Voice Assisted Homicide by Glenda-the-glass-hole - Short, Sci Fi - Franny loves his geek life and his reliance on it leads to murder. 6 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Definitely doable within a low budget I reckon and there is sci-fi and horror, so checks there.

I just struggled with this. The first three pages are all exposition. Nothing really happens until page 4 and then WHAM! He suddenly becomes Michael Myers through putting on a VR headset for a few seconds.

It just doesn't work for me. Maybe start a lot later with him trying the headset on around page 1 straight after a quick delivery. Ditch the opening the package Youtube thing, it's dullsville.  Then you have a few pages to get creative,  see him become warped over time through the searches and games the VR guides him towards, resulting in him transforming into a killer.

Anyway, just a suggestion, good luck with it.

-Mark

Alright, miss glass-hole,

Technology, it’s in there alright, horror? Maybe More just imagery and gore, it came a bit late. Another thing that I’ve commented on before, but I again feel is relevant here, there’s no real character depth in Franny so it’s really hard to build the conflict that hooks the reader in and poses questions and motivation.

I’m not sure we need the massive dialogue chunks, show us the glasses in operation and save the page space. Right now he puts them on and just does what he’s told, show us the fight of instinct against their dictation, it should be a struggle as currently he could (so far as I can tell) just take them off and send them back.

Basically he has to be brainwashed, or addicted to them. I’d suggest possibly they reward him somehow, and if he’s a bit of a loser then he has to decide between the glasses and his former life.

Anyway, it didn’t really work for me and there’s some scene formatting issues and a few typos chucked in. BUT, if you manage to work with the character at the heart and really challenge him, motivate him to do wrong, it could be a really good little short!

Well done on entering,

Cam

Loved the creepypasta vibe to this. Good job.

Franny is an odd name for a male character. Gave me a double-take the first time I saw “he.”

Quoted Text FRANNY Genuine, two thousand dollar Grape Glasses, I’ve waited three

Two-thousand-dollar

Quoted Text GLENDA How can I help you.

Needs a ?

Okay, I liked this. My only gripe is that you start with the glassed two late in the script. Therefore we go through first time on to instant murder which seems to fast.

I'd shorten the time it takes to put those glasses on and gives us a little  more of him struggling against the demon's wishes.

Nice job overall. A good one

I liked this, enjoyable and hit the criteria.

My issue with it are that I don't think the unboxing stuff is remotely useful to the script and feels like padding. You could lose about 2 pages and use it to better explain why/how the glasses hypnotise him.

Franny as a boys name threw me too.

Good effort.

I’m not usually that bothered by format but you have several scenes start in new rooms without transitions and Harry wasn’t introduced etc

Scripts can be rushed in these owc

Ok, to the story. A new tech, glasses, start to control and manipulate its owner and coerce him into killing etc

I think the obsessive power, the manipulation are decent themes. The quick change seemed to jar a bit and I’m wondered whether he could be shown to have fears, paranoid thoughts etc which the glasses play on. Also more conflict with father.

Got potential

A guy's name is Franny.  Hokey dokey.


Darth Vader theme is actually The Imperial March. No matter - it's a piece of copyrighted music.

Quoted Text Franny runs upstairs to his bedroom, science fiction posters adorn the walls, games consoles and computers spread across the room.

It doesn't say the door is open, but I'll assume it is. When he ENTERS you'll need the FRANNY'S ROOM subhead. (it's in the scene that follows)

O.S. should be V.O.  in regards to other gamers we can only hear.  Franny's father's O.S> is fine. By the way, the gamer pals are right- the Grape Glasses are a bit pricey and a three month wait to boot. Franny,I reminded myself, is 26 yrs old, still living at home (?) and buys a product worth two thousand dollars.  Even if he is on the heavy side and lazy, that's two thousand dollars on a product!  If he got it off his father's dime, he should not bitch about assisting his father for a few minutes. It's not much, but yeah, of course his father's pissed.

Two thousand dollars!  for a piece of tech. I could buy it if he was self-employed, living in a apartment or trailer alone. But not when he's living with his folks. Someone's going to say "Maybe you should buy your own food. Buy your own stove and microwave!" No. Harry says later "you should have gotten larger glasses" hokey dokey.



Maybe instead of Franny giving us the exposition about assembly (and not following directions no less) maybe an INSERT of the instructions, and a montage of him putting together the tech. Most tech isn't tough to assemble once instructions are followed.

Quoted Text Franny stands and looks around his room, picking up a large DARTH MAUL metallic statue he walks downstairs.

Picks up a Darth Maul statue. Heads downstairs.

The statue,possibly a Hot Toy, doesn't have the impact as a knife or...a weapon that fires from the glasses, let's say and melts Harry's brain, fries his eyes, hey...it's worth two thousand dollars, might as well.



Not a horrible entry, but it seems routine.

Hi writer,

Pretty good futuristic tale of Patricide, kind of a Son of Sam thing, only it’s AI via something we would all (most likely) voluntarily strap to our faces without a care in the world. I think those things (app glasses) are most likely going to go viral once they iron out the kinks and get everybody onboard with a neuvo look. No way, you say…? Got a cell phone in your pocket? Yup, same amount of bio control, even if you can’t see it, the signal is always there, feeding into and off of your biometric pattern.

It’s scary actually, cause the apps can put all kinds of shit in your field of view that may seem to be inoculate at first, but do some serious mind altering damage after prolonged use, including hypnotizing you into a state of rage, depression, or… murder?

Creepy tale, well written. Seems like you have a firm grasp on techno-speak as well; the video blog came off as quite legit, even if we’re talking about something not quite there yet. Best of luck

Even though I liked the unboxing, I'd recommend ditching it. The quicker you can get to him booting up those glasses the better.

The pages you would gain are better served setting up why it's so easy for him to follow the instructions... or, if it's not easy, show us that instead.

Good idea. But, needs another pass.

Excellent. The only thing I might work on is having Franny put up more resistance when Glenda tells him to kill his father. Maybe have a POV showing us that Franny no longer is seeing the world the same as before the glasses.

I like this idea probably better than anything I've read so far... BUT... Franny goes from normal to willing to kill his father in about 30 seconds of screen time. I think we need to see Franny verbally abused more. And I think PK hit it on the head when he said you sacrifice valuable screen time describing the coolness of the device instead of getting to where it controls Franny's mind. Too much time spent on describing the product and not enough on character development.

Oh, and not to hijack the thread, but a word on the character's name since I've seen a lot of people comment on the maleness of "Franny." I had an uncle named Gene. We called him uncle "Geney". He served in Vietnam I had an uncle named Charles whose nickname was Chick and we called him Uncle Chicky. It's a natural thing sometimes to put a "y" on the end of a name.

AJR

Story:  Pretty good.  A decent blend of future tech combined with some mixture of horror.  Creepy ending. Not sure I buy how fast Franny (this is a boy’s name?) succumbs to Glenda’s overtures, but it works in the end.

Characters: Franny is a perfectly described dork and plays out his part as described.  A bit weak-brained for a nerd, but I guess that’s why he susceptible to Glenda.

Dialogue:  Okay.  Wasn’t distracting in any way, so that was good.

Writing:  Parts of this appeared a bit rushed, with some missing words and grammatical errors.  Overall, pretty decent writing on display.

Meeting the challenge:  Think it succeeds on the challenge.    

I think Franny (short for Francis) is a cool choice for the character you created.
Ah, okay, I thought (had to read back) this was a kid.  He doesn't read as twenty-six to me - he charges to the door, runs up the stairs, he's excited, slams doors - I was sure he was a slightly overweight foppish nerd kid. I think it might read more horrifically (considering what he ends up doing) if he's a bullied kid who's a clever little Geek - I dunno, maybe 10 years old?  Kids turned evil are a lot more entertaining imho.

Give him some proper justification for his actions turning homicidal too. Example: abused by his father, bullied by online pals. You'd need just a touch more backstory there to show it.

So, I think ditch the unboxing - you obviously included this so you could extol the virtues of the device and what it can do, but I think you could do that with much more brevity. Perhaps the device advertises itself as one thing and then as with your story it becomes something more sinister. Use the freed up pages to get us to the device going rogue much sooner.

Bravo! You came up with a Future Shock tech device, and you weaved in the horror.
Nice job, writer.

Not a big fan of Franny’s dialogue. It’s a nitpick, but little things like “they’ve finally got here” and “these things of absolute beauty” sound like a non-English speaker trying to speak English.

Not huge on his exposition commercial either.

The premise of future glass tech that slowly convinces a man to kill isn’t bad for a feature or an episode of Twilight Zone/Black Mirror, but it’s too much for a short. We didn’t need 2 pages of him doing a commercial for the product only for the twist to be rushed like that.