Saints and Sinners by Your Eminence - An epic battle ensues between the Heavenly and the Fallen for the life of his Holiness. - Short, Action

Hello writer

I like this already - angel task force lol

Quoted Text MICHAEL It would seem that The Fallen has recruited members of the Seven Deadly Sins for this round. The goat signified Lust.

Don't tell me these things - show me the deadly sins, let me work that stuff out myself.

I was wondering when, and how, the cards were going to show up.

I was enjoying the battle, humour mixed with action - The ending, although funny that old men are playing cards like this, was a bit of a let down after all the action I just read - I don't feel satisfied at all.

Writing is pretty decent - spelling/grammar aside as I guess you were probably in a rush.

Overall, it kept me entertained but fell at the last hurdle

HAHA! Second read and it's another religious trading card game! I wonder how many peeps went this route?

Loved this. I got a very Assassins Creed kinda vibe from the description. Never been to the Vatican so I'll take your word on the details. I thought the Sistine Chapel was in Rome, surprised it's actually in the Vatican.

Interesting selection of Saints and Fallen. What category do the Hell Hounds fall in? Good characters, decent but woody dialog, pretty good writing here as well. Nice twist in the end too. I can just see the old Cardinals involved in a role playing game.

Good job, writer.

Hi writer,

Quoted Text (ageless, looks 30)

Does this make sense? I don’t think so. Ageless means the age can’t be defined, you defined his age.

Quoted Text We've no intel of who, or what, may be waiting for us. Ready? Break!

Their boss is omnisciencent, so this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, just saying

Quoted Text MICHAEL It would seem that The Fallen has recruited members of the Seven Deadly Sins for this round. The goat signified Lust.

Exposition through dialogue is hard to pull off well. It would be hard to do it any other way in a 5 page script but it still doesn’t work for me.

Quoted Text He unrolls his kit to display a full array of locksmith tools. He goes to work on the massive door locks.

I'd think this group could just appear wherever they wanted, but I'll go along.

Capped dialogue just looks bad on the page, personal preference.

The dialogue is a bit cheesy, not sure if it's meant to be.

Quoted Text The background fades and their images become-- INT. SISTINE CHAPEL - NIGHT --two trading cards

Okay, this answers some of my earlier questions, makes sense now.

This reveal almost has the same effect as when you realise something was just a dream, it's quite anticlimactic. Pretty good use of the cards and the rest of the criteria has been met, but ultimately this doesn’t quite get there for me.

All the best.

Here are my takeaways from this script:

1.  The trading cards seem more like playing cards. In other words, they’re being used in a game, if I read that correctly. Feels a little like you skirted the challenge here but I’ll Look the other way and let it through.

2.  The dialogue is a bit expository and/or on the nose in places. The action sequences are fine as written. Foe example:

Quoted Text                       MICHAEL           It would seem that The Fallen has           recruited members of the Seven           Deadly Sins for this round. The           goat signified Lust.

When you say “the goat signified lust” you’re explaining to us rather than engaging in natural dialogue. Plus, it feels like you’re giving away the ending with “this round”.

3.  Others probably feel a little differently (haven’t read other reviews before writing this) but I’m not a fan of getting someone to the end of a script and then ripping them out of it by showing it was just a fantasy sequence or part of a game someone else is playing. This is just a personal quirk, but in a situation like that I feel a bit cheated out of getting the ending I just spent time investing in. Again, others probably feel differently.

Writing overall was good, just a bit let down by the ending.

Best of luck,
Gary

Saints and Sinners

A fun read. I liked the touch of satire everywhere. I can accept the ending, have used this method myself quite often and you presented it with some charm and wit.

Okay. Good. The story has a good balance as a cinematic impression. Nothing to complain. Well done.

Aha, a bit of Angels/Demons going on here.  This almost felt like a "Dark fantasy-action piece."

Quoted Text The leader is the Archangel, SAINT MICHAEL (ageless, looks30).

You can't have your cake and eat it, too.  I'd pick one and run with it.

Quoted Text Michael strikes a blow through it's spine.

An aside.  All possessive nouns use the apostrophe, but possessive pronouns (hers, ours, etc) and possessive adjectives (his, its, etc) never do. The only exception is the possessive adjective "one's." But I think that most of the time it's a typo.  Sometimes a person just has a little brain fart and, meaning to type its, types it's.  

Some might argue, Its" is the exception (there's always exceptions in English) to the rule about apostrophe being needed to indicate possession instead of just being plural.  But no, it is not an exception, because we don't write "hi's". The reason that the possessive "its" has no apostrophe is that apostrophes are used to form the possessive of nouns only, and "it" is a pronoun, not a noun.

QUENTIN...Alright, then. Let's see what's behind door number one.
You can do better....

MICHAEL...Saint Ursula, I'll follow Quentin while you cover our rear.
MICHAEL...Once inside, all Hell may break loose. We've no intel of who, or what, may be waiting for us. Ready? Break!
JOAN...Go high, Michael, and I'll go low!
These guys/girls sound like cops...

A previous poster, I think Warren, made a great observation...

MICHAEL...Saint Quentin, stay on Joan. It's up to you to pick the chapel locks
Really?  

This might not be the best analogy, but it gets my point across...

it's like Joan saying...What is the combination?

How about they already know the combination. That way, as an audience, we begin to wonder. Do they know the combination because it's part of the info they've been given or because they're in tune with a much higher power?

Um...some of the dialogue could use a cosmetic make-over.  But enough of that... the ending, I didn't love it, didn't hate it.  Just some random thoughts, use 'em or ignore 'em, you know how it works.  Best of luck!

You get top grades for cleverness in terms of premise - nice imagination.

However, the dialogue was a bit of a killer for me. In some cases too exposition laden and in others it seemed out of place. e.g.,

Quoted Text MICHAEL Once inside, all Hell may break loose. We've no intel of who, or what, may be waiting for us. Ready? Break!

Seems like the voice of any modern day cop - not the voice of an old-timey Saint. Think Greek mythology as an example - would Hercules talk like this?

Congrats on entering and coming up with a unique angle

Humorous, creative, and well written. The characters are fun, and the plot — to free the pope — calls for them to do a lot of action-movie stuff. But the script is a little lacking in the stakes department. The pope’s an old guy and can be easily replaced, and the saints are already dead, so where’s the threat to them? But this story wouldn’t be any fun without them.

Religious stories don't work for me. Too many logic issues.

Love your title and logline is good.

One thing I will mention is that nobody talks like this. Almost every dialogue you have on the first page each character uses someone's name in the dialogue. They already know each other. WE know who they are... so read your dialogue out loud and remember you wouldn't speak that way normally.

Like that you set your goal out front.

share a dark recess  -- reads awkwardly trying to visualize this.

The goat was a WTF moment cute.

I like the ending of this... Good job writer.

Quoted from DustinBowcot Religious stories don't work for me. Too many logic issues.

Funny statement, Spock. Religion is rarely logical and Hollywood never is.

Quoted from JEStaats Funny statement, Spock. Religion is rarely logical and Hollywood never is.

I'm all for believing things if it helps make a story. However, everything must be logical within the boundaries of the world created. Warren made an excellent point about the god of this story regarding its omniscience. The trouble with religious/Christian stories is that they start from a foundation of apparent truth. The people honestly believe that, like Zeus, a god impregnated a woman while she was still apparently a virgin. Then, those same idiots have the nerve to mock other religions. They don't have this shit in China.

I don't like Hollywood either.

Quoted from DustinBowcot I'm all for believing things if it helps make a story. However, everything must be logical within the boundaries of the world created. Warren made an excellent point about the god of this story regarding its omniscience. The trouble with religious/Christian stories is that they start from a foundation of apparent truth. The people honestly believe that, like Zeus, a god impregnated a woman while she was still apparently a virgin. Then, those same idiots have the nerve to mock other religions. They don't have this shit in China. I don't like Hollywood either.

You're preachin' to the choir!

Massive boring morning rant ahead, my bad.

Quoted from DustinBowcot The people honestly believe that, like Zeus, a god impregnated a woman while she was still apparently a virgin. Then, those same idiots have the nerve to mock other religions.

I not entirely sure these people were idiots, maybe some were, but there’s one in every crowd. I think they knew what they were doing with respect to the creation of their religion, however. From what I’ve gathered (research), religion tends to bury its base tenet within metaphors, or parables, and regardless of where it (belief system) stems from, they all seem to hold a similar if not identical construct for that said belief; that is ‘Putrefaction’, or as blatantly in your face as they could put it in the movie ‘The House that Jack Built’… the Royal Rot (Noble Rot)

Succinctly put: Everything that lives dies, everything that dies rots (putrefies), releasing its essence or quintessence of what gave it animated life in the first place; call it the breath of God. Capture the essence (in say, an Alembic), and return it to the putrefied matter over and over in a reciprocation that forces the matter to go through a metamorphosis of creating a carbon-chain, a chain reaction (Dr. Anton Josef Kirchweger  called ‘The Golden Chain of Homer’) of realigning the atomic structure into what is termed ‘Hydrocarbon’

Quote: “Ever since Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz had his apocryphal daydream of the autophagous snake Ouroboros and reasoned that the only way six carbon and six hydrogen atoms could sit comfortably together was in a ring, chemists have been fascinated by the benzene molecule. Until 1865, chemists had struggled to reconcile much of the empirical data in the burgeoning field of organic chemistry, especially where bonding was concerned and most particularly, double bonds between carbon atoms.”

Humans are carbon-based life structures… of course, this is common knowledge put here only to reinforce the ideology.

Aromatic Hydrocarbons are used to create DNA (and, according to these ancient religions, when prepared properly and ingested, repair broken or missing DNA). Putrefied matter, enclosed in an alembic and kept at approximately 40 degrees Celsius (temperature of a female womb) will release its humid aspect to the top of the alembic (evaporation), forcing it to ‘Condense’ and ‘Rain’ down the sides of the glass back into the putrefied matter. If this is allowed to happen for approximately six weeks (40 days, 40 nights) it will metamorphosize into an Aromatic Hydrocarbon.

The ‘Virgin’ they speak of is the fact that absolutely nothing is added to or taken away from the alembic (womb) during the process, for this would contaminate the Quintessence of said matter.  Many of us have come across a Tupperware container full of someone’s old school lunch sitting in a hot place for a length of time that upon opening was discovered the most disgusting wad of funk you’d ever seen; immediate remedy… throw it out. The Royal Rot… the best-kept secret in the history of the world, hidden in plain sight.

There’s nothing wrong with religion per se, it’s our understanding of the message they were trying to convey to the masses that got tragically skewed somewhere along the way.

Hey Rick - Sent you a PM.
~John

About page three it dawned on me where and how we were going to get trading cards into this script... worked for me as an inventive solution to difficult criteria - well done.

Enjoyed the action part of the script, the Vatican is a good setting, lots of variety there... and I liked the idea of a sort of Saintly SAS attack for, sure some of the dialogue didn't work all the time but for me it worked enough within the narrative drive.

Nice job.  

I enjoyed this story up until the last scene.  It didn’t work for me.  I can see where you’re coming from and it seems fine but doesn’t land for me.  I also thought for a moment if you used real cards.  Curious to know.  It meets the criteria.  Overall it was decent with a lot of action.  The action was the best part.

Count me the exception... I liked the ending. I won't repeat what others have said regarding exposition/dialogue. Just add one more to the list of people who think a bit of rewriting is in order.

Overall, well done. Liked the premise and most of the execution.

Okay, this has to be silliest way to meet the criteria. But meet the criteria it did.
Having to intro so many characters all at once really loads down Michael's dialogue with names. Also, archangels are not saints, and to my knowledge they aren't ascribed familial relations among one another. Beelzebub and Michael do, however, hold similar rank on their respective sides.
To me, at least, all of the heroes sound alike.
Revealing that this was all a game is fine, but wordy on-the-nose banter at the end didn't work for me at all.
Overall, a nice take on the challenge.