What Is and What Isn't by Robert McCallum (bates) - Short, Drama - An elderly housewife anxiously awaits the return of her husband. Will she be waiting forever? 9 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hey Robert

I can't understand why you haven't got more reads for this one, I thought it was excellent.

SPOILERS!!!!



To start off with I didn't know what you were doing with the V.O but I kinda guessed that you had something planned and it wasn't a mistake. I don't know if you need to mark it as a V.O because she is physically there -- fair enough it's a different there -- it just seemed to make things a bit unclear when it wasn't really really important.

I thought your characterisation of Sandra was really good. A strong motive and she just seemed very real to me - like my Gran lol.

As far as I can see you have two twists here. The first one -- that he's dead I guessed in your logline. The second one, about her being in a mental hospital just kind of dawned on me during the final stages -- although, the V.O made me think something wasn't real about her surroundings.

A few things that bothered me;

You CAPITALISE alot lol I'm not that experienced so I'm not saying as fact, but as far as I know SOUNDS and CHARACTERS should be capitalised, but you were doing it for key emotions. Just kind of got a little annoying.

Also, you say things like 'She proceeds to...' I'd just say she does this or does that. Not begins or proceeds to do something. She either is doing something or she isn't.

Again I really, really like this. Hope you get more comments.

Ste

Ste, thanks for taking the time to read this. I appreciate all your comments.

I'm glad you liked this 'cause this is my first short and I had no idea how this would go over with other people. I just wanted to try my hand at a short and see if i could bring something to life in as little pages as possible.

Yeh, uh, as far as capitalising goes, yup... guilty. Lately i've been experimenting with different writing styles and this is one of those experiments. After re-reading over it, i too, found the capitalised words distracting and annoying. So this is something that i will rectify with a re-write.

If there's something I can read for you, then please, just let me know.

Again, thanks

Robert

No worries Robert.

If you were looking to trim it down any further then maybe look at the start. It's very well written but it could maybe be shortened by half a page or so.

If you wanna take a look at one of my scripts there's two links in my sig or you could wait for my soulshadows episode - should be posted next week sometime.

Good luck with the rewrite.

Ste

Hi Robert,

I thought to give it a try at your script. I really liked it. It's so great. I don't have a problem with the capitalized words, it's fine, i guess.

The story was very interesting, and the twists worked good. I don't know why i thought it that someone was dead, and i guessed it right.

My opinion is that you should try to trim the description, they were way too long sometimes and bothered at some points.

Nice job! I'll be looking for more.

Cheers
Nik

Hey Nik

Thanks for checking this out. I'm glad you enjoyed this and found it interesting.

Sometimes I do have the tendency to overwrite, so yeah, I could def trim some of the action descriptions down and make them a lot more tighter. I'll look into this.

In return, I'll start reading your short later and give you my thoughts on it.

Robert

Hey Robert.

Saw the good feedback you were getting and thought ide take a look at it.

SPOILERS!

First of all, i understand that you can trim down your descriptions a little but i like your use of description. From the old fashioned TV to the gradfather clock, it really helps you to picture what her surroundings are or what she thinks they are.

I must say, you got me with the twist. From the way she was waiting on her husband, I kinda expected him to be dead but the fact that she was in a mental hospital really stumped me, didn't see that coming so good job with that.

I also thought that maybe she was dead and her husband wasn't home yet because he really didn't have anything to go home too but clearly I was way off, lol

I understand some people not liking the use of capatilizations on key emotions and I myself only capatilize sounds and characters but i didn't really have a problem with it...it's your writing style so you should stick with it.

Like Ste, the old woman reminds me of my gran. She has Alzheimers and cant remember that my grandad is dead so it made me think that that was what was happening to her in the script but, still, the mental hospital really worked for me.

I think the V.O's are really well done but I think you can cut them down and not use so much, as the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words and i feel that seeing her expression instead of hearing her saying what she feels would be better off but thats really the only negative about this script.

All in all, a really good short and the character of the old woman is really believable, keep up the good work.

Grant :)

Hey, Grant, thanks for reading.

The whole reason I put the V.O's in there, was because even though it does turn out that she's crazy and in a mental hospital, I didn't want to have her speak things out aloud.

I thought, If she's talking to herself(which is a sure sign of craziness imo) it might make it easier to figure out she is in fact crazy, so yeh, I used them cause I didn't want to give too much away before the end.

I'll look into this though.

I think I've read all your stuff over the last couple of months, but If there's anything you want me to check out, then let me know;)

Robert

Hey Robert

Sorry I haven't read the previous reviews so I might mention things already covered.

I wonder why you use --- or ... instead of using a comma?

There's aso a lot of capitalising throughout.

A white coat that talks!  I'd maybe change this to something else as it reads funny.

I was going to mention that it was strange that when Raymond shouted for help, it arrived from nowhere, being that he was outside Sandra's house but then I got to the end and got it.

I twigged what the ending was going to be, but not the location change which worked well.  I enjoyed this read, it was a nice little story and was well written (except for the things i've mentioned).

Allfy, thanks for the read!

Quoted from alffy Hey Robert I wonder why you use --- or ... instead of using a comma? There's aso a lot of capitalising throughout.

As I've said in a previous post, lately when writing, I've been experimenting with different styles and the use of --- and ... is something that came out of that. Guess using a comma would just make more sense, and look better.

Capitalising? yeh, definitley cutting down on that in future haha!

I'm glad you enjoyed this! Let me know what I can read in return and I'll get onto it asap!

Robert

Guess I should of read the other posts so I didn't mention things already covered...sorry lol.  As for reading one of mine, erm...you could look over my scarefest episode if you like, no rush though mate.

Ah ha you almost got me with this one. I didn't know what was going on and really thought her husband was at the pub.

But as soon as she opens the door and the man in white appears you could see the twist coming from a mile away.

I felt you may have a little bit to much description and could shave off a little bit. No need to have every second by second detail of action and a list of everything in room. It okay here as it is only a short but I reckon it would make a 120 page feature script a bit of a hard slog with all that detail.

Other then that a well written little script

tonkatough, thanks for the read.

Quoted from tonkatough Ah ha you almost got me with this one. I didn't know what was going on and really thought her husband was at the pub. But as soon as she opens the door and the man in white appears you could see the twist coming from a mile away.

Yeah, I've actually been thinking about this myself, and what I came up with is that... possibly as soon as she opens the door and Raymond appears, I'll have the location change immediately. So the end part would actually take place in the padded room.

I'll keep thinking about it!

Again, thanks for checking this out. If there's anything you want me to read, then just give me a shout!

Robert

Just stumbled onto this one and have a mixed reaction. The descriptions were good, I could imagine everything really well and I loved the use of the grandfather clock to show the passing of time. I also liked how her sliding into the door at the end set her up to be in the rocking position when the transformation of the room took place.

I found the story a little predictable though, I think it was obvious right when she found his cell phone that he was dead or non-existant. I'm trying to think of ways to make this less obvious, like having it plugged into the wall or sitting on a table by the door, to make it seem like he really does exist and just forgot his phone. It looks like nobody else was distracted by that though, so maybe I just read too much into the tagline.

Also, right when the white coats showed up outside her door it was obvious she was really in a mental institution. If you wind up revealing this sooner as you hinted in your last comment I think it may help. However, I didn't really like the shot of the white coats outside of her house talking, since she's imagining the house. I think it would've fit more with the reality of the situation if she merely overheard them outside talking about her rather than showing them outside of a make-believe house. I'm not sure if what I just wrote made sense...

Overall, a lot of good ideas and have no regrets reading this short, but those are just some thoughts on things that I would improve. Ignore as needed :)

bobtheballa,

Thanks for taking the time to check this out. I'm glad you liked the descriptions - this is something I've really been trying to improve on so nice to know it may be working lol.

Yeah, I now feel certain that the reveal should come sooner and this will be changed when I re-write this.

Robert

Hey, Robert!

I promised you I would read this one. Sorry this review is so late.

This is a nice little short. I think Sandra is a compelling character, one who is so deeply rooted in the past that her stubbornness is almost heartbreaking. The twist with her husband is predictable to some extent, but it works.

Some of your descriptions can be trimmed, but overall, everything is solid. I seem to recall other readers having issues with your pacing, but I didn't feel your story dragged just because of a few heavy descriptions. I read it in one sitting and really enjoyed it, despite its concluding punch to the gut.

Good job.