Two Blind Mice by Anthony J Russo (ajr) writing as anonymous - Short, Action, Crime, Drama - Two low-level street thugs challenge a corrupt real estate developer. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Anthony,

I appreciate this kind of set-up - somewhat cryptic, yet enough mystery and conflict to drive it forward.  

Despite it being tricky to follow at times I stuck with it as I figured it would all tie up in the end.  Sorry to say that never quite happened.  I don’t know, maybe I missed something but I just didn’t understand the situation/backstory enough to put it all together.  I liked the subtlety of the dialogue and the characters - though hard to keep track of at times - were starting to grow on me.  

I got that Tommy and Lenny were childhood friends - but the who or what they were to Adam or Carlee wasn’t all that clear.  Maybe it takes a second read to really appreciate, though I feel a story should be clear enough to get a general sense of the idea the first time round.  It felt like I’d just picked up the last act of a longer piece without the benefit of understanding how all the characters came into play - this made it all the more difficult to feel much empathy for Tommy’s situation.

There’s a hint that Tommy and Carlee have some kind of connection (informant and undercover agent?) but Carlee’s last line comes out of the blue to the point I don’t know if she’s serious or not.

‘...If I don't get the money launderer at the end of this, you're going to wish you’d became a toll booth clerk’  -  a touch OTN, more so that it stands out as the rest of the dialogue is very restrained.  Did she get the money launderer?  Carlee’s FBI but ‘her’ sniper kills the Security Officer and not Lenny?  Or is she secretly working for the other side - though if so, who is the other side?

Who’s Harry?

Tommy
Lenny
Yuri
Joey
Carlee
Kenny Chesney
Jerry
Boonie

For a dialogue driven script these names aren’t helping.

Was this an OWC script?  Maybe I’m missing the parameters.  Interested to see what others made of it.  I liked what you were going for but I’ve ended up with more questions than answers.

All the best,

Steve

Hey Steve,

Thanks for the read and the comments. You've echoed some of the previous ones and I do intend to revisit this at some point.

Yes, it was a March challenge script, which could be no more than 8 pages, a certain # of people had to die, and it had to be at a celebration, and mine was an office party.

I took the direction very literally, which was all the action and deaths had to happen at the party - which hamstrung me as far as moving the characters around and delivering exposition.

Short story is that I tried to tell a 10 or 12 page story in 8 pages and failed.

I like these characters though, and I might revise it into a longer short, or a feature at some point.

Thanks again - AJR