The Book of Marinette by Johnny Diaz - Short, Horror - For love of his brother, an adolescent turns to voodoo to exact punishment on his tormentors. 4 pages - pdf, format

John,

Good to see you back on the boards. It's been awhile and as I recall you were one of the first to comment on my scripts a few years ago.

This one didn't really grab me. It lacked a real twist, and although the action figure falling on Sean's head was pretty cool, I wanted more from this. Perhaps Sean seeing the guinea pig cage empty without us seeing said guinea pig beforehand might have been better. And I might be wrong, but when Edward starts saying his speech was there something in there about sacrificing one person? Here I think he kills at least two people before offing himself.

Nice effort and written well, just lacked a little punch.

Steve

Hey Steve.

Yeah, it's definitely been a while since I've visited the SS universe.

So with the speech, what I was going for was that Nick sacrificed his guinea pig to gain control of Edward (a life for a life kind of deal).  Nick loved his guinea pig and hated Edward so that was the deal.  Perhaps I'll need to add a tad more clarification.

I see where you're coming from with the lack of a twist. Rereading it, it does seem a bit more straightforward than I would like.  This short is actually a few scenes from a larger story I've been working on.  I kinda wanted to see what people thought about the concept before I dove deeper into the feature.

Anyways, thanks for the read, Steve.  Let me know when I can return the favor.

Johnny,

Interesting idea, but there’s just not enough to connect it all.  Sorry to be negative but I have no idea who or what Edward and Tom are to Nick and Sean -- or even to each other.  Neighbourhood Bullies perhaps?  But then how are they inside Nick’s house?  Have they been abusing Nick as well or only Sean?    

How long has Nick had this book?  How does he know what it can do?  If this has been an ongoing abuse then why only now does Nick take such drastic action?  I mean, you could just break a leg or two…  Nick could be seriously twisted, but again, I don’t know if he’s acting out of desperation or pure malice.

Could be a decent story in here, but we need some backstory, some understanding of how these characters and their actions relate.  Without it there’s too many questions to make this function as a satisfying whole.

Hope this helps.

Steve

Hey Steve.

This story was actually about twice as long so unfortunately I may have cut out too much, making it difficult to connect the dots.  Tom and Edward are bullies who ridicule Sean and Nick sought revenge in the worst way.  

Edward and Tom aren't in Nick's house.  They're two different locations.  I thought about using an INTERCUT but decided to go with slugs for added clarification but I guess it didn't really work.

I guess that's my Achilles' heel with script writing:  Too little, too ambiguous.  It's definitely something to work on.

Thanks for the help, Steve.

Hey Johnny,

Slugs worked fine -- more just the initial action (shouting) taking place O/S at Nick's house that made it seem like whatever was happening was taking place inside the house.

Not sure twice as long is a bad thing -- I'd have read this at 8 pages.

Hi Johnny,

Agree with the other reviewers, I think a bit more character development/backstory would have helped. Just felt a bit confused at the end... and in just a couple of posts here it clarified a lot.

Good concept and i think with just a minor amount of work it would film well as a nice little horror short.

Good stuff

Cheers

Chris

Johnny,

Some notes.

This is a nice little concept.  Young boy wants to right the wrongs in his life and finds a book and action figures that will fill the bill.  But young boys don't just happen upon such items.  So, I think we need some kind of back story about the central McGuffins, the book and the figures.  Doesn't much matter how he goes about it, but it requires some explanation.

And like the others, a twist would be in order.  After all, using black magic to commit murder must exact more than simply the death of a hamster.  You might dream up some unexpected consequences, some payment the boy must make.  Something unexpected.

Best
Richard

Chris - thanks for the boost in confidence.  The consensus seems to be, "add a little more."  It's advice I'll definitely take for future literary endeavors.

Richard - Yeah I agree with you about the backstory.  Going through the story again, it seems like I just dumped the audience into this story without anything to go off of.  I'm sure if I added the pages I axed out of this one, it may clear things up a bit.  Thanks for the read.

You demonstrate strong writing skills. There is a great deal of craftsmanship here.

The premise of a kid submerging into the world of voodoo is a compelling one.

I do agree with some of the other posters - I got a bit lost on the relationship between the kid and Edward and the reason the kid was exacting his revenge.  I think that linkage needs to be tightened up.

Thanks for the boost in confidence, eldave1.

Yeah voodoo and curses are a favorite sub-genre of mine with horror, especially when you throw in a little psychological stress into the mix.

Thanks for the read.