Finding Peace by Nikki A. Lee - Short, Drama - A mentally ill woman reconnects with her deceased military husband in an unexpected way. - pdf, format

Hey Nikki, I gotta say, I liked this script. It's short and the story isn't very elaborate. But that's what I liked about it. You took a subtle concept and made it compelling. The dialogue is great. I didn't want it to end. But the ending was perfect. Thanks for the read

Just some notes as I go.

Code CRYSTAL (20s) lies draped across the couch on the phone. She giggles happily at the words of the person on the other line. She toss and turn on the couch like a teenage girl engaged into the conversation.

Tosses and turns.

Code She looks off to the side where a lit lamp sits on a small table. Next to the lamp rests a medicine bottle filled halfway with pills. She stares with difance.

Difance? Do you mean defiance?

Code Crystal shakes her head wildly. She stands off of the couch enraged.

She stands up from the couch.

Code Crystal push items aside until she reach the back of the fridge where a decorative bottle of wine lie flat on it’s side. The seal is broken

Pushes. Reaches. The seal is broken.

There are a few other grammatical and spelling errors throughout so you should definitely go back and edit.

All and all I can't say I liked this story... Thomas is just as mentally deranged as Crystal. His only answers to the problem are to pretend to be the dead guy or kill her? This was never about Crystal it seems. She could have easily been placed into a facility to help people with mental disabilities. This just kind of tells me there is no hope for people like that... Peace would have been proper care... Not murder.

Good work though and good luck with your script!

Cory

Hey Nikki, I'm a little leary giving feedback as most don't seem to like what I have to say, but as always, I'll give it to you straight up.

I read the entire thing and I'm glad I did.  The writing is not good - many mistakes throughout, in terms of grammar, incorrect words, typos, technical formatting, Slugs, character intro's, and the actual structure you chose to use, but in the end, I do appreciate what you did here overall.

I don't believe in intercuts, but you definitely can't intercut with a scene you haven't even showed yet.

There's alot of overwriting here, in terms of your descriptions of actions, and even things in the scene.  Describing exactly how someone is sitting, multiple times is unnecessary.

You intro Thomas as Bryan, to purposely throw us off, which is a mistyake, IMO. And then, when you intro Sara and Thomas, you act like we already know Thomas, but we don't, as he was intro'd as being Bryan.  The biggest issue here is that we have no idea who Sara and Thomas are in terms of relationship to either Bryan or Crystal. You should clear this up in dialogue - as opposed to using "family", just use Thomas and Sarah.

Dialogue isn't great by any means, either and this being almost all dialogue, is an issue you need to deal with.  Way too much using the other person's name in dialogue which just doesn't sound real.  Too much exposition as well, and really jst too much dialogue in general.

This is a dark, sad story and I give you credit for that.  It needs attention though to make it be what it can be.

Hope this helps.

Hi Nikki

Very interesting piece. Nice piece of drama you have created here, and it was quite enjoyable to read. I do think that your dialogue still needs to be strengthened a little bit more, as it comes off to cliched. As well, curious who Sara and Thomas are. What is their relationship to Crystal? Why did she get poisoned? In fact, what kind of illness does she have? I feel that maybe this story should be explored a little bit more, but otherwise, for a short script, not bad

-Silva Silva-