Fiber by Konish Dutta - Short, Drama - It's the 1950's and Natalie is facing the usual teenage pains: a robot who acts human, a father who's scared of emotions, and a mother who decided to hang herself. 15 pages - pdf, format 8)

Konish,

I just read your script because the title, premise and logline was very intriguing, but I gotta be honest and say it didn't work for me personally.   On a positive note I can see you have a pretty deep vision here but it needs clarification.   I made a few notes of some technical errors.

Problems on page 3) bert tightens his face   ...that sounds odd.
And when Natalie walks in and sees mother dead  .....shouldn't there be a reaction from Natalie?  You could just say "Natalie walks in and sees jer mother hagnging dead from a rope".  She screams...or stands mortified...

In between the radio announcer's dialogue you have "credits roll".  ????
INT. THEATER -- 4 YEARS LATER ???  should be -- NIGHT, do 4 years later as a SUPER.

Page 4)  TYLER
My hour is almost to come, when I to
sulphurous and tormenting flames...  What's wrong here? is a word mssing?

NATALIE
Not in the budget, diva. Try it again. <---funny stuff

Page 5) Tyler smiles and walks over to a HUMAN who has his eyes
closed and is plugged into an electrical socket. Tyler
pulls the plug and plays with Human’s neck <---what am I missing here? is Human a robot?  Need clarification.  Also for Jenn.  I rewrote it below.

INT. HOUSE -- LIVING ROOM -- DAY
Natalie walks into the house. JENN (40s) a robot, vacuums the
floor.

Page 6) INT. HOUSE -- NATALIE’S BEDROOM -- DAY
BEGIN FANTASY  

Should just be: INT.  NATALIE'S BEDROOM - DAY - FANTASY

I liked the script up to this point but now it's just getting downright confusing.

Page 7) INT. KITCHEN -- DAY -- BLACK AND WHITE <---not good.
A WOMAN talks on the phone.  <---who is this? Age, description

INT. HOUSE -- LIVING ROOM -- EVENING
This is just a commercial playing on T.V. The woman
speaks. <---not good.  should be a commericial plays on TV or something like that.
WOMAN(on TV)<---need paranthetical
Now, I can enjoy life while my robot
cooks my food...

Pag 9) INT. HOUSE -- NATALIE’S ROOM -- DAY
BEGIN FANTASY<---not good again.

INT. THEATER <---need DAY or NIGHT

The interaction between Natalie and Jenn about makeup on pages 12 & 13, I don't get it.  I  appreciate you're trying to do something profound here, but there's no payoff.
page 14)  Bert sits down, thinking. <---try again.

Page 15)
Natalie smiles receiving the applause. She opens her
eyes. There’s nobody else there. <---Okay, Konish, what just happened here?  Was the whole thing a a delusion in her mind?  I'm not sure.  Need clarification.   Again,  I'll say you have a great premise here but it's, well...enough said.

Keep on keepin' on
Best regards.

Hi Konish,

I thought this was rather well written in spots and, at least for me, a little confusing in other spots.  

I liked the Natalie character.  I think you did a nice job from the get go of conveying that she was a precocious child who took her plays very seriously.  I also thought that the dialouge between Natalie and her actors was very good.

That said, although interested in the story, I was a little confused ultimately about what was going on in the end.  I mean I'm willing to accept the whole robot angle, but I guess I needed to know more about why the mother killed herself in the first place.  

I think you had a lot going on here.  A lot of it good.  Maybe the story needs to be a litle longer in order to tell the whole story.  Anyway, I thought it was a very interesting concept.  maybe just over my head.  Good luck.

Craig

Konish,

I agree with craiger in that you should spend a bit more time with the characters, honing them, and definitely explain the mother's motives.

Otherwise, I agree as well that it's very well written, and definitely emotion-provoking.  Maybe not good emotions, but emotions nonetheless, and that in itself is a good thing.

One thing that screenrider missed is in the opening you have Natalie standing on "stages"...

And like craiger I can go with the robot thing because I know some prototypes were built in the 50s; however I do have to nitpick at that a bit.  We've only in the last 2-3 years built a robot with the capability to walk up stairs (Asimo, a Japanese model, and I believe he's one of a kind), so if we buy your premise then we also have to buy into some sort of an alternate reality.

Just a little nitpick. I kind of liked this, and I'm not sure why? Or maybe I wished I didn't given the subject matter?

Good job - AJR

Sorry for the late response guys. I was out of town. Thank you so much for reading my script. All the "radio commercial" and 50's stuff I took out in my latest draft, and I fixed a lot of the problems pointed out. Thank you.

I felt like the 50's era didn't add anything to my script and was just there for the sake of being there.

The ending as of now is very rough. It exists only because I couldn't think of something. But I do like your idea of her trying to figure out why her mom committed suicide instead of just coming to grips with it. I think that could lead to more closure. If you guys have any ideas about the ending, I would love to hear them.

And yes, I did intend for this to be an alternate universe. I would love to post my latest draft. How do I do that on this website? I'm new here.

Hi konishdutta,

Just re-submit the revised draft and add a note to Don explaining that you have re-edited and wish the original script to be replaced with the newer version.

Craig

I have a newer draft up on the site. I submitted it a couple weeks ago, but it took time to put up. Anyway, it still has some errors because I submitted it before I fixed all the errors mentioned in this thread.

I would appreciate any comments. Here's what I'm trying to do with my next rewrite:

Give the audience more of a reason why the mother committed suicide
Give the robots more importance
Tie the ending together so that it has something to do with Bert, Natalie, Tyler, and Jenn. I feel like Tyler's character never really gets resolved.