Sim 15 by Ray Barbosa - Short, Sci Fi, Fantasy - Could we be in fact living in a simulation? 2 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi Ray,

Quoted Text EXT/INT. UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY We observe through window three men having a discussion. RYAN, (30s) walks in the room- obviously late for some meeting.

I have a few issues with this opening.

I think this shot will be at the discretion of the cinematographer or filmmaker. I don’t see any real reason to have it "through the window".

Although you have said EXT/INT. in your slug you then go on to say "through window". At no point do you really give us a sense that we have moved inside. I mean we assume that, but I think it could be more clearly written.

MEN needs to be capitalised.

I'd lose the "we observe", if you write it down, we automatically observe it.

"walks in the room- obviously late for some meeting." How would this be obvious to the reader, what are we seeing? If I see someone walking I don’t assume they are late. Maybe, barges in, or rushes in. Give us some sense as to how he visually seems late.

I assume the scientists are the men. If so, for clarity, introduce them as scientists or call them men in the dialogue, and establish that they are scientists through what they say.

Quoted Text continues discussion -

No need to say this, the fact that he talks means that he has continued the discussion.

SPOILERS maybe

The ending confused me, so they were in a simulation and the boy was controlling the scientists? I don’t know.

Because of this confusion it doesn’t work for me.

I think I get the idea though. Guy tries to get a grant to study whether everything is a computer simulation. It’s turned down by a kid running the simulation.

It’s a pretty good idea. The execution and clarity just needs to be cleaned up a bit.

All the best.

Hi Ray,

First, I'd like to echo what Warren said about the formatting. I'd go ahead and introduce them as SCIENTISTS just to be clear who these men are.

A note about history:
In 1972, Pong was the first videogame that entered the public consciousness, but it wasn't the first videogame, nor was it considered typical gaming fare at the time. Kids in the 1970s were much more familiar with pinball machines. I actually had a Magnavox Odyssey 300 gaming system at home (it played Pong and two other very similar games Hockey and Squash), so get off my lawn

A note about scientific questions:
A question is "scientific" if it can be phrased as a refutable hypothesis. That is, one can phrase it as a statement and devise an observation/experiment that would prove it is false if that statement was in fact false. String Theory gets a lot of grief in scientific circles because it has a hard time coming up with observable predictions that differ from what General Relativity predicts.

So, yes, someone can definitely declare "That's not science!" and then the question becomes one of whether there is anything that could be observed that would answer the question. Of course, making the right observation often requires fantastically expensive machinery, which require grants.

SPOILERS

And the version number is 0.44.10.

EDIT: To explain the obscure reference, the linked game is a world simulator with enough detail that you can kludge together a functioning (albeit slow) computer inside the simulation. No simulated computers have been built that are powerful enough to run the game's software... yet.

END SPOILERS

It's a good brief story, just needs a little tightening up with the formatting bits and the use of jargon.