Hey Dustin,

I've been falling behind on my reading (it doesn't help that my computer kicks me off the internet once an hour), but I still intend to get through them all...

Pg. 1 A good start with the homeless bit. Considering we're in vampire territory, I can only imagine where that van is headed. EDIT: As I look back I realize I'm a bit unclear on where they were headed. Am I mistaken in saying Beth was the only true vampire in the story? I was originally under the impression that Minerva and her cronies were Vamps, but it turned out they were just using the blue blood to play vampire. I can understand wanting the power and whatever high the blood gives you, but it seems a little odd to me that this particular 1% wants to drink human blood even though they don't technically have to. It'd be nice if one of them had elaborated what exactly they all find so compelling about that.

Pg. 3 The homeless are already onto what's happening. That's good for them, but I wonder if it wouldn't be better if most of them thought they were just being shipped to different, far away cities, with the knowledge that they could never find their way back. "Homeless dumping" could still be controversial and damaging for the Mayor, but it keeps the more sinister truth farther from the surface. I suppose it all depends on how it plays out.

pg.  10 I don't know why I'm suggesting this, but I feel like the penis should shrink as she sucks the blood from it.

Pg. 12 Vanish must be awfully trusting to let someone she barely knows root around her stuff while she goes to the store. And a homeless person at that? Maybe if she saw him have an opportunity to pocket something of hers (a wad of money, earring, ect.) but decide not to, it might build that trust a little faster.

Pg. 14 With Vanish's encounter here, I'm kind of curious about what the wider world is like. I think it would have to be much different then I've assumed til this point. I mean, who would want to move to a city where you get stun gunned for not being at work?

Pg. 15 "Get a job, bitch." LOL. It is kinda funny though.

Pg. 20 It's a nitpicky thing, but two "front door"s so close together caught my attention. A simple fix, for sure.

Pg. 23 Coming into Act II now, and I'm aware that I don't really know anything Vanish wants. She wants a job, of course, but her way of getting it isn't really cinematic, nor the reason we seem to be watching her. Instead she's pulled off to help the homeless, then goes to a bar. I'm not in the camp that says every protagonist has to be active all the time, but I wonder if it would come across better if she was brought to these places by her own motivation. For instance, if she'd come to the city with the purpose of helping the homeless and making a difference, she'd end up at the soup kitchen more naturally than by being brought by her neighbor, who she never really developed any sort of bond with before being asked. (and might it make more sense for Remo to be the one she goes with?)

Pg. 44 The picture of Vanish's Mom presents a few problems for me. First, how would the viewer know it's Vanish's mom? Second, unless I missed something, this is the first time we're hearing about any of this. I think we need to be clued in to Vanish's mom and told about her "crazy time" before her true intentions can be revealed. As is, it's a lot coming seemingly out of nowhere. Finally, how did Vanish just happen to move in next to someone who knows her mom and all about her life? That could use some explaining too, imo.

Pg. 71 I wonder if the dream shouldn't end with Beth killing Vanish rather than the other way around. This could feed Vanish's doubt about her abilities. EDIT: Especially considering the ending, it could serve as a premonition, maybe with Vanish openly wondering whether or not she's really destined to fail. I think it could also work if it's not Vanish in the dream, but an ancestor of Vanish. Someone who, in the past, almost killed the last vampire, but is perhaps killed at the last minute, as Vanish is at the end. It might help the ending fit better, as it would be a sort of predestined cycle of death being alluded to.

Pg. 80ish Remo and his buddies bought the vampire story a lot easier than I expected they would. Might be more convincing if she had, or they had seen, some sort of evidence of this tall tale.

Pg. 82 "...it is I that is helping you" I'm still waiting to be convinced of that. I don't see what Beth thinks she's holding over Minerva. Because of this, I'm not really feeling the stakes of their subsequent fight.

Pg.  92 Not sure how I feel about the downbeat ending. Not against it, but I think the audience needs to be a bit more prepared for it.

I see from your responses that you’re thinking of spinning Beth as the protag. That could be interesting, but you might need to tweak her goal and make the forces against her more formidable than they are here. As a villain it’s great to see her roll over people on a quest for, what I assumed to be, world domination, but as a protagonist, you wouldn’t want things to be too easy for her. Also the world domination bit may play better if you framed the humans in a way that made them appear genocidal; attempting to completely distinguish all vampires from the earth. I think her trying to save her species and avenge all the wrongs done to her is easier to get behind then a quest for power just for the sake of having it.

As far as a version of this where Vanish is still the protagonist, this was good, but felt kind of half formed. At first I felt a lot of the beats in her story were coming late, but the truth is, this is mostly because Beth’s story is concentrated on heavily as well. If Beth’s story were pared down or streamlined somehow, the beats in Vanish’s story would start making their way to earlier in the page count. That said, the final battle felt more like something that might happen at the midpoint. A lot of that is because Remo’s friends are introduced late, Beth and Minerva have only recently started interacting, and this is Vanish’s first major battle. It’s the kind of battle you expect her to lose (though not so decisively) but survive and regroup and come back stronger. So while I said you could probably pare pages off of Beth’s story, ultimately it feels like the script wants to be longer and more expansive than its current length.

And finally that brings me to my last point, that there’s a lot of already existing elements in the script that can be fit to match Campbell’s monomyth structure. Normally I roll my eyes when I hear or see screenwriters trying to apply the Hero’s Journey to every script under the sun. While it worked great for Star Wars, for me it’s just one structure of many and I think a lot of people mangle potentially good stories while forcing it to fit. But here you’ve established a normal person with a heroic calling (Vanish = Luke Skywalker), a great evil that has to be faced (Beth & Minerva = Darth Vadar & the Emperor), a mentor character (Sushuo = Obi-Wan), allies for the journey (Remo & Hobos = Hans Solo & Droids). I suppose this is why the finale felt closer to the moment in Star Wars when Obi-Wan is killed and the group escapes the Death Star. The first battle has been lost, there’s casualties, but it feels like the story’s not over yet. Even if you wanted to keep the nihilistic ending, it could work as a subversion of the Hero’s Journey to closely match the beats only to have the hero fail at the end.

Maybe something to think about, even if for different script.

Anyway, good luck and congrats on completing it (and congrats on making the 250 contest as well),
Eric