How To Tell Her by Brennan Scott (evildead84) - Short, Drama - A teenager has to tell her mother that she is pregnant. 10 pages - pdf, format

Ok, you know what, there's a really good script potential here. This is too short to realize it. You could create an incredibly tense and moving family drama if you extended this theme out and explored the characters deeper.  

I like what you have, but the plot you have is deserving of more then just 10 pages. My suggestion, shift focus between the three, as they carry out their day. Don't have her disclose who her child's father is for a bit longer.

Explore this idea. Let it grow, and live in this families tragedy.

I thought it was a pretty good script. The story had a smooth pace, easy to read. As for the story, I thought it was interesting. The only problem for me personally was the ending, it seemed kind of unsatisfying. I mean a guy sleeps with his own daughter and he just agrees to go to jail.

Id of liked to see the mom take his behind to task. That's just me though, what you have was very entertaining. Technically I cant say much as I'm still self-teaching myself the art of screenwriting, but I noticed some of the dialogue was long at times. Other than that, good work.

Hi Brennan,

I agree with Topher that this has some potential, but I think you might need to take a step back and re-consider some things.

For me, the Kara character was hit and miss.  I felt like you were kind of caught in between with her.  On the one hadn, I thought you wanted her to be the domineering mother/patriarch who walked all over her husband and wife, and the type of woman who sticks her head in the sand when dealing with unpleasant circumstances.  For what it's worth, I think I would prefer the latter.

Also, as 13thChamber mentioned, the ending kind of fell flat for me.  I loved the line on page 5 where Lola mouths "I'm sorry".  That lead me to beleive that the father was covering for her in some form or fashion.  I think this needs to be explained more.

This is particularly true considering that we are talking about serious time here for the father.  I think he agrees to go along with taking the fall for this (if he didn't really do it) way too easily IMO.  I think you need to give us some more back story.

Below are some notes I took while reading:

P. 1 “TakING a BREATH she walks over to the SINK.”[/center]

AND

“Slowly pickING it up, Lola is horrified at what she sees.  The test is POSITIVE.”[center]

Watch the ING.  I’ve never really gotten the whole “passive verbiage” and it’s not a big deal for me as long as the story works, but I imagine that some on here will take you to task for it, so you may as well be conscious of it.

P. 2 “Lola turns to corner to find Kara sitting at the TABLE. She is reading a MAGAZINE while drinking TEA.”[/center]

Should be “Lola turns THE corner…”  Also, I think I would let up on the CAPS.  I kind of have an issue with deciding what objects to CAP as well, but when you do it too often, then it kind of loses its significance.

P. 3 – “LOLA - It’s dad’s, mom.”[center]

Ruh-rohh.

P. 4 – “KARA (to herself) Why is this happening? What do I do?”[/center]

I think you might consider finding another way to get this point across without having Kara say it out loud.  Maybe a glance or she has a tick or something like that.  Not a big deal, but maybe something a little more subtle.

P. 5 – “Lola mouths the words, "I’m sorry."”[center]

Interesting.

P. 6 “KARA O.S. - You sure as hell did, Scott! Look what’s happened!”[/center]

So, obviously, Kara is in a very difficult position right now, and there is no right or wrong way to act, but her dialogue is a little iffy for me.  Again, I’m in no position to try and say how a real person in this situation might react, but I think I might go with the physical anger you displayed when Scott first entered the room.  I dunno, but it seems like Kara is trying too hard to speak rationally with Scott for what is an irrational act.  Just a thought.

P. 6 “INT. HOUSE - LOLA’S ROOM - NIGHT
Hours later, Lola is asleep in the bed.”[center]

I think you can drop the “hours later” since the slug now identifies the setting as night.  Alternatively, you can just add LATER to the slug and cut down our action.

Anyway, I agree with the others in that I think this has potential with some changes.  I like what you did with the whole "incest genre" (ewww - I feel gross writing that).  I hope this helps, and best of luck.

Craig

hey Brennan,

unfortunately i'm going to have to disagree with the other members here and say that i didnt find this one very intriguing. quite frankly, i dont think theres much potential here and i wouldnt want this to be extended into a longer script. why? because i didnt find the concept that exciting. its not really new or shocking to say the least. now if this script was simply an exercise, then it definitely has some merit. but as a screenplay, it really doesnt bring anything new to the table. i can think of countless other films that had the same idea, but with a bit of a twist to it that made it all the more intriguing (see the film, Happiness for example).

the dialogue and pacing were okay. you definitely need to tone down the capitalizing like craiger suggested.

one thing that particularly stood out to me was how the mother "switched sides" so quickly. she literally goes from telling her daughter that she's lying to attacking her husband. while reading your screenplay, i tried to imagine how this situation would actually play out in real life. and its hard to come up with anything that doesnt include mass denial. so kudos for tackling such a challenge. even if i didnt think you hit the exact mark, it was a daring attempt.

the ending fell flat for me too, but that's already been addressed.

i look forward to reading more of your work. i think you have a lot of potential, you just need to hone in on themes a bit more.

sorry this review couldnt be more positive

I...I don't know what to say about this one. It's not badly written -- the prose isn't amazing, lots of passive verbiage, but it's not bad -- so I don't know how to explain this.

The way your story progressed seemed to have more place in a feature than in such a short script; then the story's conflict is never quite resolved -- it just gets muddier and muddier. Worse yet, I could not sympathize with any of the characters at any given time.

Karah seems like a bipolar nutjob, Scott is obviously a pervert, and before Scott admitted what he did I thought Lola might have been lying (or that she might have consentually screwed her dad -- not that I'd approve of that, but still).

There is a lot of conflict here and none of it was either resolved or unleashed. It just built up and then vanished into smoke.

--Julio  

Thanks to each of you for your critiques! I will definitely consider all of them. I usually don't write drama's too much so this was a new venture for me

I do understand that it's a lot for 10 pages. Even for 20 pages. But my hope for it, is that it would be suited for a feature. In that case, this would work as a pitch (if made into a short) to go with the feature script.

I know that the mother's transition was a bit fast, but she's in a state of shock. So she's trying to make the right decisions although she's hardly holding it together herself. I do think it would make more sense if it was acted out that way.

As far as the CAPS, its just a style I've picked up to help visualize the story. To put a bit more emphasis on what's going on. Though, thanks to your critiques, it doesn't work too well with drama's. Mainly because it's character driven. With an action/horror film, you have tangible objects that you want to point out. So, critique taken!

thanks again guys and I'll take your advice with me!

Hey Brennan

Well, we're at SS to learn and grow as writers and story tellers. That means experimentation. And this was certainly that, I assume!

I found no problems with the writing, except occasionally where the dialogue seemed very, very strange. But then that does not seem to stem from the writing but from the story.

The daughter's emotional reactions were hard for me to understand. Was she raped? Was she willing? Did she enjoy it? That moment when she mouthed to her dad that she was sorry made this seem like some routine family mischief, like who ate the last cupcake or something.

Shouldn't there be some possible reason for the father to engage in this very abnormal behavior? Maybe if he was a dirty, horny old geezer, perhaps the product of strange breeding himself. I don't know, something.

And the end I can't make any sense of at all. Where Kara isn't all that upset, says she wants to keep the family together, but that he must turn himself in. That's pretty likely to break up the family.

The writing was solid Brennan, and you're pushing out the boundaries, so good effort in those regards.

Kevin

Thanks Kevin for your thoughts and kind words. It was a very experimental thing, for me at least. Hopefully I can only get better at any experimentation I may do in the future

Thanks again!

Hey Brennan.

!!!!  Spoilers  !!!!

The only problems I had with this story was the dialogue and the character's reactions.

The dialogue was way way way off for a situation like this.  Everybody played it off like it was no big deal.  At first, you had Lola upset and stuff, and that felt pretty honest.  Then you had Kara blow up at her, and that felt honest, then all of a sudden, you have Scott come home and all he says is 'Oops, My bad,' while Lola pretty much just shrugs her shoulders and says 'Sorry we got caught, dad!'  Then they sit down at dinner like a regular family and Kara says that they need to stay together as a family, and the father doing his couple years or so will help them become a stronger family unit.'  Then Scott, who's about to lose his freedom, just shrugs and says 'Sure, sweetie', and they ignore everything until tomorrow.

Honestly, because of the unreal dialogue and weird reactions, I was kind of half-expecting them to have a threesome that night.

Don't get me wrong, you don't have a bad story here, but I think to get the most out of it, you have to actually delve into EACH character's emotions and how they would ACTUALLY feel in that situation.  And, I know this might sound a little sick, but also think how YOU would react if you were any 3 of those characters and you were in their position.  Work those thoughts into the story instead of just everybody placating the situation off as if (like Kevin said) someone had just eaten the last cupcake without asking.

It might expand your story a bit, and I don't know if that's what you want or not, but it would at least be a good exercise in characterization, and maybe even good practice in doing some backstory work.

Hope this helps some.

- Mark