Your celebration is an office party. The number you have drawn is 3. This is your body count (3 people must die). Non-genre specific. 8 pages max.

Two Blind Mice by anonymous - Short, Action, Crime, Drama - Two low-level street thugs challenge a corrupt real estate developer.

Retired by A Writer - Short, Horror - Retirement can't come soon enough for a dirty cop who's made one too many bad choices.

Two Blind Mice Review

I wasn't much of a fan of this one. The story was a little hard to follow and I think one of the reasons was it was really dialogue heavy. While on the dialogue I really don't like seeing whole blocks of dialogue capitalised. The frequent quick scene changes were also a bit much.

Not for me, sorry.





Retired Review

This on the other hand was a great read! A little confusing to start with but once you get the backwards thing it makes sense. The writing is really good and flows nicely. Would have been a pain in the arse to craft a story out like this in such a short amount of time, so kudos for that.

Great job!! :)

Two Blind Mice

I picked yours because I see you're getting outvoted. Maybe just for now.

p1 - I don't think she'll be typing "Lenny on the premises" if she wants to do it fast. I'd just type "Lenny here" And his response "I know, they've told me" - just "I heard"
What does "right behind him" means - better just say "coming" - otherwise it reads like Tommy is standing behind Lenny.
conversation on the 2 page – they are talking by asking each other questions. Too much of it.

“How did you get in?
The night guard?”

Why not just “The night guard is watching…”

P3 – money info – that’s where you’re losing me. Union, the tenant that won’t pay and Yuri (someone I know nothing about)

P 4 Carlee to Tommy “Don’t believe we have met”
On p2 Tommy asked her if she was a million dollar sales girl.
And on p1 she was messaging him.
Is this thing going backward like the other one? (but this one doesn't, I know)

P6 “Why I hate driving with you” – I don’t like cut sentences like that.

P6 is some dialog that doesn’t interest me. Lenny is talking about changing lanes and other stuff with Tommy – I really don’t think that stuff matters in this setting.  What are you showing, that Tommy is upset with the world?
Maybe just me and I'm not connecting to what he says, I don’t know.

Kenny, Joey, Jerry – they talk about people I don’t know and don’t care about. The dialog loses me. I’m lost, I’m sorry.

Now, for the other one. I read it but want to make sure I understood it correctly.

Retired
Is there a reason for going backward? I think you didn't provide it and it's just a trick to make the entry appealing in your case. We had a backward competition on MP and the best entries showed the reason for it.

It's easy to understand. I'm not connected to any of your characters though. And not feeling the story.

So, I'm voting for it because it's less confusing.

(I guess I'm a tough reader too)

TWO BLIND MICE:

Code He's a thug, but not an overly intimidating one.

Show this visually... no need for it to be instantly apparent. It can be revealed slowly throughout the story. This is especially the case when you go on to show him looking intimidating, as below:

Code He's dressed like Stallone in ROCKY, fedora included. He's built like a bull, and has more ticks than a mangy mutt.

Code EDM music blaring.

Passive.

Code New York's real estate elite mingling.

Passive.

I'm at page 2 and not enjoying the flow... there doesn't seem to be any. This is rushed. Very rushed. I don't want to finish this.

Writing: 1.5
Story: 0

1.5

RETIRED:

This has already won just from the first half page.

I don't need to read it all. These are all going to be basic stories and this one seems no different.

Quoted from DustinBowcot RETIRED: This has already won just from the first half page. I don't need to read it all. These are all going to be basic stories and this one seems no different.

It's a bit different though in the way it's written - it's written backward.

Yeah, OK...

Writing: 4.5
Story: 5

4.75

Bravo, for two days work.

I think Two Blind Mice is impressive. Great dialogue, believable; you don't have to know who everybody is to enjoy it. Even the big chunks don't bother me.

The backward thing in Retired is a gimmick. It serves no purpose that I can see. The test to run is: Would a reader/viewer enjoy this if it were told with a normal timeline. Who knows? You'd have to reverse the pieces to know for sure. Have at it, if you want to.

Yeah, it worked for Tarantino too. It still takes skill to pull off properly.

Quoted from Stumpzian I think Two Blind Mice is impressive. Great dialogue, believable; you don't have to know who everybody is to enjoy it. Even the big chunks don't bother me. The backward thing in Retired is a gimmick. It serves no purpose that I can see. The test to run is: Would a reader/viewer enjoy this if it were told with a normal timeline. Who knows? You'd have to reverse the pieces to know for sure. Have at it, if you want to.

Did we just read the same two scripts? Potentially you wrote Two Blind Mice?

Impressive? Great Dialogue?

Believable, which part exactly?

You didn't have to know everybody to enjoy it? Can't say I've thought that about anything I've ever watched. Investment in a character is what makes you want to watch a story.

The backwards thing serves a purpose, the deaths are a mystery, and why it got to that point remains concealed until the last scene. This would be a less effective story told in the correct sequence.

That's good story telling.

What odd comments, your opinion and you're completely entitled to it :/

Quoted from ScottM What odd comments, your opinion and you're completely entitled to it :/

Thank you, sir.

Two Blind Mice

Found this dense and difficult to follow, with characters making odd choices throughout.

Blind Mice - Long winded and confusing for me. I found myself skimming by page three. Not for me.

Retired - The slugs needed a lot of work. I figured it to be a Momento style story after a while but the slugs should represent that (IMO).

Two Blind Mice

Got confused in the opening sequence – was the party taking place in the lounge? If so, why are there no people there? – Okay – just caught it – New York’s real estate elite. – CAP the characters and and give a bit more description of who we are looking at.

Overall – the physical movement of the character through the building could be a bit clearer. Had to re-read a couple of times.

Quoted Text A face that can launch well over a thousand ships.

Cheesy

Okay – smoother read as we get further into the story.

Dialogue pretty solid – some very clever lines.

Pretty good effort for the short time-frame.

Retired

Very engaged by this one. Going backwards was an ambitious and difficult choice - think you pulled it off for the most part. There were a couple of sequences that I thought were out of order (or backwards order in this case).

Good solid writing throughout - nice effort here.

Retired

Was the backwards thing inspired by Irreversible?

Anyway, this was well written and handled well, not sure I saw a reason Crystal had come back but you don;t always need to explain.

Good job.

Yeah, it wasn't meant to be completely backward, but rather sequence jumbled. that's another reason I liked it. Smart.

I must be having a bad day.  I didn't care for either story.

I missed the backward gimmick totally until the end.  I realized that it was out of order, but, not backwards.

I didn't care for it.  I think it's the slugs or something, but, we need to know what's going on.

SPOILERS

So, we're supposed to think that a big detective is afraid of a junkie CI??  I don't buy it.  At all.

And the other story was very confusing.  I had literally no clue what was going on.

This is really hard....  But, I think I'm going for the cop one because it's more ambitious.

Dan

Two Blind Mice -- Hard to stick with this one. The dialogue just didn't have a good flow to it. You're throwing too much information at us from the get go. A huge real estate millionaires party with armed guards and all these characters being introduced while texting other characters.

I liked some of the exchanges between Carlee and Tommy. There was a spark of something there. I wish the whole script had just been about them.


Retired -- Well written. I didn't find any of the characters particularly interesting or care about them so I wouldn't say I loved it. But it was ambitious with the sequence. It pulled me along just wanting to know what happened.

Speaking of what happened, what did happen? Can someone explain the ending to me? It says her eyes spring open to dead, lifeless eyes. So, does she come back as a ghost and kill them. I though at first Malloy killed Lawson and then someone killed him. But I guess she came back to life as a spirit or something and killed them both?

Hmm two more that have potential but kind of lose their way.

Two Blind Mice - heavily influenced by city crime and corruption stuff, was well written but became very convoluted and hard to follow. The chars seemed to just talk and tell us what was going on.

Retired - yeah the out of sequence was ok but didn’t leave a satisfied feel to it.

Retired - One of two high-concept entries and this one seems to be fairing a lot better than the other. Good story, fits criteria and the writers knows their stuff. I don't think the out of order sequence is a gimmick, it had a purpose in Memento and I think it works with purpose here. Tough act to sell in so little time, well done.

Two Blind Mice - Up against tough competition. There's nothing really awful about this, it's just kind of mediocre. With awkward phrasings here and there and characters that are lacking a bit common sense, this one falls short.

Retired

I dug the backward structure, it served the story well rather than just being a gimmick. I didn't like how it turned out to be the reanimated corpse of a prostitute though, that just seems lazy and undermines the piece as whole.

However, I also appreciate you have parameters to adhere to and a limited writing time so for that its a more than a decent job.

Col.

Two Blind Mice
This was a lot of characters talking a lot, and at times something would come out of Tommy that I’d wonder if it wasn’t really Lenny’s line mis-labeled. Then a sniper shot a security guard because... bad aim? He probably had it coming, but sorry this was just a bit too tangled for me.

Retired
On a whim, I decided to vote, then check the reviews, then have some dinner, then comment, then read the script. Just kidding, but the Pulp Fiction “we assembled the film reels in the wrong order” effect confused me until the second change in scene. I don’t know what belongs in the slugline in that situation, but maybe putting a clock on screen would help the audience keep their sanity.

Was there some secret parameter that you two received that the story must be confusing? Retired’s confusion was more entertaining.