My point was this: if a story brings us into a scene, and things are happening that we don't know why, and characters are doing things where we have no idea what they want, we're not going to even pay attention to the dialog.

Why is the shrink obssessed with Ellen? We have no idea, but it gets so weird that I end up reading just for the sake of reading. We go from spaceship with Ellen hunting an alien, then to her getting rapes, then to the shrink, who apparently believes in supernatural stuff...it's not even worth my time remembering all the details. If the story doesn't even try to make sense, then even the most clever and coomical dialogue will get lost.

You could set up the scene in Ghostbusters as a short. All you have to do is establish that Binkman likes the girl, is a skeptic, and yet a Ghostbuster. One quick scene could accomplish that. The point is that in a story stuff can't just happen randonly. I'm trying like heck to be constructive on a story that just doesn't work. No doubt this is the result of fusion and bobbleheads, so we go from space station to shrink's office waiting for comedy to happen. But there's no actual story here, so the dialog ends up being irrelevaant,

I agree with everything except making Ghostbusters characters and everything that made that what it is, into a 5 page story or scene.

BUT...if dialogue is strong, don't you have to give it a high score?

My comment to the writer had nothing to do with the scoring. I am not reading with scoring in mind. I score it after I'm done. But comments are focused on trying to help the writer. And my point was that if the story doesn't make sense, you start to lose the reader, and once that happens, even darn good dialog will go unnoticed. If I don't know what's going on in the story, and it's jumping all over the place, I start to lose interest and the dialog starts to sound indistinguishable from chipmunks. It just goes in one ear and out the other, it doesn't register. Right?

Hahaha def my favorite!
Hi marks for everything.
Lolol, you're so funny. And a great writer.
Im going to reread it.
I wish I could write like you. Maybe some day. Oh, who Im kidding...
Congrats on this and other things you might do.

I'm reading the convo here and it occurs to me that people misunderstood it somehow.

The shrink here is not obsessed with either of his patients. That's what he does not to get involved too much in the lives of his patients. He learns to despise them to stay detached and have some laughs.
The character is so rich that he compensates for the lack of story. That's very rare for me. as I like entries with rich stories and this one works as a short.  Yes, nothing much happens, but it's his story - this characters life story. That's his life and all of him told in just five pages.
So, I for one marking high for the story. Because it's one man's life story and it registered.

Due to the high regard I hold for Khamanna, I am going to re-read this fully and give it another chance. I do miss things on first read a lot. I think the first time I watched Pulp Fiction I thought it was not very good. I can be slow on the uptake.

Ok, re-read completed. Glad I did, because indeed I did miss things.

Now the story feels a little better to me...but also fails to meet the criteria. I'll check back in case someone wants to convince me, I am truly happy to be talked into more positive takes on scripts, I hate being negative.

There is no sci fi in this. What I missed before was that this was a dream of Ellen's. So the story works much better now...but doesn't meet the fusion criteria. It's straight comedy.

But the comedy does improve quite a bit now in my eyes! This kind of does prove my point in a weird way, though in this case it's more my fault than the writer's. Here, because I didn't know it had been a dream, I lost interest in the dialog.

Part of the problem also lies in EXPECTATION. Expectation is very important in the way readers process scripts or books, or an audience with a movie. In this case, the expectation was created by the fusion requirment. I think if I had just been reading this script without knowing the parameters I would have picked up that it was a dream. But we knew it was fusion, and it said sci fi/comedy. So my mind was queued to expect sci fi, and it starts in space, bingo.

So maybe someone can point out why this is sci fi?

Anyway, much better job on the dialog than I realized, my apologies to the writer. Scores will reflect this latest read.

This was OK aside from the dream. The only point of that dream was to add a sci-fi element and it fails miserably. I'm sure with more time you could have thought of something better. As such, it spoils things.

So did the opening scene in the space station really happen or was it a dream? If it was a dream, I don't think this script qualifies as scifi. If it really happened, I would expect the therapy session to also take place on the space station because you're not be sent back to Earth just because you have some bad dreams. Besides, having to deal with a psycho shrink and an invisible Martian might make for good script.

This started really well and it seemed that the opening sequence would lead to this funny situation where Ellen and the entity play this little game before their loving starts. I was thinking , hmm, so where will the psychiatric office be on the space station, but we learn its a dream.

Anyway it is slightly dodgy with the fusion but isn't that funny with the comedy so a 50/50 for me.

Like Kev, this time round I can see the humour better. The first time round the sci fi horror tone was overwhelming and was not dispelled by her comments about the alien rape. So everything came across as really perverse and dark without humour.

This kind of thing happens to me as well, I can see from reviews that people miss essential details. I think there's a discussion to be had on the ways we can Signpost key stuff.

Perhaps ironically, I think I preferred my original, darker interpretation because in that he was completely  insane and frightening whereas now he's got issues, but he's really just a bit of a c&#t.

I think for the second half to work with the first, you'd need to hear more from the doctor. His interpretation. Did you suffer any trauma as a child? What was your relationship like with your father? Set him up as a very serious man exploring the issue, then finish it as you have. Without a standard interpretation/ exterior diagnosis, the reveal of his inner thoughts about the matter don't have a reference point.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films I think there's a discussion to be had on the ways we can Signpost key stuff.

I'd be really interested to hear ideas on this. We know how important queueing the human mind is when it comes to creating, well, reality. The creation of reality within out minds is a process that involves expectation.

In the OWS's, I actually don't read the loglines because I know it will color my expectation about the story, and since I'm going to read it anyway, I don't want to do that. Here, I was reading which genres because of the fusion requirement. I wanted to know if I was looking for humor or not.

The title also impacts our expectations. In the Bugs story, we're expecting bugs, so it's easy to miss that they are mechanical.

In this story, I was looking for sci fi, got it right away. So when I saw the discussion about dream, my mind processed it as though her dreams were nightmarish(or erotic) memories of what happened. But I think I was wrong. They were in fact just dream fantasies. She never went to space.

My misperception changed the whole way I understood the story. I thought the shrink was helping her deal with a traumatic memory. But the fact they were dealing with a weird erotic fantasy...one which is actually funny...changes it all. The story works pretty well for a 72 hour thing, I think. It just doesn't really hit the sci fi genre. But I feel bad my comments with Jeff sounded more critical of the writing than they should have been, and I'm glad I read Khamanna's review!

The opening dream sequence was my favourite part, I would try to keep this sci-fi consistently throughout the entire script. I would add in an action line there’s a window looking out at outer space, or something. I enjoyed the over-the-top anger from the doctor, although I think more talk between the doctor and Ellen about what occurred in her dream (how she feels? How does it compare to other dreams she’s had?) could be interesting. I think this would be funnier if it ended on Susan’s final line: ‘Yes, doctor.”

Hi Writer,

Not sure if the dream sequence counts as sci-fi, but I'm going to be open minded and say it does.

Aside from that, the title says it all. I think that you nailed Doc's character. He's funny and well-defined.

I didn't see much story, though. You spend a page and a half with a different character, Ellen, and this leaves us with little space for poor Doc. I'd have liked to know a little more of him, in some way. It's just five pages, I know, but still...

The strongest thing is Doc's dialogue, no doubt of that. It was good enough to keep me invested in the script for three pages... and he was talking to a bobble-head!

A decent effort.

David