Suicide-Murder by Niall Byrne - Short, Horror - Inspired by an encounter with a mystic, a woman in an abusive relationship plots a unique revenge against her domineering boyfriend. 10 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Saw you making contributions to a couple of scripts so thought I'd check this out: First - the nitty issues.

Quoted Text INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - DAY

Since you go through the effort of pointing out that your characters speak with American accents, I assume we are not in America. I would use the header to establish that. e.g.,

INT. WALES - HOTEL -CORRIDOR - DAY

Quoted Text CIARA, a pale, mousy woman in her 20s, pushes a cleaning trolley along the corridor of a hotel. Up ahead in the corridor a room door opens and a portly middle-aged woman, MARY, storms out. Mary has an indignant air and is dressed in the old-fashioned glamour of a fur coat.

Two nit issues - but to me always a bit inefficient to state their genders if the name is obvious and always takes less works to just state their age.

e.g.,

CIARA (23), pale, mousy pushes a cleaning
trolley along the corridor of a hotel.

Up ahead in the corridor a room door opens and MARY (50) portly,
storms out.

Quoted Text BRENDAN Haha. When will I let go? Now? (Beat) Now? (Beat) Now .

I always like to exploit the beats to provide more info than just a pause - like:

BRENDAN
Haha. When will I let go? Now?
(squeezing harder)
Now?
(still harder)
Now

Overall the writing is pretty solid. I have one beef with the story.

SPOILERS

The way you set it up it is obvious once she kills herself on page 9 what is going to happen over the next three pages till the end.  It just lost it's ooomph right there. We know the rest of the story before reading it.

A suggestion - consider opening with Ciara coming home to the apartment - having the fight with David - killing her self and right up to the point when she confronts him --

Then FLASHBACK to where she first sees Mary in the corridor. GO all the way up to the current state and then the murder. Just a thought.

LOVED the title.

Overall - I'd rate this pretty solid.

Thanks for the feedback, eldave1. Great points re: character descriptions and beats. Mixing up the chronology is a really interesting idea too. Cheers.

Quoted from The Moviegoer Thanks for the feedback, eldave1. Great points re: character descriptions and beats. Mixing up the chronology is a really interesting idea too. Cheers.

My pleasure - best of luck

As Dave said, the final confrontation will sound much intriguing if it were done with a flashback. Other than all good.

Also, the bit where Mary explains about the spirit in the hotel room to Ciara, I think it would be much better if we actually see Mary and her husband in the room(as the opening scene, if possible) experiencing paranormal stuff(even though they are not the main leads). Otherwise, just listening to it from the character(and that also not exactly sure what freaked them out) sounds plain and has less effect(or seriousness, you might add) to the build-up. Just a suggestion. It's your script. Your call.

Other than that, your writing is nice.    

And yes one thing, why there is no title page?

Regardless, good luck.        

Thanks for the feedback, Yuvraj. Much appreciated.