I Need A Statement by Creed Kat - Short, Drama - A woman finds herself at odds with her identity when she gets robbed and loses everything. 4 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi, Creed,

I've read the script a few times. Below is my categorized feedback.

Story

The premise is interesting. A story about a woman who, having suffered through a burglary, loses her sense of identity along with her belongings. I like that premise, but unfortunately I don't think the script explores it very well. We see that the loss of those gold pieces causes Lizzie severe mental distress, but I still wasn't sure why by the end of the script.

Burglaries are hard to process. I understand the idea of a person, especially a woman, being distressed at the thought of their personal space being violated. However, while I can tell she's made those three gold pieces the foundation of her identity, I'm not sure why. Why were they that important to her? She says on page 3 that she "has nothing anymore," but she has a house with a patio. Were the pieces the only real wealth she had in the world? Were they irreplaceable family heirlooms given to her for protection?

Is the idea supposed to be that Lizzie, as she says, "works so hard" for her material possessions that she's tied her identity to her wealth? If so, that should be made clearer in the story.

Why is Lizzie so fixated on having something "to leave behind" to her three children? Why does she say on page 4 "If I was gone tomorrow I wanted them to have it. I wanted something of value, of mine, to travel with you see. I'd been saving it for a long time you know"? Is she dying? Is she an old woman and not expecting to live much longer? Did she steal the gold pieces from someone very powerful and now has no means of escaping from them?

Lizzie is the one who called the police to report her jewelry stolen, right? Why didn't she cooperate more with them? They ask for her ID but she shrugs them off. They ask for a statement but all she does is remind them that she "works hard." Is there a reason she isn't being cooperative?

Lizzie seems scared of something more than the gold pieces being stolen, but I don't think the script gives me a way of interpreting what that "something more" is.

These questions may have been answered by the ending, however the story concludes on page 5 with Lizzie just saying something she'd already said before. "I work hard, Grant. Really hard. That's my statement."

And then the story just... ends. I was hoping for something more climactic and for answers to these questions.

Theme

Thematically this seems to be the story of a woman whose sense of identity was stolen from her along with her possessions. If I'm right, I wish the script had given me more to go off of to reach that conclusion.

Also, I'm curious why the story starts out with Lizzie being introduced as just "Woman". If the story is about her identity being stolen, shouldn't she go from "Lizzie" to "Woman" instead of the reverse?

General Writing

The formatting for your slug lines is a little strange. They all have a hyphen next to the EXT/INT when there should be a period. It should be "EXT/INT." instead of "EXT/INT-"

A good portion of your scene descriptions are overwritten. Typically it's good to break up description where possible and to keep them between 1-3 lines long with a minimal word count, but some of the descriptions here are 4-6 lines. For example:

"A WOMAN walks up to the patio of her house. She feels her
coat for her keys, nothing. She looks in the bag over her
shoulder, hussing and fussing. She drops something, bends
over, looks up slowly and notices her door is ajar. The knob
has shifted. Frozen. She releases a sigh, puts her hand over
the door and races up the stairs. "

Could probably be cut down to something like-

"A WOMAN searches her coat for her house keys as she storms
up the front patio. She halts in a huff, digging through her purse.

She freezes at the sound of SCRAPING, RUSTED door hinges. Her
attention shifts to the ajar-

FRONT DOOR

Cautiously she approaches. With a heavy sigh she pushes into the-

HOUSE - CONTINUOUS"

There were a few spelling/grammar issues and a, overuse of ellipsis throughout. Examples:

Page 1

GRANT
Evening mam (should be ma'am), I am officer Grant
Winks with--

WOMAN
I had some jewellery (should be jewelry) in there. It
doesn't mean much to those who took
it but... Those pieces were the
only things I was going to leave
behind... You know for my children,
all three of them. I wanted them to
have something of mine, from me,
with them. That's all... That's
all...

Page 2

GRANT
I just need to give you an
offficial statement for the report.
(I assume you meant, "I just need to get an official statement for the report.)
I would need some ID...

Short Version

A good starting point, but I'm sure you can find some things to improve.