To Die For by Bryan Mora (chomico)  (OWC name - Robinton)  - Short, Thriller - A sexual betrayal brings together a couple from the suburbs, and a critically psychotic woman… who’d do anything to get what she wanted ...ANYTHING.   August '07 One Week Challenge entrant. - doc, format

p. 8 - Should be, "Rose shakes noticably."

Should be, "Rose is," not Rose'.

Well it's certainly a violent script.  From the way it was written, it sounds like Rose walked in on Adam and Eve, so she knows Adam cheated on her.  At the end, she hits Adam in the head even though it seems she wanted to save him.  So the character motives are a bit fuzzy.  

Some good lines from Eve but we've seen this all played out before.  It would have been nice to delve below the surface of the characters.

I already explained my problem with the end, but to leave a short film as a cliff hanger is a no-no to me.  

Overall, it was ok, but could have been better.

Here goes with my review...

First you describe Eve as slender and athletic which to me is a bit contradictory, I may be being a picky here but I don't see someone athletic as being slender too.

Rather than saying she hasn't slept in a while, which can't really be shown, why not say she has dark heavy eyes or something.

Try to write in the present tense, meaning say Eve 'holds out her hand' rather than 'as she holds out...'

'We'll call him Adam'.  Oh I don't like this line.  You call him Adam not us, either he's called Adam or not.

Try not to put action in your dialogue, it's ok to break it up and simply continue with your dialogue.

She relieves the pressure, the pressure from what?  You don't really say what's happening.

How do we, the viewer know it's not water that Adam drinks?

Underlinig and bold text in dialogue aren't really needed.

Eve attempts to stab Rose but I didn't even know she had a knife, did she pick it up?

Apeshit?  Hmm not sure this should be in a script, maybe in dialogue but not action.

Not sure I got the ending, why would Rose fight Eve to save Adam and then batter him with a bar?

Final thoughts, your format needs work as it constantly assumes the viewer knows things they can't possibly know.  Eve has some good dialogue and she's obviously got mental problems but it just doesn't feel at right at times.  Mad or not she's a little too calm when confronted by Rose holding a gun.

This is not an original story but a good ending could have saved it, but for me though it didn't.  I just didn't like it sorry, seems like you had Rose turn on Adam for a cheap twist without much thought.  I may have missed something, but an ending without explanation leaves the viewer feeling cheated.

To Die For definitely fits the thriller category and thrills.

This script may be a bit ragged and needs some crafting, but it works.

We got a really crazy woman here and we don't know what the heck she is going to do next.

Now, in the beginning, you need to introduce Eve as the woman with capitals because although we see that the boat is named Eve, the first bit about her is in the second paragraph and it reads: >She's slender with an athletic build.  And I wasn't sure there.

I'm going to mention a couple of the typos first.

I almost thought thru was a mistake, but I'll mention it for any other Canadians around here.  Thru is American so it's not a boo boo.

[s]tanding needs a capital.

[god] needs capital unless it's not a mono theistic God.

[Rose'] should be Rose is...

[Incase] ran together.

[Whose] should be who's.

Eve says [You kicked her.] Shouldn't it be Rose who says that?

Maybe for the part where Eve sits back with her eyes shut, I suggest something like:

She leans back, EYES SHUT; then, CRAZY LAUGHTER.

Since this is a dramatic shot, it would draw more attention to it this way.  Pare it down where you can and draw the reader with the most precision you can conjure.

Instead of we'll call him Adam.  Maybe just have him introduced in the first bit where it says:

>To reveal, ADAM, a twenty something...

I suggest increasing the visibility of some of the shots.  Like Eve BACKHANDS her.  I don't know how much is too much of this kind of thing, but check into the way it's done best.  If too much of this happens, it's probably distracting to the reader of the script, but then again, it may be necessary it you know what you're doing and you are striving for a lot of cut up fast scenes which are close shot.

We as writers aren't supposed to "tell" how it's supposed to be filmed, that's not our job; however, if we have a certain kind of vision, we need to be able to put that down in a clear but flexible way.  I suppose it's a matter of getting the feel for that kind of thing.

After >backhands her, I think you need to make >[causing Rose to plummet] part of the same sentence.

Where you've got >[Not the sanest smile in the world] try something much stronger here like: Her smile: venomous; her eyes hot black coals, utterly mad...

I'm a little troubled by the ending on this one.  It's a surprise, but what I'm thinking is that it would probably help if we knew we were rooting for the right person all along.

We're left with the idea that this guy has caused these woman to "hate" him.

My suggestion would be to change the ending to make it work.

If something is revealed at the end to make us realize that Adam is getting his reward, then we can take away at least some kind of knowledge as to why Eve went entirely crazy; whereas, in the beginning of this, we just think that she's a psychotic nut, who he somehow had become involved with before he really knew what she was like.

As it turns out, even Rose is against him, but we don't know why.

So, my suggestion would be to work on tying this all together.

Go through it and pare it down where you can to tighten it up.

Also, perhaps we could have a tiny bit of short history to make us "see" what caused all of this.

If this psychotic woman, wasn't always this way, but something drove her this way, we might have more suspense.  Let's say for instance, Adam was trying to poison Eve slowly.

Ha ha... just had a brainwave...

First of all, there actually were these cases on television (can't remember the show) but they were true stories about... ah now I remember... I think it was called "Undiagnosed" and there was a case where a man was slowly being poisoned by his business partner.  He was in and out of hospital.  

The doctors were unable to diagnose it, until finally the guy realized and went to the police saying: 'I think I'm being poisoned by so and so and if I die..."

They thought he was nuts, but then they did some kind of test on his hair and discovered (I think it was) heavy metal poisoning.  The guy lived.  He's disabled.  And believe it or not (some kind of saint) he doesn't hold harsh feelings.  He's just thankful to be alive... but all this digression.

I'm thinking that maybe, you could use the idea of "the poison apple".  You've already got Adam and Eve.

Maybe, you could have Adam poisoning Eve, but he doesn't know that it's going to cause he to go crazy.  He just wants to see her suffer and die.  

What a turn, when she changes into this raving mad woman and...

Anyways, these are just some suggestions to add more weight, suspense and drama to what you've already got.

Work at bringing "To Die For" to the next level.

Good job!

Sandra

My feeling is that this short is ok, maybe a little less then ok. Somewhere between bad and ok. More towards good considering the time limit.

Just to get it off my chest I cringed when Eve delivered the "to die for" line. Didn't like it at all, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

I thought the naming of the characters Adam and Eve was a little uninspired. A suggestion: renaming Eve "Lilith" would carry some more meaning I think, but after thinking about it I don't like that idea much either.

I disliked all your characters but I suppose that was your intention( except for Rose I suppose), so good job mostly...

Eve was kind of "generic" crazy bitch with the often used psychotic twist so she kind of got boring half way through.

I guess you tried to solve this with lots of violence but it didn't work for me. By the end of the fight I was bored. Perhaps more context would better drive the violence and make it more interesting.

But don't get me wrong I love violence. Maybe more off the wall, crazy, insane, creative  violence would be enough to substitute a more detailed, creative, context.

That said it kind of picked up at the end. I didn't expect Rose to hit Adam so that was good. I was glad to see Adam hit because I didn't like him, seemed like a dick. However, it wasn't enough to completely redeem the script.  

Lastly I think you confused the names at the end (switching Rose and eve), this confused me some and made it more difficult to digest.

All in all, nice effort, could have been better.

Premise: Fairly decent, claustrophobic and ripe for a good thriller. 7/10

Relation to Theme: Good use of the boat and one of the few genuine thrillers around    8/10

Story: The scripts weakness. It's not bad just a little inconsistent and the ending left me cold. The twist comes out of nowhere and appears unmotivated. Some bizarre sisterhood kind of act because he kicked the girl.   5/10

Not bad though.

The story was good. reminds me of the movie with michael douglass about the crazy ex-girlfrined. So it accomplished the thriller aspect along with the boat theme I can't come up with the title yet. But it adds a funny twist. dialgoue was good. descriptions were fair.  I don't think apes--t is description.

Gabe

I was drawn into the beginning of this piece.  The situation was set up pretty smoothly, and it;s simple: crazy ex kidnaps boyfriend and beats seven shades of it out of him.  Current girlfriend comes to the rescue.  One early criticism, if the male character's name is Adam, the say that this is Adam.  Saying "let's call him Adam" causes the reader to ask. "what, you don't know your own characters name?"  It doesn't look good.  I also felt the fighting was pretty well coreographed from a writing perspective.  Very clear to me what was happening.

Then comes the ending.  Rose has beaten Eve to save Adam.  And then, in full view of the cops, cracks him in the head with a metal pipe.  The problem here is that in this one act, the entire movie is invalidated.  Rose has gone through all this effort to save her man, and in one second, turns around and clocks him, probably ending the relationship.  If we knew he treated Rose like crap before, maybe it would be understandable.  But then, why would she come to his resuce?  It makes it tough on the reader, because we want to root for Rose, she's plucky (bad word, I know, but let's run with it for now) and I like her, but having Adam kick Eve when she's down, which is obviously not cricket, and have Rose turn around and bean him less than a minute after fighting for his life, now makes her seem stupid.  Doubly so, since if the cops saw, she's spending a night in lock-up with Eve.  Which might make a good story in and of itself.  I think you might want to spend a little more time with the characters to see what you want from them in the end and take another crack.  We're pretty good for a large portion, but that ending really sours everything.

I enjoyed this one.  The highest compliment I can pay is that it kept me interested and wanting to know more, which I suppose is what thrillers are supposed to do.
The dialogue tends to be a little on-the-nose, descriptions are a little vague, and there's more parentheticals than I like, but it was still lucid.
This is not a criticism but I'd like to think this was written by a woman, given the storyline, because if it were written by a guy, he'd be skewered for his sleezy torture porn.

Good job overall. Have to say I was hoping for more original use of the boat BUT good for you for making the story about characters and not a boat. Eve was a bit cliche as a character but still held an air of unpridictability IMO. That may seem like a contradiction but makes total sense to me. Would love to see her a a job interview. I see there is a lot of mixed feelings on Rose' flippage at the end but I liked it. 6/10. Good job.

Wow this script was really good. Eve reminded me of an Alex Forrest/Catherine Trammel type, and comparisons with those movies should be made in this instance, since they do run kind of along the same vein.

The villain Eve was extremely well written. Her dialogue was sexy, dangerous and entirely entoxicating. I wish this script was thirty pages, I just loved hearing this character talk and react and act. In a way, I wish you hadn't have had Rose show up and bring the script into action mode, the dialogue itself was worthy of the thriller genre and I certainly wanted more of it.

Anyway, there's nothing really wrong with the action or the ending. It's well written and planned out, but it just didn't thrill me like the talking scenes did. A very sexy, very well written short. Definitely one of my favourites from the entries. Well done.


Matt.

You either made a mistake in the end where EVE says "I think we should see other people", isn't suposed to be ROSE who says that. Or is EVE and ROSE the same person and their fight is more a psycological one instead of physical? If that's the case then you should clearify that a bit.

Anyways, I thought this was good short. It had a good pace and Eve was a well worked-out character. It was a tad too slasher'ish (the blood) to be considered a real thriller but that's small stuff.

Alffy and Sandra E already covered what needs to fixed iro. the writing so I won't go into that.

All in all a good one.

Rob

Some of the catty dialogue was just too realistic -- haha.

Eve’s age is never given. It would have helped with the visual.

We’ll call him Adam - this not only falls into the category of a “we see,” but for me this particular type of method of introducing a character’s name makes me feel like the writer doesn’t care about the character. That’s somewhat reinforced by the fact that Adam is never developed.

There needs to be some way for a viewer to know the drink is rubbing alcohol.

About underlining words: it’s okay but be careful not to do it too much. It’s really only okay if it’s absolutely necessary for the line to make sense. Otherwise, it’s best to leave it up to the actor to work that out. It’s her job. And the director’s.

I don’t see how Rose could park a car, headlights shining at the back of the boat, and then get onto the boat, all without Eve realizing it.

This could have benefited from more character development. Adam has a prominent amount of screen time and it isn’t utilized to get to know him better. Who knows if he’s as bad as Eve says or what? He seldom speaks. We don’t get to know Rose either for that matter. Eve is the show here and she’s crazy so that’s all we really know.

Once you have Rose’s name with Eve’s dialogue. And later Eve is credited with Rose’s dialogue. And I’m not sure what you were trying to do at the end. You have Rose slamming the bar into Adam’s head but you have Eve delivering the line. At this point, there’s no way of knowing what you intended, whether you intended some sort of twist with Rose or whether Eve comes out the victor. The mixed up ending really hurt this script.


Breanne

This was a decent read. A pretty typical setup. It doesn't take long to figure out what's going on. Eve speaks and whatever she doesn't say, it's pretty easy to fill in the blanks. There's little character development but somehow I think that works. Eve paints a pretty elaborate portrait of Adam but at the same time, she's not exactly in her right mind, which calls into question whether or not Adam is really who she says he is. There's also some subtle insight into what kind of person Rose is. Eve mentions that Adam has already hurt her and yet she's still coming to his rescue. She appears, to an extent, to be a forgiving person. Usually, I'm against this kind of stuff but this kind of low-key character development worked with Eve as the main character.

The dialogue got on my nerves a little bit, for several reasons. Eve isn't a likeable character, to say the least, and she talked a little too much. At times, I felt she was trying to be clever at times where it was inappropriate. She seems to be in relative control of the situation and yet she's talking when the times call for her to act fast. I was a little confused at the end when, what I assume is, Rose's dialogue comes from Eve. I gather this is a mistake? Maybe not. I'm not sure. It sounds like a mistake to me. Also, the dialogue was problematic in regards to formatting. It was broken up with too many parentheticals and I didn't much care for the excessive use of bold, italics, and elipses. In fact, I'd do away with those before I would the parantheticals. Both should go though.

In any case, a decent premise and use of the genre and theme.

Your opening action block is, I think, confusing. You describe a miniature houseboat (is it a model?) one that can be seen through muck and pools of dark water. Unless we are looking up from beneath the water, this makes little sense. And why pools? Are their several bodies of water? Several pools that the houseboat sits in?

Reading further, I see that the following action blocks are well written.

All in all, this was interesing. It kept my attention. It's too bad, though, that I just saw Hard Candy the other night. This is very similar. Different, but similar.

Seth

Woahhh, i'm gone for two days and the names have been revealed lol. Where have  i been? So, first thing i want to do is thank everybody who took the time to read and comment on my short.

One thing i've definetly learned is to PROOFREAD lol. Then again, this was written pretty quickly so i'll let that go on my conscience. But really, and honestly this was a great experience.

I wish i could go on and explain some thigns but i'm pretty hungry and need to eat since i just got home.

p.s. -- it's also interesting to see how some called this horrible as others thought it was pretty good. Opinions in readers can differ so much.

My food fiesta is over, and i can now explain what i was thinking with this. I thought up the concept becuase i had never written in girl's point of view... SO i decided to take this as the oppurtunity.

There seems to be problems with the ending, which i knew would be a problem before i entered it. (however i didn't see my typo with the Eve/Rose mix up. Wonder how i mixed up) The surprise wasn't really  supposed to be a surprised. Throughout the entire piece i wanted to have Eve slowly convincing Rose that Adam relly is cheap s*** and that it would happen again. OR i wanted to have Rose go save Adam herself that way SHE could do the damage to both of them..and as the cops got there, just say Eve did it.

I REALLY could've done better hinting those though. So, my bad. lol


Oh yeah, i also find it funny as some people thought a girl wrote it...i guess i accomplished my mission in that sense.

AND

Eve isn't crazy...just misunderstood. lol

if any more questions or comments, i'd be glad to hear it.