Fade To Black by blank - It's hard to say goodbye...unless you say it with a gift. Then again one man's treasure is another man's trash...   Short, Drama

Writer,

Decent visuals here. However, your story lacks one critical point — WHY is Lester doing this? Without the why, I’m left scratching my head. Not to mention, it lessens the impact of the final scene when you don’t know why.  Basically, dude’s got a Range Rover, former Cy Young winner. He’s got, probably millions, so why is he doing this? Tell us that, make it compelling, then you have a good story. As is, it lacks because of that one detail.

Steve

An odd little snapshot of a life apparently well lived, a successful sporting career, a married man with a son etc.

The titular character reminded me obviously of Lester Burnham in American Beauty - all the tragedy but without the humour and satire. Well there was a touch of humour -

RALPH
Any chance you have a pair of
Versace shoes you don’t want?

I have to reiterate Steve's comment: Why? Too many why's. So, the mystery is here.

I got a vague feeling that there's resentment aimed towards Janice with the quilting remark, and some previous angst with her midlife crisis comment, the kid is irresponsible etc., and that this is a relationship past its prime in the love stakes, but...

The thing is, without the 'why' it's almost impossible to connect with the character, to feel empathy, to cry at his tragic death, to be moved by his apparent desperation etc. Perhaps you had a big story in your head and only six pages with which to get it down.

You can write more than capably, though I was a little stymied by a couple of your plot choices - a barber instead of a good mate? An art gallery instead of a museum or auction house? Hints at more deeper friendships and history? (Candy).

Too many unanswered questions, and too bleak.

You nailed the brief and it's memorable and held my interest, but I want answers after the challenge.  

Hi, writer,

The story with just six pages is a collection of bleak moments of Lester's life and how he wants to end it all after living a successful one. I know the story attempts at conveying the nullity of life even after all the glory you get but rather it comes off as pseudo-emotional without giving any proper reason for Lester's actions. Again, with just six pages, it is difficult to pull off the necessary impactful emotional reasoning to support the story, but that is also the ultimate drawback here. It leaves no impression as such.

Good luck.    

Hello Blank,

A good submission here. Loved your writing/descriptions. Not to sound like a broken record here, but I, too, wanted to know: Why?

However, I can look past it and focus on the rest of the script. The flow of the story, getting to know Lester and his friends and family, was all very intriguing. I was excited to see what he had next for his friends he was visiting. The pacing was all very well done.

Good job, and good luck.

Sean

Not sure I understood why he decided to drive off the garage.  Did he have a terminal illness?  Did he lose all his money in some Ponzi scheme? Was he having an affair and about to found out?  It obviously makes you wonder what would drive him to do this.  I mean, if he had a terminal illness, surely his family would know about that.

Beyond that, this writing was fine and it painted a vivid picture of a man obviously in mental pain if not physical pain as well.  If there is anything I would change it would be to maybe provide some insight into what is going on in his head as he's giving away all his property.  Best of luck with it.

Very good effort here on a tough September challenge. No problems at all with the writing -- Very good, easy to read.

So Lester is saying good bye through gifts. His journey is to that other place -- I wasn't sure when reading whether it fits the criteria , but in hindsight it does. Good luck!

Writer,

Interesting way of saying goodbye.  Writing and pacing are good. Def met the criteria.   I liked the line where Ralph asks if he has any Versace shoes he didn't want. If you got expensive suits, can't be walking around in JC Penny.   Good job.

All the best.

I don't really have anything to add that hasn't been said. Unfortunately, the pieces are here, but the lack of "why" leaves the story feeling thin.

I like the idea, though.

Oh, and her line about him needing to grow up hit me sideways, given that, from her point of view, cleaning out the den might be a sign of growth.

Decent writing here but really not sure about the ending. I'd suggest you either give more clues about what's going on in his head or change it. I had assumed he was ill, but that still wouldn't explain the ending.

Started to feel a tad repetitive too.

Good luck

Hi Writer


Nice idea but for me, the story is a bit flat. The biggest issue for me was your protag, he's a bit wooden and we are kept at arm's length from him, so I couldn't feel any empathy and meant the final scene had no impact on me.

The conversations with him giving his stuff away should reveal more about his psyche and what he is going through. At the moment, they are just convo's of him giving away stuff and was a little dull.

Ramp up the emotion and open him up to me more and I think I would enjoy it.

Before I even begin, it took this many scripts before I saw one that even used all the allotted pages. Full disclosure: it is really hard to ignore the number of spelling/grammatical errors in this script, but I promised myself I would do it. For all these pages, I feel bad saying this, but I expected a bit more for the pages. The story presented doesn't match the actions of the characters. Lester has a loving-enough family (Janice said that she thinks Lester needs to grow up but that's the only negative shown), obviously has friends and a routine. Since he's 47, he didn't just retire from baseball. Since he's got Cy Youngs and World Series trophies, my guess is he's pretty well-off. You've given no reason, or even hinted at one, for why he'd do this. I have to admit, that turned me off to him, quite a bit. He's leaving without saying goodbye and knowing could even guess why. It's kind of a shame because if you'd have left out the outside scene, nobody would have missed them, then we could've had more in the house and gotten some story. A missed opportunity for me. Best of luck with this one.

Wow. Really shocked and surprised how many readers here have commented that the writing in this script is "good". Did I read a different script!? I'm very sorry writer, but the writing here is NOT good. Let's just skip past the punctuation errors in the opening Fade In and opening Slug, and take look at your very first action line...

Reading a magazine JANICE 36, sits at the dining room table
in a room decorated in middle class accouterments. A cup of
steaming coffee and a bagel at arms length.

Woof! That's rough, reader. Makes it hard to focus on the story when I have to keep going back and trying to figure out what the Hell I'm supposed to be seeing. Makes my head hurt.

I did manage to push through and finish this, and it's just not for me. Lester's decision for why he does what he does just doesn't make much sense.

Good news is, you got a script in for the challenge. That's no easy task. Good luck.


!

From a format point of view it definitely needs tidying up/fixing. For example the Header formats actually change as the script progresses.

From a story point of view there's not a lot here apart from a guy setting affairs in order before driving to his death, with no why, and no real hint of one (that I could see anyway)... a rewrite to include a why will help.