The Light by Michel J. Duthin (michel) - Short, Fantasy - In a (near?) dark future, the last family in the country waits for the light to come... - pdf, format 8)

I liked the way this one started, but it went down hill after the first few pages. There are a lot of typos throughout.

Page 4- Marianne nods to Peter. He nods. She gets up.- Isn't she blind? How does she see him nod? Unless you mean Louise.

Page 5- You mix action with Peter's dialog.

Characters are decent, as is the dialog.

The end is what really killed this for me. Frankly, it was kinda stupid and random. Better luck next time.

4/10

~Zack~

Oh boy...

Where to begin...where to begin?

Sorry to say this, but this script is literally littered with mistakes of every kind, on every page...typos, grammatical errors, awkward phrasing, poor writing, action lines mixed in with dialogue, incorrect labeling of character dialogue, silly plot/story...

Really can't come up with any positives here, other than you produced a script that met the challenge for the most part.

I really don't want to come across as mean here, but you really need to work on your writing.  Read more scripts.  See what works and what doesn't...and why.  Apply what you learn to your own writing.  Everybody has to start somewhere.  Good luck.

Congrats on finishng a script for the OWC!

So your script has problems.

Read scripts. Read reviews. Both Zack and Dreamscale are respected members here. Follow their advice. It'll help a lot.

Gary

Right off, you forget to give us an age for Louise.  I will chalk that up to time constraints, but annoying nevertheless.  And description scooped up into the dialogue in spots.  Misspellings scattered about.  You did not proof this very well.  The time constraints can only forgive so much.

And for such a decent set-up, I am afraid this story left me underwhelmed.

I am left wondering where this story went wrong.  The abandoned family, the ominous knock on the door -- it's all quite good -- but after that, it is like your imagination suddenly ran out of gas.

Mixing in the good and bad, this one is a solid C.

I thought this was average.

Didn't really dislike anything but also nothing really stood out to me as memorable.  Typos and technical miscues, but what really lacked for me here was, well, something to remember it by.  Definitely an intriguing build up and a pretty torn family, and even going into the final climax there's hope that something enlightening is going to happen...but it doesn't.

Not bad, not great.  Just average.

Greg

The opening is very confusing.

A couple of examples:

1) "On her back is PETER (55). Bold, scarred, and two missing
fingers..."

I thought Peter was literally on her back. He didn't do or say anything, before you introduced him to indicate that he was in disagreement with her. Then you, quickly, in a subsequent paragraph, tell us again that Peter is missing fingers. This is redudant.

2) "In the semi darkness, a young woman hums quietly a song.
MARIANNE is blind. Her blond hair falls down on her elbows."

This is awkward --- Maybe, "A young woman, MARIANNE, hums.

And as Bert said, it'd be nice to know how old Lousie is as well as Marianne. Given the constraints of the challenge, we know they're adults. Still, It'd be nice to know her age relative to your other character's ages.

I think you did a good job setting tone. Your discriptive writing is good, if a little sloppy. Just a few changes here and there and it'd be fine.

I like that you opened with a lit candle and then closed with this same candle. It brought it all together nicely.

A decent sci-fi set up, but ruined by poor execution.  I think this would have worked better if you had set this in some near future post-apocalypse with characters we could relate to instead of some strange world where the people tend to talk like Yoda.

PETER
I'm sorry Mother.

I think you meant Thomas there.  A few mistakes are understandable when you have a time constraint, but this one just had way too many.

I thought this one started out pretty good. I didn't even get bugged by all the typos and other errors. I had this post-apocalyptic vision of what was going on. The movie The Road even flashed in the back of my mind a couple of times, but then you ruined it IMHO by have the Dark Lord appear. Anything would have been better than that...even zombies.

Not bad, just a bad ending which is fixable.  :)

Betrayal.  Another dark subject worthy of writing about.   Unfortunately for me, the story had holes.  Needed a little more explanation.  I dunno, maybe I missed the point.   On a positive note I appreciate the effort of attempting to do something different and out of the norm.

I thought this was gonna be a vampire short, instead dark lord. Who's knocking on every door himself to own the country. Why did he need their son to go with him anyways? couldn't he just find out where they are and use his magic wand to blow open the door?

I'm sorry, typos are expected in the OWC but some of yours are unforgivable. I can't see how you even proof read this one time. Too much action for the challenge too IMO. Then again, guilty of that meself.

Don't drink and write...

James

Not bad, I can visually picture what was going on in my head for the entire script, but I'd want some more explanation about the Dark Lord. Like what are his goals, what does he want, etc. I assume he doesn't just want the whole country. You still have four pages to expand the story.

The suspense is very good when Thomas knocks on the door. Wish you could give us the approximate age of Marianne and Thomas.

I think it kinda fits the theme, it has a dark tone but the story is a bit too straightforward. Wish it can be more layered and complex, instead of having every character giving us clues about Thomas and the Dark Lord.

Overall, it's a good job.

Man, this had all the ingredients for a really neat script: a post apocalyptic future, survivors huddled in their cottage(a very rustic, reminisce of Transyvanians fearing the coming night). Even the title was cool, hinting at a light/dark confrontation.

For most of the script it was good but, as evryone has pointed out, the ending was almost anti-climatic. Perhaps the writer was running out of time, or the initial inspiration had run dry.
Formatting was good, and the wrting style ok. a re-write will bring about a much stronger story.

This one was equal parts interesting and confusing for me.

jwent, to answer your question about why the Dark Lord needed Thomas, the author set that up pretty nicely with an homage to the vampire movies, where evil cannot strike you unless you invite it into your home. So he needed Thomas in order to gain entry.

Others have pointed out mistakes - I would have let some of these go with the understanding that this is a OWC, but there are too many. Two of the more glaring ones for me are in Louise's dialogue where she says "Who's there?!" And also says "No answer!", which I believe you meant to be description, and the part where Marianne stares at Peter (she's blind).

I guess the issue I have with this is the one I have with all "twist ending shorts" - that it's less about the journey and all about the destination. We run crash bang to the ending because we know that's where the answer is (i.e., why is there no light? And what will happen to change it?), and we almost don't care about the setup.

It's the author's job to make us care about Louise, Marianne and Peter. Otherwise I don't care who gets their head chopped off or roasted alive.

SPOILERS

Once the name was mentioned, I knew where this story was going in. This was very much inspired by Harry Potter.

I think you had too many characters for this type of short. This is something I learned previously before.

Also, I think you should have explained a bit more of the situation since the end seems to come out of nowhere.  

Good effort though.

I liked the story, but I thought the execution needed work.  The descriptions were shallow and rushed, IMHO.

Quoted Text On her back is PETER

and

Quoted Text MARIANNE is blind

were both very awkward.  I didn't understand what Peter was doing.  And you need you describe Marianne a little better.  How do we know she is blind?  Are her eyes a dull white?  Does she wear dark glasses and carry a white cane?

The characters can be better described.  You're introducing a world that we're not familiar with.  Saying that Jane has greasy hair is not enough.  The same goes with Marianne's intro as behind blind with blonde hair.  What are they wearing?  What remnants of the old world are left in this world?

I think this story could be really good if you fixed it up.  Develop the characters and throw us some bones about this world you created.  You don't have to show the world, per se.  Just gives us hints in passing.


Phil

Well this definitely takes out the award for most errors. Dozens of them throughout, did you even read this before submitting it? On the first page, who is Jane? Did you mean Lousie? Sorry but this was incredibly sloppy writing.

What happened to the Oracle? You gave mention to him as being crazy and sick, and then he was not brought up again or seen at all. If they are the only ones left then who is this Orcale guy?

Why did it take 3 years for Thomas to come back with the Dark Lord? What was the purpose of your story? It was set up nicely as a sort of suspense/thriller and then descended into some sort of cartoonish horror that made little sense.

Sorry but I don't have much positive to say about this one.

Cheers,
Tim.

Too the writer...

Another sci-fi.  Not bad even with a few typos.  Your ending I thought you came up a little short.  You had enough suspense in this one which was good but I felt something was missing here.

I can't put my finger on it yet.

Congrats though

Ghostwriter

That was depressing. I believe the message is "There is no hope." You had a couple of typos here and there that messed with my head until I deciphered them. With Marianne, you have to find a way to show she is blind. The audience isn't reading your script to know this.

Other than the Dark Lord, I don't quite now what the outside danger is. Why was the house boarded up? They weren't exactly concealed since they had a fire going. A little more explanation over what they're supposedly defending themselves from would help immensely in understanding why things are going on.

It just boiled down to a piece of a larger story that didn't really make a lot of sense in this context. Needs work, and you could probably expand quite a bit if you wanted to.

Michel,

This showed promise story wise but was derailed by a need to be proofed and a finale that felt contrived.

“As Louise and Peter starts to eat, Marian eats where she was sitting before.”

I don’t get this description. Should be “start,” not “starts.” But what’s the deal with Marian? It’s Marian in the description and Marianne in dialogue. And when did she move?

You get Marianne and Louise mixed up.

Peter speaks twice in a row with nothing between.

Thomas says, “Please, come in.”

You keep getting the names of your characters mixed up.

There were some good descriptions but also some clunky ones. The flow was choppy in places.

The story was actually pretty good up until the end. It had its moments. It felt like it was headed toward the vampire direction and then just sort of catapulted itself over the shark.

I suspect the deadline hurt this one. With more time spent on it, it could be reworked into a really cool little script. :)


Breanne

It's been on my lilly list to investigate some of February's OWCs and one of the first things I look at is the title. Does it catch me? Yours did and you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to find out this one was written by you, Michel.

The first thing that struck me was the cinematic feel with the light from the flame in the darkness. Things like the boarded up windows and Peter, busy with his gun and ammunition.

I was able to feel the fact that they were afraid of something and their holing up against it. Locking themselves away. When Louise says, "You'll have to go out one day", I felt like her words were just so very real in so many respects.

It feels to me like these people are in this "situation" of which we don't have a background of, (of which many people here already given criticism) but I think you could remedy that by having "the something" that they're afraid of be the unknown.

Please forgive me as I go off now on how I'm seeing this, but these are my feelings.

I feel that this is more of a sub-conscious piece with hidden brilliance that no one else is getting even though some of it is as clear as day.

For instance:

The element of darkness is covered from the very beginning wherein we participate in the slow fade in with the candle. The daughter, Marianne, is blind. Well, she is. I guess there's a lot of ways to write that differently to show it, but hey, if an actor or actress can't "get with that", then they can't and whatcha gonna do? Do you want to show more in that regard? Then go ahead, but I certainly wouldn't gripe about writing "She's blind" and let other brilliant people come up with how they want to show her sitting in her blindness. "She's blind." Heck, it's better than writing "The brown dirt". Duh, most dirt is a shade of brown, unless it's red, but that's another story.  ;D

What I'm getting at here is that IMHO, there's nothing wrong with writing it short at times. Just plain. That's what you did here and it was good enough for me. I pictured a girl sitting there without the advantage of sight.

Anyways, the idea of blindness and darkness come together as they typically do. What you might like to do is examine Marianne's blindness and how she might actually become a main character in this. After all, she's inside of darkness already, she wouldn't be afraid of what she's used to. You know what I mean?

Wouldn't she be rife with all kinds of internal feelings and manifestations that "the sighted" would never have had the pleasure to know? And wouldn't she have these perceptions due to the darkness? And thus, wouldn't the darkness have a special and wonderful place and purpose from her unique perspective?

I'm speaking Kabbalistically, which I spell with a "K", and I do believe there is a very important difference between the "c" spelling and the "k" spelling, but I'm not going to claim for sure at this point.

Anyways, this brings me to the following on page 4:

All around the front door are painted with blood cabalistic
signs.

This is as bad as me when I've written Kabbalistic attributive worlds and words that Rumley, in THE MAGIC OF LETTERS studies, but a good percentage of the people on the planet drop their jaws with a WTF because I haven't given enough for them to chew on first.

So the questions are:

What do the signs look like?

Where is "all around"? On the door posts? Passover perhaps?

What blood was used to paint the signs? The blood of a goat?

**Note that most of the criticisms above mine have to do with the lack of supplying context to what is currently happening. Again, as I said before, you might remedy this by clearly defining their fear as being the fear of the unknown.

Regarding the use of the name, The Dark Lord. I definitely thought of Harry Potter, but I really can't think of any other name that I would call an overseer of darkness than Dark Lord. I guess due to the fact that everyone will be thinking Harry Potter, you'll have to come up with something different maybe.  ;D

But still, The Dark Lord is The Dark Lord. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it. Whatcha gonna do?

This brings me to the conclusion of your story and the conclusion of my lilly review:

I feel that ending this story on the note you did, doesn't give credit to The Creator who in fact, has everything worked out just fine and proper.  ;D Even though we're currently blind to the fact. Double  ;D ;D ;D Oh, that was a triplet. Good.

Seriously though. In the end, we've got The Dark Lord coming in with Thomas and killing everyone including Thomas, who had moved into working with TDL for whatever reason. He's probably like us. Gets into all kinds of shit because he "wants stuff". Stuff that TDL promises, but all of TDL's promises are false promises and we all know where that leads...

But still, we're faced with "Why?" Why this senseless slaughter? And what does TDL get from it? The poor shmuck's left all alone. The lilly Dark Lord had nobody to play with. I'm starting to feel sorry for him.  ;D He has absolutely nothing. He's completely alive. Completely alone. And yes, completely in the dark.

Can anyone help that dude?

Michel, I think this is a promising piece that you might have fun with in the future.

Sandra

Hello Michel,

I've read the rewrite you sent.

The main problem I see is that you've tried in the rewrite to explain too much later on and integrate elements that kind of come out of the blue, but don't quite mesh.

For instance, the vampire stuff should be at least hinted at. I gather that these people/this vampire family was the last left in some kind of guerrilla warfare or something like that.

It feels to me like you left the realm of fantasy, which I felt in the first write and went into sci-fi more with the NBC white suite and gas mask stuff . There, I felt that kind of actiony feel, but it didn't jive for me whereas the mood you had going in the first version was, (though it had its problems) consistent.

My opinion is that you stick with the surrealistic vibe and don't try and explain everything. Use the thought provoking elements to invoke the feeling that this poor family must feel.

Perhaps just state plainly at the beginning what they're afraid of and what happened.

Might you show Marianne singing a song yearning for the time before...

And you could incorporate what went before into the lyrics. It seems plausible to me that Marianne would use song and music as an outlet since she's blind.

Anyways, here's a few notes:

>Lighted by high flames from the fireplace

and

>Lighted by the candle on the table

I'll toss this out as a try:

JANE (51), long greasy red hair, cooks a stew in a large cauldron. The fire in the hearth illuminates her face.

Behind her is PETER (55). Bold and scarred, he pours lead
and powder in handmade cartridges.

His face is shadowed somewhat by the darkness of his corner while the candle flickers in protest as he uses it to light a smoke, then exhales in a kind of morbid disgust.

This:

>LOUISE
It has to be someone somewhere.

Should be

There has to be someone! Somewhere!

Here:

MARIANNE
Do you think he's still alive? I
mean, they were so many young
men Like him who died during
that war.

Should be

I mean, there...

Instead of

MARIANNE
He's my brother!

I think she'd say

It's him! It's Thomas!

Here:

THOMAS
Please, come in.

Should be Peter saying this.

Here:

THOMAS
No!!! She's my twin sister!!!
She's symptom-free carrier too!
Just like me!

The dialogue is feels too contrived there.

So yes, Michel, what I'd try and do is go for the psychological aspects and do some explorations to figure out what this story is telling you. Try and explore it through the characters. I truly believe this is the answer.

Whenever we try and hammer a plot or reasoning into something we write, it just won't work and fit. Not unless it comes first through character. At least that's my philosophy and although I have trouble getting it right, and continue to fail in what I want to accomplish, I know it's the most important thing to consider.

I hope this helps,

Sandra