Shelter by Cupid Deloriane - Short, Drama - A family test a nuclear bunker. A bunker tests a family. 18 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hi Cupid,

A very predictable story, but basically well written.  The two biggest problems, as I see it, is the voluminous descriptions and the lack of any meaningful conflict.  After only a few pages in I started skipping past all the description and just read the dialogue.  Try this yourself and you'll find that you're able to understand what's going on in the story without having to slog through all those heavy paragraphs.  Think about trimming these down to the bare essentials.

Next, your log line implies that the family will be tested.  I expected this to be about conflict within a family.  Old grievances aired, secrets revealed, doubts about who is the real father of their daughter, and generally the stress of isolation bringing out the worst and best in these people.  The only tension I noticed was them getting tired of the boring food.  This isn't enough of a conflict to sustain interest for 19 pages.  You play on the tension of what's going on up above, but from the first "test" I knew what the outcome would be.  This is further telegraphed by the incoming radio signals.  The audience is going to be way ahead of the family on this one, so the final "twist" is going to be a let down unless there is something more to it that we haven't already anticipated.

I was also thinking that this could be a lot more filmable (at least on a low budget) if you just start it off with the family arriving in the bunker.  Even if you keep the opening scenes, you should be able to trim this down to a maximum of 10 pages without losing any of the current story beats.  With the only dramatic question of the story eventually being "What's going on up above?" you either have to cut the length down to match that limited external conflict, or ramp up the conflict within the family to provide some human drama.

Good luck, and thanks for sharing your work with us.

Cheers,
-RayB

Cupid? You using an alias Joe?

Kinda. It's a name I occasionally use on some writing. Just sounds good.

rjbelair - thanks for the feedback. The lengthy descriptions are because it was originally written as part of an application to a short film fund with the intention of directing it, so that's why there are some directions and long descriptions of scenes.

And that's also the reason why there isn't that much tension - it needed to be short, under twenty minutes. Originally I conceived the idea as something longer than that with the family getting tested more, really falling out with each other, hating their surroundings and also a bit with weird dreams Dominic has.

I'm considering re-writing it and making it longer, making it exactly how I wanted it.

Try for Coming Up next year, think the deadline for this year has already passed. They're after 30 minute dramas.