Career Move by Richard Russell - Short, Drama - A man down on his luck runs into someone who promises to make things better. 19 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Richard, you had me all the way with this. Nineteen pages of effortless immersive story tthat had me in its grip....

Until the end where it just followed its logical conclusion. Great set up which begs for some kind of out of left field ending imh. The idea of a clean slate, a new successful life, the fact he doesn't trust himself not to botch it up and so declines the offer in the end is just a bit of a let down. That's the realistic option I suppose but this cries out for the unexpected, I feel.

And, that's how you get to be a fairy godfather? The blood brothers thing seemed a bit excessive too, seemed we veered into horror territory momentarily and I thought perhaps that was going to be his demise. Struck me as a bit weird, not in keeping with the rest of the story.

Well written, some funny lines. Just gimme more at the end. Jmho, of course.

R,
hmmm,
Lot's of dialogue from Fletch at the table? No? Pg. 3-7.  Maybe just me, but  I wasn't in stitches .  Too much talk; not enough laughs.  Glad when Ruthie showed up with drinks and remembered a 50 year ago chat Fletch had with Marty when she was ten?

Best part of the story, I thought, was the Malibu Beach House demo.  Clever!  And,I needed to get away from the table at that point.

The ending got a bit convoluted for me.  Makeover or new career or nothing?  Took a little to long to get to the decision maybe?

The end really didn't work for me.   We're cutting wrists and mingling blood?  Really took a turn from Tiny Tim, Disney and Le Petit Prince.  

Enough of my ugly side.  I say, turn this into a feature (with some minor adustments).  Go out to 90 or bring it into 10.

What no Fairy Godfather dust?
All the Best.

JJ

Not a fan of this one. For starters, it’s a hard concept to pull off in a short. Any way you cut it, there’s going to be a lot of exposition just to get to the point where something actually happens (IE, the character is forced to make a tough decision). As written, the dialogue needs to be cut way, way down. Stuff like this:

FLETCHER
We're the best-kept secret since
Tiny Tim's limp. You know, Tim
wasn't really crippled. He had
what is known as a beggar's limp,
good for alms. But you can't blame
that English guy for writing Tim up
that way. Had Tim-boy really been
crippled, we'd have been there in a
flash. We'd be famous if we had
pulled Tim's bacon out of the fire.

You could cut this entirely and lose nothing. You could cut 80% of Fletcher’s dialogue and lose nothing. I’d recommend getting into the “demo” immediately. Have Shoate and Fletcher talk at the bar, Fletcher gets right into the fairy godfather stuff, Shoate laughs him off, goes to the bathroom, comes out and he’s suddenly at the Malibu beach house with the kids and the gorgeous wife. Now Fletcher can do a bit of exposition, while Shaote is horribly confused, being talked at from all sides by these nonexistent family members and completely freaking out, etc. Then we’re going straight into “the choice” before Shoate has really gotten his bearings.