The Doctor's Doctor by Paul Townsend - Short, Drama - Doctors make the worst patients. 11 pages - pdf, format

New writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi Paul,
Okay, So you went after the "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." conflict.  A noble effort, I thought.
but you should know that,   I'm a sucker for soupy dramedies with happy endings. "So I'm wit yu"

I enjoyed how you structured your story; The set up was fine and your characters were certainly descriptive enough.   Gainsford was  a wonderful curmudgeon.     I was rooting for him from the get-go.

Here's what I wrestled with:   "When the two pit bulls face off".  G and S.

A bit too much "over the top" dialogue.  Loaded with great emotion but too many words; On The Nose Dialogue.  But how do you reveal all the "necessary" background info. to get the tears flowing, you ask?

My, "Maybe's":

Show Gainsford screwing up in surgery, losing a patient rather than Simon bringing up his "file".

Jeanie and Gainsford having a smoke early in the story; esp. if you're going to stay with the ending.

Gainsford, showing up for counseling but not going in.

All the Kuwait City and Alice stuff? Very necessary info. and  Emotion packed.   GREAT opportunities for film.  So, you do one flashback; better than  wasting it on OTN dialogue, I think.

You may have to stretch your SP, a few more pages.

A little massaging maybe, but good stuff.

JJ

Some notes.

This one is an effort to achieve drama, but it doesn't work for me.  First, we spend the first two pages showing our doc drinking and then finding out he hasn't had a check-up in a while.  You don't need 2 pages to get that info to the audience.

then, we get to the meat of the story, and I don't quite buy that the old guy is upset because he loses a patient.  If he's been doing this for years, then he's lost many patients.  Why is this one special?  If it's because his shaky hands proved insufficient, then you have a reason--and a reason to retire.  The young guy's revelations are horrendous, but overdone, I think.  That's me.

The writing needs a bit of work.  Look for simple expressions--sits for 'is sat' for example.

And there is no need to capitalize character names in action paragraphs, except on the initial introduction.  

best
Richard

Hi there,

Thanks for your comments. They have definitely given me ideas of how I can take this script forward.

And thanks for going easy on me for my first submission  

Pretty good story, I liked it.  I have similar criticisms as the others, so I won't rehash those.

A suggestion, though, if I may.  Change the script to a "one-room" story.  There are all sorts of movies/plays that only take place in one room (i.e. 12 Angry Men, Buried with Ryan Reynolds, Sleuth with Jude Law and Michael Caine) In fact, this one could be similar to the play version of Frost/Nixon, where it's just basically 2 people verbally sparring for 90 minutes.  Cut out the stuff at the beginning and the end.

I personally felt that the conversation between the 2 doctors escalated fairly quickly and unrealistically. If you made this 90 pages or so, you could really build up the drama between these two.  Also, the older doc is on his back foot the whole time, so let him land a few punches of his own.

This is not my story, so you can do what you want, I just think that this would be a great idea...

(I would watch Sleuth for references on how to do a 2 man, 1 room style story, or Rope, which has 3 characters, but a similar concept)