrong with the story of a hate-motivated home invasion, but this needs a tone.

Also, this is a horror movie, not a drama, unless I'm missing something...

Picked this as my first read and its an interesting one. I think a relative newbie did this as the use of 'continued'  etc shows they are still maybe getting to grips with the software - you can adjust it in the settings as its not really needed.

Some parts of this were written quite well but as Heretic noted, its a bit of a mish mash of styles. It was bit cliched with a few stereotypes all mixed together but it was overall ok. if it was a newbie effort then you are on the right track!

Re the baby rape talk? I got the impression it was just that - talk to scare Zoya more? I dunno. Perhaps it would work better overall if we saw the 2 scum buckets load up on drugs before they start their shit? Anyway good effort.

I'm lost - where did this meet the criteria of stranger in a strange place? And weren't there 5 characters.

The character descriptions could have used a little more pop and the dialogue seemed out of place/unnatural - especially Zoya's during the rape scene.

Sorry, wasn't for me.

"When two young women marry and adopt a baby the haters gather like vultures. However, they fail to take into account the love the women have for each other and the innate ferocious defensiveness of a Mama Bear.?

That logline needs work. Don't say the haters. Makes it sound like a bunch of young juveniles are up against them(oh I guess they are, but still after reading this I would not describe them as haters) . Also, innate ferocious defensiveness of a Mama Bear is too much. Keep it simple, and to the point.

You get one chance to make a first impression. You blew it with Zoya and Claire. They are doing nothing, sound generic, and could be the same person apart from their hair. In a short like this you can't waste any time building your characters. Is one of them intelligent? Have them reading a book, filing taxes, studying for school buried in books. Instead we have a girl laying on a couch, literally doing nothing.

Couple things right away. How old are these girls? If the are adopting a baby it makes a big difference if they are 21 as opposed to 29. You just have them written as 20's so I have no idea. 2nd, why is it such a big deal that two women adopted a baby. It's 2017, not 1957. Maybe it should be...... 3rd, WHERE IS THE BABY? Show. Don't tell. It should be here, scene one, right away if it's the crux of the story.

The newspaper is reporting on their adoption? Slow news day? Where in the world  is this taking place?

"Problem is, these girls are lesbians and one, you, are Muslim and I�m a Jew. Now Zora honey, that�s news. Even in today�s fucked up society. What a crock!" I disagree. Again, show don't tell. Way too on the nose here.

"I am so unhappy here. Maybe we can go somewhere. Somewhere where there is no hate...if that place exists." What hate? A car parked outside the window?

Ok, two men unknowingly parked outside the window waiting to kill these women is convenient hate I guess. But that doesn't mean it makes sense or helps your story any. It makes no sense still.

Page 8. Where is the baby?????? A sound sleeper I guess considering there is an attempted rape and break in going on in the next room. Also, these guys are against lesbians and adoption but are ok with murder and rape?

BOY (O.S.)
Jus? Sup man?

lol. His friend is getting butchered alive in the room next door and all Boy can say as he strolls in is Sup man?

Zoya just butchered two men, yet is "sleeping" on the couch in a PRISTINE white gown? Wha?????? No police? No bodies? No bloody evidence of the machete butchery that just took place? No baby????? Where the hell is the baby? Does it even exist? Wasn't Boy in there with it while Justin was getting all murdered? Zoya doesn't care to check on it at all? Seriously, she's taking all this all QUITE well.

Not good. Sorry. Totally unbelievable from beginning to end. Not in the way it's written at least. Also, how does Mama Bear fit as a title at all? Zoya was never once motherly in any way.

At first, when I read the two lesbians, I thought, great, something fresh. But as I read further and all we've had by page 3 is a neck massage, I can't say I'm not a little disappointed that you didn't start this script in the bedroom. A bit of scissoring or something.

Kinda straightforward I suppose. Nothing really to see here. It goes from A through to C in a very simplistic manner. Less a story, more of an event.

Hey writer,

So I guess they're kinda a fish out of water. In the manner that they've been under abuse from locals due to their sexuality, I'll let it pass. The baby is intimated, not seen, so that's a borderline pass on the character count. Page count works. So it's really borderline for me, but it's by no means the worst at missing the brief so it's an overall pass for the sake of the challenge.

Right. Formatting seems good, no obvious typos, tempo moved with the change of mood, all works there.

Story wise it was fairly brutal, but by no means the most confronting script in the challenge so I guess I should give this a fair go in that sense. Unlike the other script, however, this was pretty linear and followed quite an obvious path. I did feel fear, anger and disgust, you managed to draw some emotions, but there weren't any real surprises. Also the last few lines didn't work for me, a bit of a stab at humour when all hell's broken loose.

It lined itself up fairly early, showed you where it was going to go, went there and then finished.

A decent enough script, but it didn't really move anywhere else once it got going.

Cam

Well. All righty then.

Do we have our theme covered in some way? Well, the dialogue indicates that "we don't belong here," so we're covering it that way again. There seems to be a lot of that going around.

And "Boy"? Boy is your character name? Did you intend to do a find and replace later and forget?

So an ultra violent hate crime against gays scripts where the lesbians win. At least you got the lesbian part of the challenge. I don't know. It is definitely over the top. If I try to distance myself from generally disliking it, I suppose it rolls in a plausible manner. Zoya is properly defensive, but was enticed into opening up in a believable manner. The violence fit with the characters delivering it. The suggestion of sex with a baby was a bit too much, but it does illustrate the character you were going for.

The early dialogue came off as very difficult to follow. I made the rare choice of scrolling back and forth over the first couple pages to try and figure out what was going on. I eventually got it, but it told me how confusing those first couple of pages were.

I'm not fond of the storyline here, but it's ok. It comes to a resolution.

Well, starting out with a 3 line passage describing what Zoya looks like and wearing is not good.

When you give a character description with an age following a character's name, you need a comma.

A big nit pick of mine - "out of the window" - NO!  It's simply "out the window".

Exposition City here, but I do not see any strangers in a strange land.

Dialogue is poor.  The entire situation is far from believable.  The way it plays out is far from believable.

Missing lots of commas in your dialogue!

Talking about raping a baby?  Oh man.  Not good.

Nothing rings true here at all, sorry to say.  This does not work at all.

Grade - * 1/2

P1 slugline should have a main location like HOUSE

Too many adjectives for Zoya's intro

Zoya Zora

P2 spacing/formatting issue in the middle of the page

Delete Continued at page breaks

Honestly, even delete all cont'd in dialogue boxes. It's annoying.

P6 Short side-note: theme of multi-religious lesbians adopting baby and getting trouble by homphobe stalkers is interesting. Just show the baby early at some point. It's more cinematic and makes the theme touchable.

So, he wants to rape the baby??? Well this isn't developed properly. A homophobe killer and a baby rapist/killer are quite different in personality I'd think. So imo that he would go so far feels coming from nowhere.
     
P8 lesson comma baby
Same in next box
And several others

CHECK ALL Zoya Zora confusion

Something wrong in the interactions between p 8 and 9
She runs after him, then why is she OS?  we hear him then… Where are we and what's on screen?
Just uneven, right in the middle of the climax.

Interesting theme, could be real dynamite if developed further. The motivations of the killers weren't fleshed out enough. It seems to me you also have had a time problem since there's a lot of editing that should've been done, like Zoya's repetitive dialogues "It's unfair etc…"

Interesting. Not there yet but interesting. The killers need more profile. Framework is okay imo.

This was violent, even more violent and disgusting than mine.  And that's saying something...

The characters didn't feel real.  The lesbians were tropes.  The 2 guys were less than tropes.

The dialog was bad, and I'm bad at dialog.

The
Oh, SPOILERS

The baby rape talk was so far over the top I almost stopped reading...

I have actually said, "What the Fuck, Dude" so, guilty.

No, I didn't write this either...

I just didn't get the why.  

Why would the paper cover it?  Why would people care?  Are we in the deep south?  And where in your descriptions at the beginning do you say one's dark-skinned (like a Muslim, say, from Iran) and the other's a Jew?  That should be at the beginning, not in conversation.

Fix all this up and I think you could have a decent story because it is relevant today.  It does have meaning, but, it needs to make sense first.  Even if the 2 guys are "Fake Christians," it needs to make sense.  

And please come up with a better name than Boy.  I mean, really.  For such a gruesome story, that name rings of a comedy, which this isn't.

Dan

Zora, Zoya, Zoy? Boy? If that wasn't confusing enough, throw in a lot of grammatical issues. Not a fan of the subject matter like previous comments. Formatting issues with cont'd and transition direction could be removed. Not too sure about the OWC parameters too. Five people and who was the stranger in what strange land? Not for me, sorry.

Holy exposition, Batman!

It's very heavy-handed, full of shock value, and not at all entertaining. I regret reading it. But it's not supposed to entertain, is it?

"ZOYA 20’s, long dark hair, toned body, model good looks..." I had issues with this, but it turns out to be relevant, so...fine.

The repetition at the end wouldn't bother me except it was word for word the same. That isn't real. The truck at the beginning bugged me too, there was no need for it.

What I really like is how low budget and filmable it is. Also, nice use of foreshadowing with all the knife imagery and references.

The writing is decent, but the dialogue needs work. The story is there, such as it is. Good job. Now I need a drink.

ReneC I thing she's in shock and that's why she keeps repeating herself over and over as she hopes that it can become real.  She just did murder 2 people, justified, but she's lost her brain.

Dan

Writer,

Don't really hear many news stories these days about lesbian-hating buffoons getting ambushed. If our two buffoons were so against gay adoption, why look for money in the house? Hardcore haters, I feel, would just get right to it. Whatever the case, I get what you were going for, just wasn't for me.

Steve

Zoya starts out depressed and ends up in the same state. What happened doesn't seem to have affected her at all.

Neither of the thugs think raping the baby is a bad idea, but I think it's over-the-top. Maybe one of them would like to try it, but I doubt the other one would  go along with it: "We're not animals. Just kill it."

At the end, we don't know if the baby's okay. Zoya doesn't mention her, and neither does Claire. I'm left thinking the baby's future is not going to be a good one.

Not interested.

Sandra