The Five Stages of Grief by David C Lambertson (eldave1) writing as Jane, dystroyer of dreams - Short, Comedy - A suburban family goes through the five stages of grief during the pandemic.  - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

I liked this. I thought the structure was cute, with the 5 stages. There were some pretty good lines, like from John while he was helping the kids with their homework, and Jane saying "flatten the curve" about John's belly.

Competently written, and a good slice-of-life look into what families are going through now.

AJR

I thought this one was fine. A bit lightweight, but fine.

The descriptions of the characters could be less bland, IMO.

The running gag of the kids pointing out adults saying bad words was funny.

Some of the jokes I have seen as memes. Maybe that's intentional? The one with the dinosaurs keeps appearing frequently on my FB feed.

Anger: I liked it, but it would've been cool to see some of that from John and the kids too, not just Jane. Maybe not enough room for that?

You go from day 21 to dusk. In the dusk piece, John has a shabby beard and Jane has gray roots. Did that happen between Jane coming home with the groceries and dinner time? Maybe you meant that paragraph to be part of day 30?

The bargaining piece could have had a little sharper/funnier back and forth.

The depression section works for me.

The acceptance part has a lot of dialogue that doesn't do much, IMHO. In a super short like this, each line has to matter.

I liked the last line from Tommy.

Wasn't that crazy about John taking up screenwriting. If you still want him to, make it play a more important part.

Over all, nice job.  

So this was very entertaining. I liked how you separated each scene by the stage of grief. And I liked how the kids would chime in after one of their parents would let out a profanity.

I did find myself laughing quite a few times through this, especially this bit of dialogue...

Quoted Text JOHN If your Daddy had five dreams and your Mommy destroyed four of them, how many dreams would your Daddy have left? KID One? JOHN (sobbing) Zero, it was a trick question. She crushes all dreams. TOMMY Don’t cry, Daddy.

Though I think you meant "Tommy" instead of "Kid" for character name above dialogue.

Overall, this was well-written considering the tight time frame. And the dialogue was sharp and funny. The stages of grief were pretty spot on, I'm sure many can relate.

-- Michael

This was great. Very creative and very funny. I especially liked John teaching the kids math. Great job overall.

Very clever. I liked how you used the five stages to pace the story

All of the parameters of the challenge pretty much nailed.

Good effort

Pretty good effort here on this one.  Lots of fun with it and I think you used all 5 stages of grief to good effect here.  I’m always a sucker for kids that swear.

Overall, some solid writing on display, but if I did have to quibble with it at all, it would be the ending didn’t land as I might have hoped.  You had them at acceptance with where they were with their situation when the news is sprung that the shutdown was ending.  I almost wanted to see them go into denial and restart the five stages again. But that’s just a personal preference and you did a great job with this.  Congrats on a strong entry.

Haha. Cool.  I laughed at a couple of parts, wasn't expecting that.  Thinking about this...I kinda like the whimsical bits to it - I’ll echo nice touch with the stages.  Give me an ending to remember.

A N Y W H O - well written.  A light, fun read. Great job.  Sorry for the lame ass feedback.-A

Loved the funny one-liners - the golf newscaster line, the flatten the curve joke, (wish I'd thought of that one)    and the movie line.

It's clever and funny. Something just lacking in the energy and flow for me though - read much longer than six pages and I'm always a bit iffy with jokes that border on hurtful - the husband & wife - but that said it's true to life and reflects the different stages - (nice choice there) of lockdown.

It's got all the ingredients.

At the point that he opens the script page at the end with the Fade In on a blank page I was as hopeful for him as he was - nicely bittersweet.

In the end this'd come down to comedic performances and delivery from good actors.
Good job.

The five stages of grief

Nice to have something different. And a clever idea using the grief model onto a process of change.

As a whole I suppose I was hoping for a little more. It seemed a tad comfortable. Almost like a sitcom, where the dad is a weak character, the wife makes up for it, and has to handle him and the kids.

Overall, a decent concept and the kind of script that could fly with a little more time.

All the best

This was probably the funniest read.

I loved Tommy. Lol. He is cute.

The mathematics scene made me laugh out loud. The dinosaur joke was clever, too.

Overall, solid writing. I enjoyed it a lot.

Got several solid laughs from this one. That's always a good thing.

Best part of it was the depression scene. Funny stuff.

Character descriptions are basically non-existent, but I'm in-between on how important that is when writing shorts. In some scripts, it feels very important. In some, not at all. For this one (and most in this challenge), a script about the collective experience, I lean towards "not very important."

The running joke about language hit. Kudos on that one.

I want a glass toaster.

Overall, good job!

Quoted Text This was probably the funniest read. I loved Tommy. Lol. He is cute. The mathematics scene made me laugh out loud. The dinosaur joke was clever, too. Overall, solid writing. I enjoyed it a lot.

This was probably the first script I read out of all the entries and it's still one of my favorites... I agree, pretty funny stuff.

-- Michael

haha, that's funny. I especially loved the kids.
I think you're living this life and you used it as a basis.
Very nice, congrats.
And congrats on all the writing. It's nicely written too. The dialog is very natural.

Not sure.  I found myself wanting to skip through.  It didn't flow to where I was just carried to the end.  Some funny stuff and some not nice humor, but that is the way sometimes.  I've never been a big fan of using kid's cursing for humor.  Just a personal thing, so not relevant to whether or not this would make a successful short.  It just detracts for me.