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A real drama! This was very well written and I enjoyed the story. It did have a lot of characters for a short though... and I lost track once or twice.
Not well written at all. So many miss-uses of tense and grammar. Quite dull with all the running around and shit. Lost my interest early on. BUT...at least you ended things up with a story of sorts, and a reason for the script. It didn't work for me at all, but of the first 3 I've read, it's the best.
I love words and the fact that when the page is blank...there's nothing there until words are formulated in my brain. Those thoughts...rushing through my viens and out my finger tips, find "life" on the page.
When people and places come to life...that to me is exciting.
MBCgirl =) My finger nails should look nice while I type - Red works!
This felt like you stretched out the story to use up your 12 pages, but only got to 9.
Considering Lily is the glue that holds this one together, it just seems a little odd that she doesn't say anything?
This is the only real exposition of her story:
Quoted Text
DAVE Your mother made it. Why wouldn’t you? Cheryl turns her head to Lily. The old woman takes a glimpse at her watch. CHERYL I’m not her. Never was. Never had her strength or her will though she’s been always blue all her life. DAVE Come on. I’m sure she’s been happy. Although she raised you by herself. CHERYL Wish I’d knew my real father. (beat) Never knew why he left us.
The pacing is a little out 'cos it feels like we are running around for a while. It does build some tension, and I think you would have been better served with the climax, had you given us reason to care for Lily. As it stands, Lori and to a lesser degree, Randy, play no discernible role, other than to pad out the family.
Without the OWC time restriction, I think your ideas will be more developed and better for it.
Where exactly did the old black guy come from? Was he hiding in the bushes all that time? And why did the old lady kill him and herself? I understand they were old lovers, but I have no idea why she felt the need for the murder suicide.
Personal Opinion: It was nicely formatted. Maybe, I'm ADD but it really felt like there was no clear antagonism in each scene to build the necessary tension to draw me in.
I took this scoring from Johnny...Hope you don't mind, bud.
Oh, you have no idea how much I smiled when I saw someone else had adopted my scoring system...not only do I not mind, I'm actually a little proud. How sad is that?
Now, back to the review. I think this was probably written by someone who has English as a second language. I know how offensive that will be if this WAS written by a native English speaker, but the mistakes have the feel of someone writing in another language. That's my guess. And while that means the mistakes are perfectly understandable, they do limit the enjoyment I can get out of this.
Meeting the competition criteria: the entire script is set at a family picnic, it's definitely a drama, and I suppose there's a sort of secret revealed, so you get high marks for that - 9/10 Characters: if it's true you lifted the description for Lori straight out of Juno, then tut tut. The characters didn't have a great deal about them, I'm afraid. None of them were particularly interesting. I also agree with Andrew when he says the most important character, Lily, is strangely sidelined - 4/10 Dialogue: the difficulty with the language really hurts the dialogue, I'm afraid. Bits of it were quite good, but it was hard to get into it because of the amount of errors - 4/10 Story: now this was something the language couldn't destroy. I quite liked the story. I didn't guess the ending at all, had no idea what was happening when the gunshots were heard. However, the ending was a bit unneccessarily violent and dramatic. Why exactly did the just-reunited couple decide to blow their brains out? That I didn't really get - 6/10 Writing/format: oh, the mistakes. SO many mistakes. I honestly think (hope) it's a product of trying to write in a language you're not completely comfortable with, but it really does damage to the script as a whole. You start badly with the double 'when' in the logline and things don't really improve throughout. Your actual formatting is okay, but the writing is poor - 3/10
TOTAL: 27/50
Everyone should use the scoring system! It focuses your thoughts when you read, even just listing the category scores gives at least as much feedback as a one line review because it flags up the script's weaknesses, and it allows you to easily sort which ones you think are the best entries (at the moment Of Sound Mind is leading with 40, and Love Is All You Need is last with 19). Embrace it!
Again, to the author, if you are actually a native English speaker then feel free to PM me and we'll arrange a time and place where you can slap me!
EDIT: just want to take the opportunity to shamelessly brag that I was right. Go me.
I think you have a good concept that will be better served if you significantly change the structure of your story.
What struck me about your story is that, although engaging, it comes across as background to the main event. Maybe you were experimenting and that’s what you wanted to achieve. If not, you might want to consider: what is the core – the essence - of your story? For what it’s worth, my take on it is that the story is really about Lily and Old Black Man. If this is right, then it’s very difficult for the audience to have any emotional connection to these characters – we don’t know them at all, except by way of some expository dialogue from Dave and Cheryl.
A few other points:
-- You might want to review the way you open. I think it helps keep the reader engaged if a script is easy to read, and looks easy to read. You open with description that takes up most of the first page. That’s heavy going, and sometimes it’s necessary. However, in this case I believe you can lighten the load by abbreviating the descriptions. I think you can cut about half of the present description without story compromise. Trust the reader/audience – they’ll get it.
-- Others have mentioned language, grammar, syntax etc. and I agree. It’s something that you will need to address. It would be a shame to let technicalities get in the way and detract from your storytelling.
There was quite a bit of tension when the gunshots went off but I think there's got to be more of a reason for the murders. Lily isn't really the center of the story to begin with so I don't really feel anything for her. Give her some dialogue instead of letting Dave and Cheryl tell her story for us.
I looked past the mistakes, I can't imagine writing a script in a second language, I would make a complete a*** of it. I still understood everything that was going on, I just wished there was more to it.
This one fit the challenge, I saw a picnic, drama and what I assume was a secret so good job there. I say that because I didn't quite understand the ending, though I have a guess, and I think it could be explained a bit better.
Also, what struck me was how on the nose a lot of the dialogue was. On page 2-3 there's a lot of exposition spoken by the mother that could provide us with a bit more information on Lily. Give her some mystery, some intrigue, so that when she goes missing we're left in suspense rather than mildly interested. That way the ending will seem more satisfying as well.
Overall decent but not one of my favorites. Fix up the story and re-fine some of the dialogue and you may have something.
sorry to see you got slammed for the English. Sure there were mistakes, but I think it was pretty obvious that it wasn't written by an English native so I think that should be taken in consideration. I had no problem following the story.
You had good drama here, but there are some things that need to be clarified IMO.
You lead me astray with Lily being gone. I thought she had drowned so when the real secret is revealed I was surprised. Not so sure however that I liked the secret though. The way you wrote it when the family finds Lily was a bit clunky. I thought at first she was being raped. I think that needs to be changed into a more romantic or loving way. Maybe they were holding hands or something. I thought he was strangling her...
Also what really happened here? They took their lives, but why would Lily chose a nice family picnic to do so? That seems sort of selfish to not care about the others. And was this planned? Did they plan to meet there and do this? That would be really bad if that was the case.
Over all I think you did a good job. You wrote a drama with a secret being revealed at a family picnic.