Full Circle by Cindy L. Keller - Thriller - A young woman finds out the hard way that everything in life comes full circle. When her husband is arrested, and charged for the rape of a teen, the woman is terrorized by a peeping tom; she finds out that her new friend, a shy hospital valet, has been secretly video-taping her; and learns that her dog is truely man's best friend.   96 pages - pdf, format 8)

Script removed by request

Thanks for getting this one up, Don.
The logline still needs work. I know.

I started printing this file, Cindy.  You may want to revise your title page a little.


Phil

I wrote this in Final Draft. When I converted it into pdf, the title page came up like this. Kevan has given me a lot of help with this one. I was stuck on page 20 for the longest time until he offered suggestions with filling in the holes, and getting the story back on tract. Bert also gave this one a read, and offered suggestions.

Another thing about this story is that some of it really happened.  

So what's with the new title?

As for the logline, I would lose the dog (it's too much), and I would not call the valet "shy", as this makes him less menacing somehow.  That is, unless you have changed the script to actually make him less menacing.  I'll be curious to see what Phil thinks of this one, too.

I'll start reading it tomorrow.  I'm kinda busy today.


Phil

Bert, I didn't have a logline for it, had to come up with something to get it up with. I agree with the dog. It is a bit too much. I changed the title because the story is more about the girl, then it is about the valet.

Maybe a better logline would be something like... A young woman finds out the hard way that everyting in life comes full circle. When her husband pleads guilty to raping a teen girl, the woman files for divorce, and soon there after is terrorized by a peeping tom, learns her new friend has been secretly video taping her, and that she is the target for revenge.

Or something like that. I need to play around a little with it.

Take your time, Phil. I'll be looking forward to seeing what you have to say.

Cindy  

If you don't know how to make a title page in Final Draft, its easy. But I'm not sure what version you have...

Rapture,
I was able to make and print a title page, but it wouldn't save with the screenplay. I used Final Draft 6. It was the first time I had used this software for a script. All of my other scripts I wrote using MS Word, but now I no longer have that on my computer.

Hi, Cindy! I read this late last night and this morning I woke up and printed it out for later reading, I liked it that much. The characters were original and unique. I could sympathize with almost all of them. I thought the first couple of pages were effective and the children singing was great. It was a great hook.
I definitely liked your transition between the plots: wheels to wheels in the valet parking lot, the store bench to the station bench and valet keys to Carrie's keys. It was visual and I could imagine that with "Pop Goes the Weasel" in the background.

Spoiler Warning!!


Here are some errors I spotted:
In the first couple of pages, the word money is in place of monkey.
pg. 12, Sean stares through troubled eyes.
pg. 13, doesn't answer. I read those articles in the Class forum, and it says that things like that aren't necessary. Of course he doesn't answer, because you haven't scripted anything for him to say. He glares at her hand and then she continues -- that's fine.
pg. 80, Carrie goes out like a light
Oh, and didn't Nick already know where Carrie lived? Wasn't he spying on her putting on her nightgown before he took her address from her registration? Or was that another woman?

I thought Aunt Elaine was awesome! She wasn't just a mirror character, she had her own personality and she was quirky. I loved the scene where she pinches the nurse and Carrie says "I love you, Aunt Elaine."
I don't know if you meant Nick to be perceived this way, but I could sympathize with him. He was definitely the lesser of two evils and I felt bad when he died.
The story picked up very well in the end. I was trying to read it so fast to find out what happened. I loved the climax in Carrie's bedroom, the suspense was built, I was getting so upset when Nick, Mike and Elaine were fighting outside her room, I thinking "She's upstairs, you idiots! Upstairs!" It was great. I also liked the false ending when Carrie's sobbing on her bed and Tom is still alive. Tom's death is great, with Carrie's "F--- you!" before she shoots him.
I liked how you brought back Mike's little girl. I was wondering where she came from.

Okay, with some constructive criticism:
Maybe I was reading it so fast that I didn't comprehend the jump in real time. Would newspapers really print pedophile? What about sex offender? Rapist? I didn't connect the newspaper headline with Sean's case until much later.
After Carrie's scene in the police station, I completely forgot about Sean. I was all about following Carrie and Nick and then, all the way on page 39, here Sean is again. I don't care about him... he's a convicted sex offender, and after his arrest, what did he really have to contribute to the plot. Tom was already introduced with Mary Jean and at the end, he explains his motive -- I don't really see Sean's importance after the beginning. I didn't care if he killed himself, not really. Carrie already explained that he would divorce her -- it's a nonstory. I wanted to see Nick and Carrie. Would she find out about his peeping fetish? Will she fall for him anyway? Those are the questions I'm asking at that point, not what happened to Sean.

Now, I'm just nitpicking here but when Carrie sees Tom in the closet, the flashback isn't necessary. We already knows he's connected to Mary Jean in some way and a little bit later, he explains his motive for raping Carrie. It took me out of the moment when the suspense was building.

Okay, that's it.

In all, I liked this script a lot. It had me engaged throughout and I read it in a single setting with no breaks, I was that in the story. I liked Carrie, I thought her reaction to Nick's secret was realistic. This was great.

Ha, first review!

Hey Cindy, just finished reading this and got some comments.

It seemed to me that you´ve got a clear story in your mind, you know where you´re going and you worked hard on this; it showed.

I had some problems with the execution though, specially in the first act.

I felt the story moved a little bit slow, and that some of the scenes were not needed or lasted longer than they should have.

Here are some suggestions:

*SPOILERS*

P.1 I´ll start with something very nitpicky. In action scenes with only one character present, you don´t need to write “Little girl” (or Carrie or Nick) each time the character does something. It becomes repetitive and disrupts the scene flow. Tell us who is in the scene the first time, then just write “he” or “she”, and then you could just describe the actions.

Later in the script, you´ve got some scenes with 4 or 5 action lines all beginning with “Carrie” for example

Also, “A GIRL (4)” is much more economical than “A little GIRL…She is about four”

You´ve got only one camera direction in the script (last line of the first scene) so I guess you know they don´t belong to spec scripts. I think you can get rid of this direction by writing: “She is alone in the room”. By reading something like this, the reader´s mind automatically “pulls back” to watch the whole room and notice the girl is alone. And in this way you also get rid of the infamous use of “we” in descriptions.

P.8 You introduced a bunch of characters and I´m not sure who´s the main character by now. I don´t know what the story is about, either. Except Sean who´s arrested, you describe some trivial things: Carrie buys her groceries, gives a bone to her dog… Do we need Frank in this script? He doesn´t seem to serve a purpose to this story (if he does and I missed it, please forgive me). I guess you included him to have an additional suspect who could be wearing the sky mask?  IMO, you can loose this character, unless I missed something he doesn´t add anything important to your story.

P.9 Carrie finds out Sean was arrested. Now I feel much better reading this script; Carrie has a problem and I can guess she will be the protagonist.

A suggestion: once Mary Jean tells Carrie she´s coming for her, cut directly to both women inside the car already on the way to the police station. No need to show Carrie hanging up, listening a horn outside, rushing towards the door, closing the door, opening the car´s door, etc; the audience can fill the boring blanks by themselves.

P.11 Carrie bought too quickly that his husband was a rapist, IMO. I think the normal reaction of any woman would be denial at first, but Carrie is immediately too suspicious.

You´ve got some descriptions that can´t be recorded by the camera, like: “Carrie doesn´t buy into it like Mary Jean, she digs deeper” I guess you already know this, but included that description as a guide to the actor. Even if that’s the case, this kind of directions are frowned upon, and I think you don’t even need it in this particular case; by reading the dialogue we can perfectly gather that Carrie is being more suspicious than Mary Jean.

P.18 When Elanie says “I love you too, hun”,  you could cut directly to Carrie parking her car at the hospital. The stuff in between is not essential, IMO and could be left out in benefit of a quicker pace.

I had this kind of problem with other scenes as well, but pointing a couple of them is enough to make my point. If you agree with this comment make sure your scenes start when things get interesting, not when people arrive; and that they end when there´s nothing else interesting to say/do, not when characters said goodbye to each other.

P.22 By showing Nick copying the key and having a devilish smile, I felt a little bit “cheated”. After all he was not evil, and (despite his strange habits) only wanted to help Carrie, and saved her life a couple of times.

P.38 Writing in other than present tense is usually frowned upon. You´ve got a “he is looking” line here that can easily become “he looks”. I spotted a couple more of these.

P.42 Carrie tells Elanie she invited Nick. News for Elanie but not for the audience. This exchange between them, repeats information already known. I´d suggest to loose this bit. Scenes later, Elanie sees Nick and Carrie together anyways.

P.51/52 Unless I missed something here, you don´t need another “feed the dog” scene. You already established Carrie loves her dog.

P.91 You´ve got some O.S. dialogue that should be V.O. (the newscaster is not in the room)

Well, nothing more to add. I hope some of this comments may be useful to you. Good luck.

Hi Impulse,
Thank you for taking the time to read and comment on my script.
I wanted to clear up the questions you had... The first time Nick is peeping into a house, he is looking at someone else, not Carrie. Carrie caught his eye though. That's why he got her address and key, and asked Mike about love, saying that someone new always catches his eye.
I wanted to show Sean killing himself. I thought that was fun. He deserved it, and it showed why Tom was so pissed. Sean was his little brother. She turned her back on him, filed for divorce, and he killed himself.
I like Aunt Elaine, too. She's a carbon copy of my mother.
Thanks again for taking the time out to read it. I appreciate it. I'll be doing some more work on it soon.

Hello Mr.Z,
You've brought up things I've overlooked, too.I'm going to go back over the script in a few days, and fix the lines where I've done that with the character's name, and the "ing" where I find them.
I did use the jogger as another suspect. For his sweats with the hood. Tom didn't have it on at first. When he ran off from the side of Carrie's house, Frank was jogging down the road.

I did do another rewrite on this after I posted it here.There were spelling errors and errors in the slug lines. I'm going to let it sit for a few days, see what others have to say about it, then open it up again with a fresh set of eyes.

Thank you for taking the time to read and comment on this script. I really appreciate it.

Cindy
  

Thanks for clearing up my questions. Maybe I should wait until I'm completely awake before I start reading.

That's okay. I do it, too. Read with my morning coffee.

Cindy, I haven't read anyone else's reviews of this, so I might be repeating some things.

SPOILER SPACE

I had big problems with Carrie.  She was very similar to the main character in Halloween Games (which isn't really a problem), only moreso.  I found her to be so naive, aloof, detached and stupid that I wanted to stab her myself.

Her husband is arrested for for raping a teenager and she hardly bats an eye.  My wife reacts worse when I bounce a check.  He's comvicted and later hangs himself in his cell and that's the end of him.  She completely forgets about him.

I don't understand her attraction with Nick.  Maybe I'm being a snob...but a parking valet?  And I got the impression that he's a very sleezy-looking guy.

And why does she set mouse traps to catch her peeping tom?  Why wouldn't she call the police.  What's with the Scoobie Doo method of catching the bad guy?

I suspected right away that Tom was the bad guy.  His knife throwing display was just an obvious flag.  Not including him in the story until the very end just drew that much attention to him for me.  I would suggest you had more red herrings to the story to draw any attention away from him.

I noticed this with Halloween Games, first, but you like to use a lot of very short scenes (only a couple of lines each) in your scripts.  It just drags the story out, doing this.  Eliminate these little things will shorten the story considerably.

Another thing you like to do (IMHO), is you tend to add one more line of dialogue than you have to.  It's almost as if you don't know where to end the scene.

Very often, you describe things in ways that cannot be filmed by the camera.  You mention what's going on in people's heads and how they feel.  Don't write that someone is scared and nervous.  Show the person shaking as he picks up a cup and saucer.

I wish I could be more positive about this story, Cindy, but I had seroious problems with Carrie and the story didn't do anything for me.


Phil

Aw Phil,
Sorry you didn't like the script. That's all right though. You're being honest.

I wrote this script for two different reasons. One, of course, was to warn women about something that could happen with a valet... Him getting into her personal information...
The other reason... Well, the peeping tom scared me, haunts me actually, and I thought it would be scary to others as well.
I was actually the one with the peeping tom, and the guy did kill my dog. The next night, I moved a chair right in front of my open door and sat there waiting for the guy with an ax. I had had enough.  Mouse traps were me, too. In fact, I'm a lot like Carrie, well in my younger days; I've wised up a lot.
I have done a rewrite on this one. I don't plan on posting it though.

Cindy

Can you explain the mouse traps to me.  I'm really at a loss here.


Phil

So they would go off and scare the peeping tom when he steps on them outside the window... maybe scare him away.

I'm not trying to knock you or anything, Cindy.  I'm just trying to see the logic of this.  Why not the cops?  Or motion sensitive lighting for outside the house?


Phil

I actually thought the mousetraps were a clever touch and something that a smart, frightened girl might actually do --

-- letting the guy know that she knows about him.

It's better than the cops, I think.  What the heck are they gonna do?  

Exactly, bert. In fact, the cops didn't do a whole lot of anything in this story. Once Carrie called the cops about the peeping tom, all the cop did was say "well, he's gone," and leaves. I mean, the cop couldn't even kill Tom at the end!!

The mousetrap thing sounds like something you see in a comedy.  Maybe load them with ping pong balls so they go flying through the air once the traps are struck.


Phil