Unrestricted by Nadine - Thriller - A female friendship is tested when one of them resorts to extreme measures to keep the friendship. 64 pages - pdf format

New writer interested in feedback on this work, please be nice

Your work is getting better and easier to read.
The characters are well developed. The dialog is a little rough in the beginning but gets more natural as the story progresses.

The story became a little unbelievable after the murder, You may want to rethink that. Sadie seemed a little squeamish being around some of Valerie’s domestic problems. To go from walking out in the middle of Valerie’s argument with her husband to suddenly becoming an accomplice to a murder is a big jump. I realize she was highly unwilling and Valerie had to pull hard on the heart strings to secure her not reporting the crime to the police. I consider it to be a long but workable stretch.

However, when the two women give up their lives and take on new identities in another city, you lost me a little bit. When the police not only let them escape, but gave them a large sum of money and access to a plane with a pilot willing to take them anywhere, I felt that the story got a little crazy.

In short, the nice ending is still possible but more needs to be done to keep it believable. Perhaps Sadie’s friend Aaron gives them information on how to get out of that jail. After they escape they find or steal the money. Perhaps Aaron is the pilot that takes them to Soda-brab. That is far more believable than detectives feeling sorry for them. I know you tried to explain it away with the detectives explaining their reason. It needs to be better than that.

The writing has a little room for improvement. To start with, you need the requisite FADE IN. I know you know that and just forgot. I’ve done that in my rough drafts of OWC submissions.

You open with the slug line: INT. HOUSE – DAY when we are actually in the living room. I realize you were describing the whole house but then you focus on the living room. I’m not sure of the correct way to write this except to not describe the whole house in the beginning. I would use the slug line INT. SADIE’S HOUSE – LIVING ROOM – DAY. After you have established that we are indoors and in Sadie’s house and in the daytime, the next slug line would be just KITCHEN and nothing more.

Sound effects like a doorbell or in-scene music on a radio is usually expressed in ALL CAPS. For example, “The doorbell RINGS.”

I would write “A couple of BEEPS are heard” instead of “A couple of beep noises is heard.” The beep is a noise. Saying we are hearing beep noises is a little like saying “A couple of female women walk by.”

Try to avoid using verbs that end in “ing”. Instead of “Valerie is sitting in a chair tying her shoelace.” , it should read, “Valerie sits in a chair and ties her shoelace.” It’s just cleaner and more professional.

In a few places you have dialog from the same character in consecutive entries. At the top of page 5, it’s done correctly. Valerie says, “I understand. This is my first gym ever!” Then you have an action line where Valerie chuckles, followed by more dialog from Valerie. Where it is done wrong  is near the bottom of the page. Valerie says, ”How about tomorrow?” followed by, “Sorry…that sounded desperate.” If you want to break up a character’s speech, you need a piece of action text in between like, “Valerie cringes.” Otherwise, there’s no reason to break it up. It should be put together in one dialog block.

In closing I would like to point out that once the story got going, you pulled me in and I couldn’t put it down. I really wanted to know where this story would go and how it would end.