It’s a great little story, with the twist and turns. The challenge is met — it’s a rom com with necessary props. So why does this story bother me?  

I think it’s the writing. At times it seems natural, and at times it feels robotic. It could have been written hastily to beat the deadline. I think if you give this a good scrubbing you’ll have a little gem on your hands.

Best,
Gary

No offense, just one opinion, but...

Sounds like it could be a funny concept, but this just felt very generic.  The A/D is a bit tedious in certain spots and confusing.  Some of the dialogue is stilted.  In fact, it seems like you could remove a bit of it and not really lose anything.

One thing you could remove is some of the extraneous named characters with dialogue.  Some were superfluous and only there to "do" something for the writer yet are not necessarily organic to the story.  I'm wondering why you need the Bitter Old Lady.  The twist was decent.  The larger issue here is that everything feels so jarring.

Shrug, my thoughts.  I'm not claiming I'm right, I'm just telling you how I reacted to your script. Hope it helps in some way, good luck with it.  Kudos for finishing...

Good romcom. But why does it take 20 years for Fabian to finally make a move on Diane? One of the few big words I know is "propinquity." It means the tendency for people to form romantic relationships with those whom encounter often. Another thing I wondered about was how he roped Tatanya into helping him. But these are minor points, which are easily fixed. If this is going to be fleshed out into a full script, does Fabian find himself really falling for Tatanya just when Diane is starting to respond to him? This has the makings of an excellent romcom.

I liked this much more before I started really thinking about it.

Once the twist is established, Fabian's actions in the shoe store no longer make any sense. Was he pretending to be thrown by Tatanya?

It's not something that can't be overcome, but the script needs a scrub for consistency with the twist. Maybe you wrote most of the short and thought of the twist at the end, but didn't go back and clean up his actions to match?

Anyway, I do think you've got a pretty good idea here. A rewrite or two will go a long way to making this sing. (I agree with others regarding the guitar/hobo scene. Fun.)

I didn’t even say anything to her,
yet she hates me. Don’t you, Tatyana? Didn’t you want to splash me with your coffee?
Oh, hi, Diane.

This script almost has a The Room vibe to it.  
I could almost hear Tommy Wisesu’s accent and voice every time Fabien spoke.

I figured the shoe sizes were of some European scale.

Why would Tats help Fabien with his hair-brained scheme?  Perhaps a huge commission on boots?  

The hobo scene was a little out of left field (as was much of this) but funny.

Definitely needs some cleaning up, but by no means bad.

Thanks for entering.

Not a fan of the attention getting title font. Especially when it's so off putting a choice as this. Some people don't mind, but it looks a little amateur in my opinion.

Your pg. 2 should be pg. 1.

How can Diane make a face behind Tatyana if only Fabian walked into the store?

Why is an old lady throwing eggs out her window? And then a hobo steals a guitar? What the hell is even going on here?

I ended up skimming after that. A persistent guy chasing after the girl of his dreams is at the core of many a rom-com. But you gotta have something unique to stand out with this tried and true formula. I don't think Fabian is as much persistent as he is an idiot. Why in the world would Tatyana ever want him when he's such a goof? On top of that the writing was hard to follow I think because the descriptions were so off. Things happen without much set up or explanation, the egg and hobo scene for example.

Good job on entering though. Keep at it and improving!

I can see what you’re doing here but it’s not the best angle for romance.  More impersonal.  You describe her as early thirties but she says she's 37.  Not early 30's to me.  Candella is spelt two different ways.

The moment Tatyana encountered Diane wasn't right.  She shouldn't have acted as if she didn't know her.  She did.  Diane was in the shop earlier to that scene.  You could say she's play acting and pretending not to know her.  But that doesn't work.

Anyway, not the greatest executed idea for me.

Well, first of all, a nod for the effort.

I understand the story you were trying to tell, but I didn't feel it.  For me, the hobo stealing the guitar came from no where, and then went no where...taking attention away for the core story.

It's a clever idea, maybe the best thing to do is digest the comments of your fellow writers and take another stab at it because it's certainly worthy of another pass.  

Like a shoe that's the right style and the right color, but doesn't fit right.  You just have to try it in another size.

The sort of wandered around a little bit for me and seemed overly contrived too.

Concept had promise but needs work.

Hey, great effort getting a difficult assignment in under the time constraints.

The title page font... it had me expected some bloodshed. Turns out this is a romcom entry with rom and com. Somehow I've been lucky enough to avoid all of the off-genre ones.

I've been told that characters should be given exact ages even when you don't think it's critical to the story. In this case, you can use then to hint that Fabien and Diane grew up together by giving them identical ages.

The shoe size thing is confusing for people outside of Europe. Just the word "size" in there somewhere, and it should work just fine.

On page 4, "features" should probably be "face" and the expression is "in hot pursuit."

If the goal is to polish this into a shootable short, the Bitter Old Lady and her egg have to go. This character has to be set up indoors to coordinate with an outdoor shot, and the egg thing might qualify as a stunt for Screen Actors Guild purposes. The character also serves no other purpose, so she's ripe to get cut from the team.

Just about anything could serve as a distraction letting the Hobo make off with the guitar. The scuffle can easily ruin his outfit. You can also make the encounter less out-of-left-field by slipping in a prior encounter when Fabien shows indifference to a homeless person who turns out to be this Hobo.

Although you want the reader surprised by the twist, everything up to that point has to make sense pre- and post-reveal. Presumably, Fabien recruited Tatyana before the first scene. Without a strict page constraint, there's room for Tatyana to "accidentally" leave out her driver's license, or for Fabien and Diane to do a bad job of following her home... complete with Tatyana waiting a bit when she realizes she somehow lost them. Just remember that it has to seem plausible pre-reveal to both the reader and Diane.

The ending doesn't quite work, and I'm not sure exactly how to check all the boxes here. In a vacuum, I'd say have Tatyana parrot Diane's "madly in love with you" line back to her, but the escalation with the other suitor is an important element that you should keep. At a bare minimum, the drink should be something cold so as not to risk injury.

Of course, we're talking about a comedy here. His spur-of-the-moment plan is to have Tatyana through her frozen coffee milkshake thing at him, but as he tries to convince her to throw it he clumsily spills it. Now the only thing left is his scalding hot espresso. It would have shades of the wedding reception scene in Mickey Blue Eyes.

Another idea is for Tatyana to blurt out during the coffee attack that she's supposedly insulted that Fabien asked her out when he's obviously been in love with Diane the whole time. I don't know how to make that dialogue work, so just a suggestion that may or may not actually work.

Writing something with a twist like this can be a challenge, any time you change anything it ripples backward and forward, and editing mistakes can pile up. So be sure to read it with "pre-reveal eyes" and "post-reveal eyes" to catch any inconsistencies.

Overall, I liked the story; it was just a bit more complicated than it needed to be. A round of revising should fix that nicely.