*WARNING: LONG POST
*
I know a lot of you have questions, which is a bit of a surprise to me, but I’ll go along.
I had a bit of trouble with imagining the opening.
It's at night, and we have a shadowy figure entering the building, but then the Bank is still filled with customers. It all felt a bit weird. |
To answer your first question, originally, the robberies and Ivy all happened in the daytime, but I feared people would tell me it’s not noir if there’s even one scene that takes place in the daytime. I played it safe and changed everything to night in the final draft. It read better to me, and it felt like a noir. Originally, only two or three scenes took place at night.
I added stormy weather whenever Amy visited to differentiate it from Ivy’s visits. Maybe now that the challenge is over, I can rework it a bit? I agree, the Amy/Ivy switch (“Amy/Ivy’s a serial robber, blah blah”) read better switching from night to day, rather than night to night.
Picked the bottom script to start and will work my way up!
Some elements of comedy in there, perhaps unintentionally? |
If you’re talking dialogue, sure. I wanted to give the robber some quips, while everybody else (including Amy and Ivy proper) play it mostly straight (Rikki gets a few deadpans). It’s the kind of snappy dialogue I would assume to be in a noir.
The title suggests a female based crime drama.
The author's name suggests a tough guy style. |
I came up with the concept first, then the title, then the story, characters, etc.
The pen name is intended to be: Alex is an androgynous name (Alexander, Alexandra, Alexis), and Mann (Man) is pretty self-explanatory. It’s not the first time I’ve used a pen name that tied into the OWC theme:
Board Game OWC: Jim Onji (Jumanji)
Taxi OWC: Utah Kintumi (Taxi Driver’s “You talkin’ to me?”)
This reads as a parody of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. Not sure if that was the intention but it doesn't quite work for me.
The problem for me was I didn't buy into the premise. Do people report crimes to detectives or to the police? They normally report things they want investigat[ed] to detectives and crimes to the police, so I wasn't buying into this early on.
It also felt like some of these characters were male, the P.I. especially. |
Nope, no parody. I wanted to write a straight noir.
You brought up a very good question. I figured the cops would say Amy and Ivy don’t have much of a case naming someone without proof. Since, the robber disguised herself (including her voice), the only way to get proof/evidence of identity would be to catch them in the act, which would go beyond a cop’s job description. Also, perhaps Amy and Ivy didn’t go to the police because they already have records?
Here’s some things a PI can and cannot do:
https://www.pinow.com/articles/456/what-a-private-investigator-cannot-doPolice vs. private Detective:
http://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/justice-studies/blog/private-investigator-versus-police-detective/I wrote the characters in such a way that they could be either gender and the story would still work (to the extent that it does).
And now… (deep breath) …onto Jeff.
Quoted from Dreamscale There are also a whole lot of "DARK CORNER" scenes. Is this the exact same dark corner each time? If not, that's an obvious mistake that wo[u]ld be Hell to try and figure out in production. |
Of course it’s the same exact dark corner, each and every time.
Quoted from Dreamscale I really dislike the snarky style, not naming characters, but saying, "we'll call her...Asswiper, how about? Yeah...that's hat we'll call her. Does that work for you, Reader? If not, how about you call her anyfuckingthi[ng] you want to, because I'm not going to name her, because it's so cool to write like this and show everyone what a talented writer I really am.
End of rant. |
I’m concealing the characters’ identities so as not to spoil the twist ending. And I’m told this is the correct way to do it.
Quoted from Dreamscale OK, so what kind of bank is open at night? Really? Just a terribly fake setup here |
See above about me changing day scenes to night. I was afraid people would blast me for doing a noir in the daytime, but the actual complaint is the opposite? Wow.
Quoted from Dreamscale "OFFICE OF RIKKI WESSON, P.I." - Seeing (or writing) this Slug numerous times should have told the writer that it's not a great Slug...at all. It just sounds terrible. |
I disagree, but different strokes. Maybe DETECTIVE’S OFFICE would have worked better. But it works for me.
Quoted from Dreamscale So this "Witness" has only 1 eye? That's very odd. |
Only one of her eyes (and the area around it) is visible. It could be either eye (I prefer the right because it would be on the left-hand side of the screen), but the viewer would never be able to tell with the rest of the body obscured by shadows. I didn’t want to write anything unfilmable.
This is basically what I had in mind:
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/dark-eye-stock-footage/161330225
Quoted from Dreamscale Oh...now it's OK to reveal the Witness's name? Why is that? |
See above. I only conceal their names when they’re involved in the robberies, because I reveal that they were both in on it; I show Amy as the robber, which logically, makes Ivy the witness. Perhaps they’re learning from one another and pulling off every other heist, alternating between each other.
Quoted from Dreamscale Page 3 - Why are you repeating the Slug again? Looks to be exactly the same Slug we're already in. OK, so it's a different night or time, huh? Think how that will look on film? You end the scene with Amy talking, then the next scene is the same place with a different chick walking in. That's don't work, brother. |
See above. I agree, when I changed all the scenes to night in the final draft, I tried to make this transition work by changing the weather. After the fact, I thought about inserting a calendar and ripping off yesterday’s date. But now that I think about it, I could have left it alone to begin with.
Quoted from Dreamscale Page 8 - Wow...now we have INTERCUTS going on? Oh man… |
Ramp up the suspense, man.
Quoted from Dreamscale OK, the end. I don't get the end at all, but at this point, I don't think it really matters. |
As noted above, they were BOTH in on it.
Quoted from Dreamscale This isn't for me in any way...the story, the writing, the characters, the dialogue...none of it. |
You said the same thing about Mad Max: Fury Road and It Follows.
Also, Bogart as a woman is not drawing an image in my brain at all. |
Yeah, this one. I’m sure there’s some woman out there who looks like Bogart, at least in the face. Someone like Melissa Leo or Mickey Faerch.
Oh and Rikki is in no way coming across as a woman to me. |
I wrote her a tad butch and manly, admittedly. The characters could be either gender.
“Back in black!” – I don’t get it. |
I take it you’re not fluent in AC/DC? Just one of the robber’s quips/one-liners.
Why does she use a knife?!? Why not a gun? |
Quoted Text JOKER Do you know why I use a knife? Guns are too quick; you can’t savor all the… little emotions. In... you see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are. So in a way, I know your friends better than you ever did. Would you like to know which of them were cowards? |
Knives are more intimate. Why do you think Michael Myers uses a knife instead of a gun? Jason? Freddy? Norman Bates? Imagine the shower scene with a gun; it’d be over in five seconds. Bernard Herrmann wouldn’t have bothered writing that iconic screech.
Why don't any of the bank guards have guns? |
I actually didn’t think of that. I figured she got away before the guards could do anything. Hence, the smoke bomb in the first robbery, the titular heist. And I never did say they did or didn’t have guns; I just never wrote them in.
Why go to the same P.I. instead of the cops? Why would Ivy go at all? Just a ton of logic gaps here. |
I did the best I could in a week’s time. Why go to a PI? See above, to catch them in the act. Maybe Rikki is investigating in between scenes? There’s only so much I could do within 12 pages, but I’m happy with what I accomplished.
Ivy is going so she can catch Amy. Rikki is suspicious of both of them at some point.
How many customers are in the bank? You never specify. |
I never specified because the customers aren’t that important to the story, but it would only be a handful.
"An unseen woman inches towards..." How do we know this if she is unseen? |
It’s her P.O.V. Should be obvious.
You've now introduced "The Witness character three different times. Not good. It's actually slowing down the read for me. |
See above.
You have Rikki pick up the newspaper in one action line, then you have Amy slam the paper down in the next. I'm confused. |
Rikki is reading the paper. Amy, on the opposite side, slams the palm of her hand onto the paper. Again, should be obvious. Sorry if it’s confusing.
"What's the poop?" I really hope this is a typo and you meant "Scoop". |
poop
noun, slang.
relevant information, especially a candid or pertinent factual report; low-down:
Send a reporter to get the real poop on that accident. Origin 1945-50, Americanism; apparently extracted from poop sheet
Quoted from Cameron Some typos and formatting issues didn't help matters. |
I read and re-read several times to make sure I caught everything. I wonder what I missed?
I also tried but couldn't really make head nor tail of the story.
I think the terms: 'sister' 'dame', 'hotcakes' 'dollface' et al really only work if it's a male noir character speaking to a female. Do cell phones belong in noir? |
I was sort of trying to be ironic and/or turn that convention (hotcakes, sister) on its ear. Ditto the hard-bitten detective archetype.
Cell phones, I never actually used them in the script, but I thought I should update the noir genre somewhat.
What about one person makes them more suspicious than the other? |
Ivy Murdoch is pretty suspicious. First of all her name. “Ivy” is associated with poison Ivy. Then “Murdoch” sounds like “murder.” Then there’s the fact she reports the crime AFTER Amy already did so. Then, Ivy implicates Amy, who we’ve assumed is a protagonist. Plus, who would suspect somebody named Amy Swan? Amy is a very agreeable name, and a swan is a very innocent animal. All of this was intentional and very much thought out.
...
That should answer everything.
Thanks for the reads and honest feedback. I had a lot of fun writing it.