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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    One Week Challenge    February, 2010 One Week Challenge  ›  OWC - The Light *
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  Author    OWC - The Light *  (currently 3658 views)
dogglebe
Posted: February 15th, 2010, 7:10pm Report to Moderator
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I liked the story, but I thought the execution needed work.  The descriptions were shallow and rushed, IMHO.


Quoted Text
On her back is PETER
and
Quoted Text
MARIANNE is blind
were both very awkward.  I didn't understand what Peter was doing.  And you need you describe Marianne a little better.  How do we know she is blind?  Are her eyes a dull white?  Does she wear dark glasses and carry a white cane?

The characters can be better described.  You're introducing a world that we're not familiar with.  Saying that Jane has greasy hair is not enough.  The same goes with Marianne's intro as behind blind with blonde hair.  What are they wearing?  What remnants of the old world are left in this world?

I think this story could be really good if you fixed it up.  Develop the characters and throw us some bones about this world you created.  You don't have to show the world, per se.  Just gives us hints in passing.


Phil


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Trojan
Posted: February 15th, 2010, 10:12pm Report to Moderator
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Well this definitely takes out the award for most errors. Dozens of them throughout, did you even read this before submitting it? On the first page, who is Jane? Did you mean Lousie? Sorry but this was incredibly sloppy writing.

What happened to the Oracle? You gave mention to him as being crazy and sick, and then he was not brought up again or seen at all. If they are the only ones left then who is this Orcale guy?

Why did it take 3 years for Thomas to come back with the Dark Lord? What was the purpose of your story? It was set up nicely as a sort of suspense/thriller and then descended into some sort of cartoonish horror that made little sense.

Sorry but I don't have much positive to say about this one.

Cheers,
Tim.
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ghost and_ghostie gal
Posted: February 15th, 2010, 11:28pm Report to Moderator
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Too the writer...

Another sci-fi.  Not bad even with a few typos.  Your ending I thought you came up a little short.  You had enough suspense in this one which was good but I felt something was missing here.

I can't put my finger on it yet.

Congrats though

Ghostwriter


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George Willson
Posted: February 16th, 2010, 4:02pm Report to Moderator
Of The Ancients


Doctor who? Yes, quite right.

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That was depressing. I believe the message is "There is no hope." You had a couple of typos here and there that messed with my head until I deciphered them. With Marianne, you have to find a way to show she is blind. The audience isn't reading your script to know this.

Other than the Dark Lord, I don't quite now what the outside danger is. Why was the house boarded up? They weren't exactly concealed since they had a fire going. A little more explanation over what they're supposedly defending themselves from would help immensely in understanding why things are going on.

It just boiled down to a piece of a larger story that didn't really make a lot of sense in this context. Needs work, and you could probably expand quite a bit if you wanted to.


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Breanne Mattson
Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 7:06pm Report to Moderator
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Michel,

This showed promise story wise but was derailed by a need to be proofed and a finale that felt contrived.

“As Louise and Peter starts to eat, Marian eats where she was sitting before.”

I don’t get this description. Should be “start,” not “starts.” But what’s the deal with Marian? It’s Marian in the description and Marianne in dialogue. And when did she move?

You get Marianne and Louise mixed up.

Peter speaks twice in a row with nothing between.

Thomas says, “Please, come in.”

You keep getting the names of your characters mixed up.

There were some good descriptions but also some clunky ones. The flow was choppy in places.

The story was actually pretty good up until the end. It had its moments. It felt like it was headed toward the vampire direction and then just sort of catapulted itself over the shark.

I suspect the deadline hurt this one. With more time spent on it, it could be reworked into a really cool little script.


Breanne


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Sandra Elstree.
Posted: March 11th, 2010, 2:02pm Report to Moderator
Of The Ancients


What if the Hokey Pokey, IS what it's all about?

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It's been on my lilly list to investigate some of February's OWCs and one of the first things I look at is the title. Does it catch me? Yours did and you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to find out this one was written by you, Michel.

The first thing that struck me was the cinematic feel with the light from the flame in the darkness. Things like the boarded up windows and Peter, busy with his gun and ammunition.

I was able to feel the fact that they were afraid of something and their holing up against it. Locking themselves away. When Louise says, "You'll have to go out one day", I felt like her words were just so very real in so many respects.

It feels to me like these people are in this "situation" of which we don't have a background of, (of which many people here already given criticism) but I think you could remedy that by having "the something" that they're afraid of be the unknown.

Please forgive me as I go off now on how I'm seeing this, but these are my feelings.

I feel that this is more of a sub-conscious piece with hidden brilliance that no one else is getting even though some of it is as clear as day.

For instance:

The element of darkness is covered from the very beginning wherein we participate in the slow fade in with the candle. The daughter, Marianne, is blind. Well, she is. I guess there's a lot of ways to write that differently to show it, but hey, if an actor or actress can't "get with that", then they can't and whatcha gonna do? Do you want to show more in that regard? Then go ahead, but I certainly wouldn't gripe about writing "She's blind" and let other brilliant people come up with how they want to show her sitting in her blindness. "She's blind." Heck, it's better than writing "The brown dirt". Duh, most dirt is a shade of brown, unless it's red, but that's another story.  

What I'm getting at here is that IMHO, there's nothing wrong with writing it short at times. Just plain. That's what you did here and it was good enough for me. I pictured a girl sitting there without the advantage of sight.

Anyways, the idea of blindness and darkness come together as they typically do. What you might like to do is examine Marianne's blindness and how she might actually become a main character in this. After all, she's inside of darkness already, she wouldn't be afraid of what she's used to. You know what I mean?

Wouldn't she be rife with all kinds of internal feelings and manifestations that "the sighted" would never have had the pleasure to know? And wouldn't she have these perceptions due to the darkness? And thus, wouldn't the darkness have a special and wonderful place and purpose from her unique perspective?

I'm speaking Kabbalistically, which I spell with a "K", and I do believe there is a very important difference between the "c" spelling and the "k" spelling, but I'm not going to claim for sure at this point.

Anyways, this brings me to the following on page 4:

All around the front door are painted with blood cabalistic
signs.

This is as bad as me when I've written Kabbalistic attributive worlds and words that Rumley, in THE MAGIC OF LETTERS studies, but a good percentage of the people on the planet drop their jaws with a WTF because I haven't given enough for them to chew on first.

So the questions are:

What do the signs look like?

Where is "all around"? On the door posts? Passover perhaps?

What blood was used to paint the signs? The blood of a goat?

**Note that most of the criticisms above mine have to do with the lack of supplying context to what is currently happening. Again, as I said before, you might remedy this by clearly defining their fear as being the fear of the unknown.

Regarding the use of the name, The Dark Lord. I definitely thought of Harry Potter, but I really can't think of any other name that I would call an overseer of darkness than Dark Lord. I guess due to the fact that everyone will be thinking Harry Potter, you'll have to come up with something different maybe.  

But still, The Dark Lord is The Dark Lord. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it. Whatcha gonna do?

This brings me to the conclusion of your story and the conclusion of my lilly review:

I feel that ending this story on the note you did, doesn't give credit to The Creator who in fact, has everything worked out just fine and proper.   Even though we're currently blind to the fact. Double   Oh, that was a triplet. Good.

Seriously though. In the end, we've got The Dark Lord coming in with Thomas and killing everyone including Thomas, who had moved into working with TDL for whatever reason. He's probably like us. Gets into all kinds of shit because he "wants stuff". Stuff that TDL promises, but all of TDL's promises are false promises and we all know where that leads...

But still, we're faced with "Why?" Why this senseless slaughter? And what does TDL get from it? The poor shmuck's left all alone. The lilly Dark Lord had nobody to play with. I'm starting to feel sorry for him.   He has absolutely nothing. He's completely alive. Completely alone. And yes, completely in the dark.

Can anyone help that dude?

Michel, I think this is a promising piece that you might have fun with in the future.

Sandra



A known mistake is better than an unknown truth.
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Sandra Elstree.
Posted: March 29th, 2010, 2:53pm Report to Moderator
Of The Ancients


What if the Hokey Pokey, IS what it's all about?

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Hello Michel,

I've read the rewrite you sent.

The main problem I see is that you've tried in the rewrite to explain too much later on and integrate elements that kind of come out of the blue, but don't quite mesh.

For instance, the vampire stuff should be at least hinted at. I gather that these people/this vampire family was the last left in some kind of guerrilla warfare or something like that.

It feels to me like you left the realm of fantasy, which I felt in the first write and went into sci-fi more with the NBC white suite and gas mask stuff . There, I felt that kind of actiony feel, but it didn't jive for me whereas the mood you had going in the first version was, (though it had its problems) consistent.

My opinion is that you stick with the surrealistic vibe and don't try and explain everything. Use the thought provoking elements to invoke the feeling that this poor family must feel.

Perhaps just state plainly at the beginning what they're afraid of and what happened.

Might you show Marianne singing a song yearning for the time before...

And you could incorporate what went before into the lyrics. It seems plausible to me that Marianne would use song and music as an outlet since she's blind.

Anyways, here's a few notes:

>Lighted by high flames from the fireplace

and

>Lighted by the candle on the table

I'll toss this out as a try:

JANE (51), long greasy red hair, cooks a stew in a large cauldron. The fire in the hearth illuminates her face.

Behind her is PETER (55). Bold and scarred, he pours lead
and powder in handmade cartridges.

His face is shadowed somewhat by the darkness of his corner while the candle flickers in protest as he uses it to light a smoke, then exhales in a kind of morbid disgust.

This:

>LOUISE
It has to be someone somewhere.

Should be

There has to be someone! Somewhere!

Here:

MARIANNE
Do you think he's still alive? I
mean, they were so many young
men Like him who died during
that war.

Should be

I mean, there...

Instead of

MARIANNE
He's my brother!

I think she'd say

It's him! It's Thomas!

Here:

THOMAS
Please, come in.

Should be Peter saying this.

Here:

THOMAS
No!!! She's my twin sister!!!
She's symptom-free carrier too!
Just like me!

The dialogue is feels too contrived there.

So yes, Michel, what I'd try and do is go for the psychological aspects and do some explorations to figure out what this story is telling you. Try and explore it through the characters. I truly believe this is the answer.

Whenever we try and hammer a plot or reasoning into something we write, it just won't work and fit. Not unless it comes first through character. At least that's my philosophy and although I have trouble getting it right, and continue to fail in what I want to accomplish, I know it's the most important thing to consider.

I hope this helps,

Sandra









A known mistake is better than an unknown truth.
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