Sorry, not sorry

Title: Not my favourite.


Premise: Board games during a blackout cause conflict in a relationship. A topic that has potential, but needs to be seriously well written.


Script: Opening shot isn't very well described, in my humble opinion. There's nothing wrong with the image, it's just a bit haphazard and confusing. Is it lit by candle-light or flash-light or both? Or are they just there, but not on?

Pedantic, but you need to set the scene as you see it, and not leave it open to interpretation so much.

Where are the flash-lights...on the floor, hanging from the ceiling, on a table?


Maybe the room is lit by candles dotted around the room, and the flash-lights are gathered on a table in the middle.

Everything you write, and the ordr you write it in tells a story and is important to the image the audience, Director and Production staff receive in their minds. Be clear.

Character introductions are weak. Tell us what they look like, and at least give us their general demeanour. Give something for the actors and Director to work with. We can tell a lot about their state of dress, their body language etc. You give us nothing at all apart from their age.


By Page 3 the boring bone is rattling in its cage. It's biting the bars, trying to get and savage my fleshy parts. Let's hope you can calm him down, soon.

In terms of evaluating this for Production, I would be out by Page 4. The premise is somewhat forgettable, and the action based around the board game is monotonous.

Unfortunately it only gets worse.  I don't care about any of these people, or their relationships, so the whole thing is tedious.

The boring bone has torn through the cage, ripped the room apart, and has already feasted on all my limbs.

It's now slowly and deliberately working its way through my stomach cavity, and is consuming me from the inside out.

A terminal case of boredom, I'm afraid. I think there's probably a story to be created out of your initial premise, but this isn't there, yet.

Not for me. Sorry. (Hoho).

Hmmmm... I get the feeling that whoever wrote this one is pretty good at dialogue.  There's a lot of back and forth banter in this one; and if polished that'd be fun.  (And clearly - whoever wrote this is also a Democrat... at least based on the Republican line...)  ))

My qualms on it: too long a story.  Maybe my lack of experience with Sorry as a board game made things even more confusing - but I really don't have an idea what happened here.  The story just sort of wandered.

The writer is clearly competent - but the tale itself?  Not for me.  At least in its current state...

Which doesn't mean rewrites don't often happen... )

Cheers,

--Janet (W)

IMO, It's a pretty thin storyline, and it's overwritten by a fair amount. Your action blocks could be cut down significantly and save yourself a few pages (and the interest of readers).  At most, this should be seven or eight pages. Essentially the story is a couple broke up over a game and then get back together when they play a different game and are allowed to win.  That's not much to work off of, especially over 11 pages. I would try to add some twists or somehow raise the stakes a little bit to make the story more interesting.

My ratings (out of 5):
Concept: 2.5
Story: 2.5
Character: 3
Dialogue: 3
Writing: 3
Overall: 2.8

Good luck!
Gary

Some nice little touches of humour and a lot of your dialogue is good but the central idea needs expanding upon. It's a good premise - a falling out as a result of playing a game has potential, but as is this needs something more - an injection of surprise, twist, something we don't see coming. Lil' technical tip - and sorry if I'm repeating something others have said: - get rid of your CUT TOs and keep your action/description passages to four lines.

Oh, and don't let neg feedback put you off. We all get it. Keep at it.

Some notes.

Slow opening.  How about they're already playing?  

Not much at stake in this one, just a year-long romance.  Why not have them play for something large?

The electricity being out doesn't seem germane except for the possibility that it drove them to the game.  Why not strip poker?

And the ending.  Throwing the game is not my idea of a great strategy.  And everything works out....hmmm.

Best
Richard

The number one rule when writing comedy is pretty simple: it has to be funny. I laughed once up to page 4 and then I continued to bang my funny bone against my brick wall with little effect.

Have never heard of the game either (actually quite a few games in this challenge are new to me as an Aussie lol). Anyway I began to skim after that. I may have to re-read when I'm less tired.

The second rule of comedy writing is to keep the spontaneity of the humour by not tinkering with it with rewrites, but that's in the future I guess

Sorry, not sorry

Strange young people. Interesting to watch them.

Reads a bit like reality tv only with normal people. It's a bit long for what it is. Not that I dislike some simplicity but 11p is tough. I'm happy they're together again now.

C

Like the title. And the logline is good for me.

The fact that someone is trying to repair a relationship torn apart by a game seems like a good concept to me.

As I read I find myself skimming because I want to get to the story. Finally we do but it's near the end.

I'm ok with a lot of dialogue but it has to go somewhere and not just back and forth for the sake of talking ya know? Move the story or give me some insight on your character.

Not sure this really felt like a comedy to me. Think it's worth a rewrite though.

Good job.

Pretty good story. A few typos here and there.

You could have cut the transitions and saved a page or two.

You could have beefed up the dialogue and tension a bit more.

You switch from Sorry! to Trivial Pursuit. Of the two, I've only played Sorry. But I'm pretty good with trivia in general.

The gameplay paragraphs are too long. Break them up into smaller paragraphs.

No need to remind us that the power is out and they're using candles.

7.9/10

Presley York,

Never played Sorry before. Hopefully it doesn't matter too much.

In the end there's not much of a story here. They fight during a game, make up during another. I feel you've got to add something else to give this one a bit more oomph. The writing is ok, a tad passive at times but the story was easy to follow. As I've said, if you could add a little more to excite the reader it'd help this one out tremendously.

Good luck.

Glenn.

Thank you everyone for reading this!

A lot of people didn't like the game choice scene. Would it be better to improve it, make it funnier, or to just get rid of it and start with playing the game?

I do think that I could go into a little bit less detail about the game, and break the paragraphs up.

Someone, i can't remember who, I just remember this from reading the comments earlier, mentioned that they didn't like that the power came back on at the end. That was actually something I had never intended on doing, but when I got there, I did it because I thought it would help set up the final joke. But, really, the joke can be done without that.

The story was never intended to be super intense. I generally write sitcoms, so as a result this ends up feeling like a sitcom storyline.