CAILLIIIX by <>+<> - Short - Triple Helix and pain resistance are under the scrutiny of a modern sorceress born from the lineage of Cailleach. She vows to rid the world of suffering, but first she needs a suitor, a difficult task when her beauty turns-- as does her world so strange.

A February 2011 One Week Challenge script. - pdf, format 8)

I like the name and the concept. I would have liked to see more of Bride's methods for pushing the pain threshold, perhaps with another client, first? Watching it end badly, and then we fear for Reese right off, thinking, "No, Reese. Don't do it. Don't get involved with this woman.

There's the other thing: If you would have shown Reese struggling with the idea of allowing herself to get pregnant first hand, it would have been more compelling I think.

And then too, who might be the father of Reese's child? Did Bride artificially inseminate her with Tri-Helix sperm?

I loved the ending because we don't really know whose point of view the whole thing was from? Was it Oui-Do and Bride/Cailllllex? Was it Ned? Were the whole kit and caboodle out to lunch?

I want pet Tara-Byte and Paddiwack.  ;D

Good for you for finishing the challenge.

Sandra

Good writing, very entertaining, of course my DNA will never be the same, but change can be good.

This is a hailstorm of language, words as tiny poems.  Lovely, but painful to my brain.  Samuel Beckett, that's what this reminds me of.  
Regarding its worth, it has plenty -- but if it's ever filmed you have to figure out a way to keep the tone of the information in the descriptions, the sidling up to the viewer with shared secrets.  

SPOILERS
Oh, worms in the corn doll.

Hi, <>+<>   ( - SPOILERS - ) Ya daft goblins!

How's Prince doing these days?  :)

So, REESE, 30, is surrogating a child for BRIDE, 16, who "Different enough to have three
miscarriages and each of the three fathers are death prone too?"?
And a thirty year old woman is okay with this?
Okay.

Turn off your (CONTINUED)/CONTINUED: feature.

Pg 5 - A long beat. Tah te-te Tah te-Tah te-ta Tah
I don't get it.

This story hops around a bit, THE FOUNTAIN style.

Gotta put parenthesis around your off screens: REESE  (O.S)
And two spaces away, too.

Okay!
THAT was a pretty fruity story!
In its own little weird way I liked it better than most of these entries.
Pretty sure it's fantastical weirdness rather than horror.
Visuals are nice. Story's a butchered nightmare - yet strangely coherent.

I liked it.
Thank you.

This could be more straight forward, I think. Also, there too many characters in this. I think it could be simplified with some of the characters gone.

The story is very good but it's a bit lost in all these details and characters.... At first there are two men who talk about Bride and explain to us what she is and how she comes back... -I think it's expositional, plus the characters don't really pay off. Then there are other two men... etc.

I also didn't understand few things in the script, not storywise but small things, that spoiled the read for me. For example all the roman letters throughout, including the title. Does it have to do with the myth? But I didn't study the myth before I started reading and I think I don't have to study all these myths to understand the stories here.
Or this:
IIII and HHHH, two vertical ladders on a white board.

CAILLIIIX * interesting premise * confused and stopped at page 5 * too many characters * baby in progress sign made me chuckle.

It's not bad for a OWC, the premise was really good. For the most part, the script is fine. I'm not 100% won over though. You were going good, but then you blink in the last few pages. Before then:

Quoted Text Oui-Do moves in, as IF there are lots of people around. For a moment, there are.

This is a contradiction. Either there is a crowd or there isn't. Even for a moment.


format off p7

But then comes the real downside to this otherwise well-done OWC.

Quoted Text A good spirit?

Inner being questions, telling not showing, the prose takes over. Just for a little bit. If it wasn't for this stuff, this would have been above average. But average is what it settles for.

-DjS

I'm glad it seems like some people got this because I had no idea what was going on.  I read this late last night and didn't get it but decided to try again - I was able to follow it a little better today but still was as lost as ever.  There's far too much going on here in too short a time with far too many characters.  

I counted 9 characters in here.  9 for a 10 page story!  

I commend you on obviously having the creative juices flowing and having a lot to tell, but for this challenge it was too much.  

Greg

I have absolutely no clue what this script is about.  The story just seemed to hit a lot of tangents with me nothing synced up anywhere.  About the only thing that sticks out for me was some badly written direction:

Quoted Text Bride rambles instructions.

Seriously?  Why describe a list of vocal commands as an action?  This should've been written as dialog.  If you didn't want us to know what the instructions are, you cut away from the scene before the cat's out of the bag.


Phil

It's hard work reading all these scripts sometimes. Each story has different characters, different writing styles, so when you're reading a bunch in a row, it can be work. This is the second story in the challenge I just don't have the brain capacity to read. The other was the Ding!Flash one.

It is not hard for me to suppose that a script that is complicated and technical, and is a great story that will make a super film, could be hard to read. So this script and the Ding!Flash one may be examples of that, great scripts that were just beyond my capacity.

I would suggest that one of the things making this hard for me was the sudden introduction of so many characters, and with very difficult names often too. I didn't have enough RAM to process.

I also am not sure if I can buy the third helix of DNA resulted from smoking opium. Not if this is going to be serious horror, or serious anything. I like the third helix idea if it can be transmitted genetically, you know, the way genes are.

It may also be the case that the writer is trying something very ambitious here, which I for one applaud and encourage. It will mean you will really have to master the craft to be effective, but I love complex ideas, so I hope you continue. I just hope you can make the story a little easier for people like me to follow.

Finally, though I couldn't follow everything, some of the character voices seemed interesting and distinct, so I think this will shine through in future work.

This one triple dog dares the reader to try and make sense of it and put it to film.
A rather unique but ultimately unenviable position for this OWC.
Scripts with an identity crisis can fool some into cobbling threads of logic.
However, this plays out like Inception got Sucker Punched by Splice.
I agree with the last line, it's definitely time for meds.
Take two eight balls and call me in the morning with a storyline.
Thank you for playing, I'll collect my consolation prize and be on my way.  

E.D.

I found this to be quite hard to follow, and if I'm honest I didn't understand it.  The writing style, though unique and eloquent, seemed more appropriate for a novel or short story rather than a script.  I think if this script could be written in simpler and more straight forward way, it could make for an interesting short film.

Well done though.  I felt your passion through your words and you're clearly a creative mind.

I hate to say it, but this one didn't do anything for me, except leave me a little confused.  I'm not sure if it was the story or the writing, but I found it hard to read.  The logline itself made me a little bewildered, but I suppose that's what made me curious to read this one in the first place.

There seems to be far too much going on, and the language you use is way too flowery for a screenplay.  However, I must commend you on getting a script finished in the one week deadline.  Keep reading, keep writing and good luck!

Your script is a bit like your logline. Extended and puzzling.

You could benefit from simplifying it a bit. Make it easy for dummies like me. Or not. Your choice really.

I know the idea of the third helix automatically would make the read hard to comprehend so cleaning this up in terms of characters, their motivations and descriptions could only help you.

You seem like a complicated person with complicated ideas. But because the idea is complicated means that the writing itself should be even leaner and crisp instead of flowery, which is what i thought this was.

I do think, however, that you should stick with this story and keep writing.

Native princess, native from where?

Some things are just puzzling.

"Strange these two 30s males are alone. A handsome
African, OUI-DO ALPHONSE, slurps his coffee. SVEN PALENS
pale and beany, looks horrified." - what is that supposed to mean?

- Lose the continueds.

Man the exposition train.

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

Man I had to keep reading in the hope that it would make some sense. I think I get that this lady after some troubling times and miscarriages lost her mind. If I'm wrong then I have no idea what this was about, but it was poetic in its own way.

I someone cut my long hair off I would defintely have some kind of reaction.  Even if Reese was afraid to say something, there could have at least been a facial expression.

Too much giving of information instead of showing.  This stuff you tell us in your narrative has to be shown.  If I was swatching the film, how would I see some of these things?  You have to write it that way.  

Bride counts twenty thousand dollars into Reese’s hand." - how do we know how much it is??  If it's important to the story she should count it out loud or say the amount.

"Strange these two 30s males are alone."   Why is is strange?  

"Oui-Do pulls a small version of the doll" - are we supposed to know that there is a larger version??  How can that be conveyed on screen?  You're telling us information again.

"IIII and HHHH, two vertical ladders on a white board." - I have no idea what this means.

"Indeed it is, a TRI-AL-EX painted as a GRAPEVINE. Ned’s seedy complaints are overcome by the NIGHTINGALES’ SONGS." - ????  Again, no idea what this means.

"DIED OCTOBER 31, 2011" - ???  No idea what this or the scene means.

Okay...I'm just lost.  There were some cool visuals in here, the ones I understood.  And I liked some of the creepiness but it just ended up confusing me.  

Pros

Original, trippy, weird, energetic. Like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on a mix of PCP, Crack and Military Grade LSD.

Cons

Unfocussed in the sense that it's hard to see the connection between different scenes at times, from one moment to the next and in terms of the story arc. Even towards the end new characters are being introduced...could do with picking just your core few that represent something in particular.

More to do with Enochian Sex Magick and the Qabbalah than Celtic Mythology...which sort of gives the game away as to who wrote it!

Still have a tendency to tell us what to think in the description, rather than showing us on screen.

I recognize this author and their unmistakable style -- and I find what I often find -- which is that I enjoy the individual scenes greater than the sum total.

These scenes are like the pieces of an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle, where the individual units are shimmery and fun -- and if you hold them to the light just so, you will often find a good bit of amusing wordplay.

From the curious plight of poor Pastor Ned and his tattoo, to the stolen braid woven into a corn doll, to the Bride's unusual pet, there is a great deal of playful imagination on display here.

But when you squish all those pieces together -- with pegs into holes that are not quite aligned -- the picture you get is confusing to the point where you are not sure what you are looking at, exactly.

I think there are too many characters here.  That is certainly part of the problem.  And I think the scope is a bit ambitious for the page count.

In their next outing, this author is encouraged to challenge themselves with a 2 or 3 character limit, and only a minimal number of locations.  I would love to see this clever wordplay applied to a fully coherent story.

I think it would really be something to see.

Hi.  There's a lot going on here, to be honest i had a hard time following the story, i didn't quite get it.  There's definitely a deep universe in here, every line seemed to introduce something new and strange, maybe too much to take in within the page limit.  
The setting confused me, i wasn't sure if this was setting in a sci-fi setting, or more fantasy,  
However, not understanding this did not prevent me from enjoying this, it was very fresh and creative, i would love to see how this would look on screen ( For some reason the movie Dune kept popping into my mind, hope that's not too far off the mark).
Very interested in checking out more of your work.
Leon

My dearest Sandra...the world would be a much less happy place without your writing, so please, never stop!

But, as I often tell you, I couldn't make it through all the way...not even close, actually.  No clue what's going on or why.  Your scenes don't seem to have anything in common...they jump around like wasted frogs in a pond.  So much crazy description that you're telling us, as opposed to showing us.

And...you've got yuor name on your PDF, but even if you didn't, I think it's fairly obvious who wrote this...you crazy girl, you!

Quoted from Dreamscale My dearest Sandra...the world would be a much less happy place without your writing, so please, never stop! But, as I often tell you, I couldn't make it through all the way...not even close, actually.  No clue what's going on or why.  Your scenes don't seem to have anything in common...they jump around like wasted frogs in a pond.  So much crazy description that you're telling us, as opposed to showing us. And...you've got yuor name on your PDF, but even if you didn't, I think it's fairly obvious who wrote this...you crazy girl, you!

Hello, Jeff. There are definitely quantum leaps going on that need to be put into a classical framework in order to be understood. But is it possible to create a unified theory between quantum and classical frameworks? I really don't know. Perhaps both are mutually exclusive and only true by definition of the observer, as in the case of that quantum slit experiment.

Vielen dunk to you and to everyone who commented.

Sandra

I love the quantum slit experiment, especially the part when they remove the devices that watch the photons or electrons to see which slit the go through...and it changes the behavior! Freaky stuff.

Quoted from leitskev I love the quantum slit experiment, especially the part when they remove the devices that watch the photons or electrons to see which slit the go through...and it changes the behavior! Freaky stuff.

Me too. I think, given the right education, planted in the right place, I would have made a good mathematician/scientist, but ah, well...

Must make do with stupidity, sometimes. Things have to even up.  ;D

I get excited about a lot of things. Like a kid in a great big universal candy store. The Candy Man, (Okay isn't he a bad guy in some horror movie that I haven't seen?) arouses my attention. Bless his heart. But I'd like to kill him, even still.

Sandra

Quoted from Sandra Elstree. I get excited about a lot of things. Like a kid in a great big universal candy store. The Candy Man, (Okay isn't he a bad guy in some horror movie that I haven't seen?) arouses my attention. Bless his heart. But I'd like to kill him, even still. Sandra

I seen all three. I think he's the only horror icon not planned for remake/reboot yet, but that's today. Next week, I wouldn't know...

Quoted from DarrenJamesSeeley I seen all three. I think he's the only horror icon not planned for remake/reboot yet, but that's today. Next week, I wouldn't know...

Thanks DJS! Ok, now I'm learning what kind of death the Candy Man met with. How can I want to kill him? I often do have sympathy for the D-vil.

Sandra

Quoted from Sandra Elstree. I often do have sympathy for the D-vil.

He's got none for you.

John 10:10

Quoted from screenrider He's got none for you. John 10:10

Maybe not. He made me as I am and I must believe in His Will.

I'll have to look up John 10:10 My memory doesn't always serve.

There is None Else Beside Him...

In other words, thou shalt have no other gods before thee. To think there is someone, a devil, who overpowers G-d in any way, is a false perception:

It is written,

There is None else besides Him. This means that there is no other force in the world that has the ability to do anything against Him. And what man sees, that there are things in the world that deny the Higher Household, the reason is that this is His Will.

And it is deemed a correction, called "the left rejects and the right adducts," meaning that which the left rejects is considered correction. This means that there are things in the world, which, to begin with, aim to divert a person from the right way, and by which he is rejected from Sanctity.

And the benefit from the rejections is that through them a person receives a need and a complete desire for the Creator to help him, since he sees that otherwise he is lost.

**

Judgment is left for the Self. For who knows the footsteps? The one that traveled them,  the one who wore the shoes, the experience for good or bad is the work of G-d. Can I argue with His choice to create evil? I think not.

Sandra

I have no idea what I just read.  I didn't even understand the log in.  Some of the scenes were interesting, but I could not follow the story at all.  The fact that you were still introducing characters on the 7th or 8th page tells me that this needs to be a longer piece to fully and properly address all of the ideas that you're story wants to raise and develop.

This does read more like a short story than a screenplay however.  This is due to some overly descriptive passages and unfilmable elements.  I understand that this script is trying to be weird and make its audience think, but from a director/producer's standpoint, a script needs to read like a blueprint in order to make sense enough to translate to the screen.

Hi Sandra,

This is the last of my owed reads. Meh, i needed a clear head for this. Your writing is sound and enjoyable. Even your dialogue is quite good. I agree with others that this has too many characters.

The way it ended, leaved me to believe thar Bride was looney and imagined all of this for some reason. Reese was alive again, unless the ending is a flashback that takes place before this script even begins. If thats the case, I didn't understand it.

I would've liked to seen a more clear goal for the reason Bride was paying Reese to have her baby. It eluded me. I think this could be a nice creepy script if it were more evident. As it sits, and i see I'm not the only one here, Its difficult to grasp.

Anyway, I enjoy your writing. The descriptions were vivid.

Good job writing a script in a week...

James

Quoted from jwent6688 Hi Sandra, The way it ended, leaved me to believe thar Bride was looney and imagined all of this for some reason. Reese was alive again, unless the ending is a flashback that takes place before this script even begins. If thats the case, I didn't understand it. I would've liked to seen a more clear goal for the reason Bride was paying Reese to have her baby. It eluded me. I think this could be a nice creepy script if it were more evident. As it sits, and i see I'm not the only one here, Its difficult to grasp. James

I agree, James. I was writing backwards with this one. (With everyone. I always write backwards.) It had its evolution with only three characters, and I took it in different directions because I started imagining different POVs and it was all melting together.

The clarity for Bride paying Reese is not terribly evident. I wish it were, but it's much too hidden in dialogue with mentions of (Did I even mention in this version? Have to read it again to find out.)  ;D That she was doing experiments, trying to push the bounds of pain tolerance. Using some whacked combination of magic, blood from her own Triple Helix DNA, (And how the hell do I put that in a ten pager? I'm nuts to try!)

I had considered petri dish stuff, but then too, I kept thinking of the Celtic story of Calleach and that factored into making Bride into quite the goddess, a bit of a damned goddess in many ways, despite her innate sensations of knowing bliss... that bliss, she desires to pass onto others, even if it means Hell in the process.

I know I'll just have to keep writing like Hell, revisiting it from different angles and we'll see what the cards have in store for this one. Maybe something, maybe nothing, but I'm glad I wrote it.

Thank you so much James, and to everyone who commented.

Sandra