Faded by Gregory Thompson - Short, Thriller - A man learns that those who plan to kill him become ghosts who fade in and out. 17 pages - rtf, format 8)

Noticed that this had no review and I had some time to kill, so basically:

SPOILERS



It's not a bad little short. I wrote down things as I go along, so I'll summerize them below. As usual, this is only my opinion:

- I'd like to know the ages of the characters when you first introduce them. I wasn't sure if they were young or old.
- You don't need camera angles or fade outs (cut to:, fade out:, dissolve out). Leave that for a shooting script.
- A screenplay is meant to show us the movie in words. Things like "Mark doesn't know what to think" doesn't mean anything - you need to show us that Mark is thinking that.
- I would clean up the scenes leading into other scenes (Mark heads to the INT. LIVING ROOM, living room). It's redundant.
- The scene that Mark realizes that the movies are causing his hallucinations (or though he thinks) needs clarified. You can't tell us this, you need to show us this.
- I wasn't so keen on the dialogue between the bum and Mark. It seemed too natural, too flowing - especially under the circumstances.
- There were some continuiity issues in the house. Paul walks in and stabs Ellie, before dragging her to the sofa. Yet when Mark bursts in, he moves to other rooms before arriving at the living room. This wouldn't work as it seems the front door opens to the living room and Mark would have spotted Ellie's body right away.
- The ending confused me, so I think I mist the pay-off. Was the bum the guardian ghost? If so, did he do his job as a guardian? Why would the bum want him to stay for the police to arrive? What is his motivation to do so?


Apart from that, it was pretty decent. You're format is above average and the structure was pretty straightforward. I think it could go through another couple of re-writes to tighten up the story and the structure to a point where it can be a decent little read.

Stew

When the two ghosts follow him one is going to hurt him it's face gets clearer when he gets closer to hurt him. Original. A few spelling errors but we all have them. Nice formatting. The story was good. You could make this into a feature.

Dan