Fatal Distraction by Not Again... - aka L. Chambers.  Short, Drama - Audio Drama - Inspired by "Calls".
A woman is forced to make a choice whether to forgive her husband after the death of their child while in his care. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Quoted Text AVA Do you have children, Mr Swinton.

Needs a ? at the end.

This is another excellent premise. It does take two reads to get the bearing straight given all the back and forth (i.e., it gets a bit confusing given all of the characters that you have introduced) – BUT – once filmed (or recorded) – I don’t think there will be any confusion at all (because we’ll hear the different voices).

I like the frantic nature of this. I like the cautionary tale – nice job.

Struggled with the chronology of the calls a little here, but figured it out with a quick re-read.

I may be being too simplistic here, but why is Ava even questioning testifying against Dan?

Powerful though.

I reread this a couple times and I think I've got it. Very interesting approach to such a nightmarish event. It was difficult discerning between voicemail and actually conversations, especially the recorded conversations (I think?). Valiant effort here, good work.

So, is the frantic shifting back and forth kind of to represent her indecision where she's battling all these emotions trying to forgive her husband? I like that a lot, if that is what you're going for.

I think it's probably hamstrung by the phone/non-visual parameters and could work a lot better visually with obvious flashbacks we can see.

Was an interesting read, something different, so kudos for that.

Emotive and cautionary. Very well written.
Well done.

For some reason I'm not understanding the ending - could be just Ava relieving the event.

Oh, I know the reason - I"m not smart at all.

But this is a nice tale. Very straightforward despite being a jam of many calls back to back and quite a story told only through phone conversations. You managed very well - I understood all of it which is big (well, a bit at the end is not very clearly but it's a small part of it)

Nice work overall. Really good

This is effectively sad. The conversation snippets work. Perhaps there is some small bit of hope at the end.

At first I was looking for a pattern in the calls. One caller branches off to the next one and so on. The lawyer connects with the mother and another person connects with her and so on down the line. In the end, it seems that that was not the case.

Total upheaval for all involved. Interesting script.

Interesting take on the premise.

My one gripe is with the phone call where Dan tells Ava their daughter has died.  I believe this would be face-to-face.  It's fairly tacky and impersonal to do it by phone call.  I would imagine if it wasn't for the parameters you wouldn't have written it like this.

Meets the challenge.

I think you really nailed the parameters and the premise, excellent work there.

And holy crap, you really stuck the landing with conveying a flashback on the page that would also work for audio. Well done.

Some of the dialogue could be streamlined, but I'm nitpicking.

Awesome stuff~

Super strong script. The chaos of it mirrors the chaos in her mind. So many voices telling her what's right or wrong.

And, I love the choice to tell it out of order.

Every bit of it is reflective of her mindset. That's excellent.

Love how you finished it.

Hi writer,

Quoted Text BARRY Ava, Barry Swinton... I thought we might be have just one last conversation about your testimony before -

Something's not quite right.

Excellent entry here, really well structured and easy to follow. It really pulls at the heart strings. Needs another small edit for sentence structure and grammar but otherwise hard to fault.

All the best.

Writer,

for me, this kind of jumped all over the place. I'm feeling that was intentional. Distracting at first, then it made sense. Damn. I actually FELT this at times, so good work there. Good entry.

Steve

For me, this was a little disconcerting how much it was jumping all over the place, but after reflecting on it I'm sure it matches up with the chaos going on in her life after the death of a child.  Good idea and well played out.  Needs some editing if you do a re-write, but otherwise good job here.  Best of luck with it.

Gary

I got completely lost reading this. I see from the comments everyone else got it so I feel thick. It's like there are flashbacks going on with the calls but I don't know who's talking to who or when. This will probably work much better as audio as it will be more obvious. I'll probably revisit this and read it again once I've been through the rest.