Night To Remember, A by Javier Torregrosa (jayrex) - Short, Dark, Thriller, Horror - Tyler awakes to find he doesn't know who he is, and all he has to go on are the clues left behind to help him retrace his whereabouts. 11 pages - pdf, format

Definitely a thriller more than anything else.

A little too wordy for my taste in screenplays.

I thought Tyler got over his amnesia a little to fast. I never sensed the disorientation I would imagine people feel when they have no idea where they are or what happened.

The story hummed along familiar territory. When Tyler goes to rescue Lucy, I was sort of disappointed. Then it just turned into something bland. I would have liked to see a little more dark or sinister ending. What if Lucy had clocked her husband and what if she was working for Tony by choice and she kills Tyler? That's just me though... I'm weird, I already know.  

So you did a pretty good job, but could make it a little zippier to read and not such a predictable ending.  

This was OK. A workable plot without much of a dark side. By workable, I mean solid if somewhat predictable for example: The damsel in distress has a twin?

A bit on the overly descriptive side in places. Beautiful but not needed. Example:

His eyes scans down the dimly lit hallway. Holes litter the
walls, ceiling and floor. Wallpaper has been peeling off
the walls for some time, long enough for families of spiders
to leave their webs underneath the paper that hangs.


Gary

Too many characters for a short.  I lost track when you started talking about two Sarahs and something about a receipt.  All of this is so convoluted.  I had no idea how the twins came into play.

I can tell that you are going for a "Memento" kind of thing, but you are not hitting the proper beats.

And the climax is just weird.  And the dialogue makes it that much weirder.

This one is like an engine chugging along on the wrong grade of gasoline.  It works, but only fitfully, and not the way it is supposed to.

I think this author could have used more time.  Or a simpler scenario.  One or the other. And the genre considerations are not satisfied here.

The grade here is a middle-ground C.

Kind of like two stories in one here.

It starts off as this guy who can't remember who he is and finishes with him trying to find his wife.  Even with the two subplots, the ending seemed very routine.  Tyler locates her, he kills the bad guy, and they go home.  Definitely didn't end the way it started.  There's also a lot of characters in here.  Three bulky guys for a short like this is two too many.  

The script wasn't bad, but it's rocky.  It starts as one thing and ends as another.  Still, it wasn't a bad read, so I'll give you a good job for that one.  

Greg

Have to agree with Bert here, but I'd downgrade this to a D or so.

Tons and tons of mistakes throughout...typos, really poor grammar, awkward, really bad dialogue, convoluted, bland, totally unrealistic, and unbelievable.

Two opening passages set the stage for what's to follow...and that's not a compliment in any way. "...wakes up from lying unconscious on the pavement." - really poorly written and so unnecessary.  "...leaves a nasty reminder from when his head met with the ground." - again, completely unnecessary.  "He sits up under the streetlight gingerly touches his forehand..." - oh boy...missing an important comma, and then what's a "forehand"?  You just can't start a script out like this with this amount of mistakes.  There are similar examples like this throughout the script.

I don't think you even mentioned anything about Sarah, and all of a sudden, Tyler is calling her.

The story just raced along, and seemed so easy for Tyler to figure out exactly where to go and what to do.  It just didn't work at all, sorry to say.

You did manage to write a script in a week, and you obviously put some thought into the convoluted plot, but I don't see how this is supposed to meet the challenge at all.

Sorry.

I'm sort of confused - ok, this isn't vying for the machima makeover. i don't have a prob with that.
But I think the scripts should be labelled somehow, to indicate if they are a machima entry.
Where was the dark in this? It seemed just like some episodes linked vaguely together.

I commend everyone who entered the challnege. But i fear the standard for this theme may suffer.

Jeff, there is a super that says IT WAS SARAH on the first page - otherwise though, I agree with you again about the mistakes and the overwritten narratives. I think, if one is going for a noir feel, you need to write narratives without commas. Something happens. Then something else happens. Then something could happen like something else (as compared to), if it's a short description.

Some notes I took along the way:

I have a hard time right off the bat when the opening narratives are too long or overwritten. Also, I didn't understand the first slug EXT. THE STRAND - are we supposed to know what or where The Strand is?

Four sentences to describe a guy (who you don't describe, btw, other than to give us his age), who wakes up in the gutter with a bump on his head. This should be two sentences - two and a half if you allow us to know what Tyler looks like.

How does someone "sheepishly stand up like a drunk" ? So he's drunk, and at the same time embarrassed by it?

On the top of page 2 in the narrative you tell us that "memories flashback" - can we see this? Then you use a slug that says simply "flashback" - where does it occur? I assume in the same room 113, but I don't think it's clear. Also, how did Tyler get away?

In the flashback Tyler in punched in the chin with tremendous force, yet when he wakes up, he has only cuts and bruises. Speaking as someone who's taken a shot in the chin, wouldn't his jaw be broken from a blow of that force?

Agree with what's been said as well that this does not really fit into the "dark" theme. Also agree that Tyler seems to remember that Sarah and Lucy are twins without having an "aha" moment.

Sorry, but I really didn't like this one at all. For the most part, it makes zero sense. It is just really bizarre. This would have to have arguably some of the worst dialogue I have read in a screenplay. I mean really awful, totally unbelievable dialogue.

The part where Tyler tells Sarah that Lucy has been kidnapped, and she replies 'Oh no. Come to mine'. Are you serious? She finds out her sister has been kidnapped and that is her reaction? How many people in real life do you think would react that way? And then he goes to meet her and the first thing she says is 'My, my, what happened?' Just ridiculously unbelievable.

And then just everything that happens, none of it rings true. He goes to see this Julio guy, says the woman he has is a twin and he accepts it straight away. Tyler already told him it was the wrong woman when he was having the shit beaten out of him, so why did he still take her?

The whole scene in the brothel is weird. He just waltzes into the office and the owner tries to set him up with a girl? Do they not have a receptionist for that? They kill a guy and just kiss and talk as if it is the most normal thing in the world? WTF?

You have a lot of passages overwritten. Such as 'His eyes scans down the dimly lit hallway. Holes litter the walls, ceiling and floor. Wallpaper has been peeling off the walls for some time, long enough for families of spiders to leave their webs underneath the paper that hangs.' Ok, um, who cares?

Sorry to be harsh, I wish I had something positive to say but I really don't. Well done on completing the challenge in a week, I guess.

Cheers,
Tim.

Sorry to say, this script didn't elicit any emotion from me. Seems like this happens, then this happens, and this character goes to this place and something happens again. There is a lack of characterization which prevents me from caring about them.

You packed too many things in 12 pages (and obviously I can tell that you didn't have enough space to play out the entire story). Try to focus on one or two smaller incidences. For example, you don't need those three thugs. They are the same person to me. You can cut straight to the brothel and escalate the conflict with Tony. Sarah is another superfluous character as well.

The ending scenes in the brothel was good but can be written better and more in depth. Your action/description is clunky at times. Try to split up the sentences to make the read faster.

It's a fair entry nevertheless.

Not a bad story. Very film noir more than anything else. Classic plot. I like how you played it all out in a modern sense, allowing your guy to piece together the clues and giving us a bit of a drama at the end, though one still has to wonder how they'll get out of there.

Not sure how you could do it in such a tight space, but you had a slew of characters all very thinly drawn, and that was actually its greatest weakness. If you could round them out just a little, the story would be that much better for it. At present, it's just a series of events, like you had the plot drawn out and put some names through the paces.

All in all, it was still rather good though. I liked it.

This, for me, was a long read. A part of the problem is the overuse of adverbs:

clumsily
suddenly
slowly
nervously
quietly

If a word can be removed without effecting the story, then it should be. You want to present a quick, easy read.

Other than that, I haven't anything to add. Hope it helps.

One of my pet peeves is the overuse of slowly!!

Everyone seems to be doing everything SLOWLY!

Also hate this "he/she begins". The characters are either doing it or not!

Rant over!  

This definitely had some desciptive phrases to remember....bulk punches Tyler, almost
knocking his chin off his face.  Tthere's a visual.  And; he plays with her breasts like they’re knocking balls.  I'd cut down on those a bit.  

As for the story I'm not big on the whodunnits, but I can tell you put your heart into it.  So for that, well done.   You might even have the makings of a full-length feature in here somewhere, but you're gonna have to clean the oyster to find the pearl.   Take the advice of others and keep working at it until you find your solid story.

Best of luck.

Too the writer...

Congrats on completing the challenge.   You've received enough harsh criticism already and some of it was overly critical and sarcastic.  So all I'll say is take the constructive criticism run with it and leave the nonconstructive criticism at the door.

That's the problem with writing shorts.  So little time to put together a very good and sound story.  It can be done but you put yourself in a bind with a lot of characters and your descriptions.  But in hindsight now, this was a good thing because you now know for the next time what not to do.

This wasn't bad though.

Good Luck

Ghostwriter