Sleeping Pill by Nick Le - Short, Drama, Surrealist, Psychological Horror - A sleep-deprived teen takes a pill—and spirals into a dreamworld of blood, failure, and a woman who may never let him wake up. 12 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Dear Nick,
I think you need a bit more dialogue in there if only to break up the long and intense action sequence. Is such a nightmare just the pills - or could you foreshadow with some inserts of previous dilemmas? Audiences like clues and relationships between characters (is there one?) Even in a short piece is good to follow a familiar framework set up / overcoming problems and then finally resolve when as written this is really one big chase sequence.
All best JtF--

Aw, thanks a bunch, JtF. It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, so I appreciate the comments a lot. Also, the concept of this short was actually based on a nightmare I had two weeks before final exam, so I thought, probably just write it out. But anyway, thanks for commenting and reading my work, hope to see you next time. Peace out. All best, Nick Le.

I don't think you have posted anything in quite a while. If you have, I missed it.

I think you did a good job illustrating a nice picture of what can happen when fatigue and a bad reaction to medication overwhelms the mind.

My only criticism is with the non-stop camera direction. It's a pet peeve of mine when I see a spec script with all of the director's work done for them. I understand that you have an idea of how this should look but from a director's point of view, it's a turn-off. It's similar to someone posting an entry on a dating app dictating exactly how the date will proceed, step-by-step, with every bit of dialog scripted, the restaurant and dinner selected and dictating exactly what they and I will wear and eat. I don't see people responding to an ad like that. I wouldn't.

I prefer scripts that describe the imagery and the action, and let the director use their skills and creativity to bring the story to life. You want a producer or director to look at your work and say to themselves, "I'd like to sink my creative teeth into this." In this case, it's a 'color-by-numbers' painting. All their creative work has been done for them.

I like the story although I'm not sure what happened at the end. Maybe I'm supposed to be unsure. Maybe Harry doesn't know.

Anyway, it's nice to see that you're still writing.

Michael, hey. Thanks for reading my work, and yes, I agree that it should have been more into imagery descriptions and it’s best to let creativity sink into the script. It’s been a while, so maybe I’ve lost my edge, but I’m getting back to writing now, so there’s always room for improvement. Thank you again, for you comment, and now I see that you’re a director now, can’t wait to see Jeep Commercial on the big screen. Best of luck, and have a great summer