Bond by Louise Lee Mei - Short, Drama - A chance meeting with a stranger changes perspective on the possibility of true love. 16 pages - pdf, format 8)

I think something's wrong with the link here.

This one opens up in another google link.

I read this one Louise. Not bad, some familiar plot devices, and could do with a few tweaks.

Happy to make suggestions if you're willing to participate on the boards. :)

First off Louise, that's a great location. As an Englishman who's been here for a few months, I love that coastline. But, did you mean Tamarama (I know there's no train station, though) instead of Turramurra? The latter is near Hornsby and later you choose Coogee, which would suggest it's the former intended?

Either way, this was an intoxicating script. Tom's pursuit of true love resulted in Belinda becoming collateral damage. That works as something we can all relate to. Was 'Vanilla Sky' an influence here? I am in love with that film with its many complexities and engaging look at love and its fragility - to me, those are features you explore here. Tom is so sure that he's met the love of his life and yet he is married to Belinda - does that mean he was emotionally switched off during their whole relationship?

In an audience's appreciation of the true love story it's often forgotten that the character who misses out is the character that should really be more identifiable to the majority watching (pessimistic I know).

In terms of the structure of the story, you have managed to get a lot in over the 16 pages and while not much happened as such, I felt very involved with what you were doing. In terms of improving it, I think you can clean up the Tom/Annabell exchanges. There was something a little rough and disjointed about them - partly the dialogue, but also due to the fact it felt too surreal. It needs some anchor in reality, despite the surreal nature of it.

All in all, this was a good script. It would be nice to hear your thoughts about it.

Lousie,

Congrats on finishing the script.
I'm not going into detail here if you're not a SS member, but I jot down a few thoughts.
First off, lose the Google link thing, I could not load page 11 at all. =p
This reads very novel like, we're all guilty of it when starting out.
You may want to read some pro scripts to get an idea of the craft.
It also seemed at time that English may not have been your native language.
Word repetition and syntax errors were fairly rampant.

That all being said, this is a pretty decent effort.
You tried to tell an interesting story over a few pages.
I didn't see the elderly couple coming at the end, good work there.

Read, review here and then rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.
Good luck with your craft and thanks for posting.

Regards,
E.D.