The Undone by Evan Davis - Short, Drama - A man struggles to navigate through life after the loss of his wife and child. 17 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hey Evan,
I’ve been mulling this one over for a bit and here’s what I’ve come up with:
-     Not a good idea to start off with a character waking up. It turns off readers who have read the same thing a hundred times before.
-     Re-write the dream, its little clunky like this section: A POLICE OFFICER AND HIS NEIGHBOR MADISON STARE AT HIM UNCOMFORTABLY. HE SHUTS THE DOOR IN SHOCK. It reads weird. We don’t know why he is shocked or why he doesn’t say anything to them.
-     You don’t need to have the dream in all caps either.
-     NICK
(Meeting Adam and clasping hands, as they start walking
towards the restaurant)
It’s nice to meet you.  I hope you haven’t been waiting here to long.
Change the Parenthetical to an action block.
-     I think you missed a character tittle on page 14 after Harvey’s room is revealed.
-     The ending feels too obvious. Like Harvey is only there to reveal that Adam is losing his mind. There should be more meaning for him to come around like him helping Adam to get better. It could be interesting if instead of Harvey you have Luke still alive in Adam’s mind and showing a story about a father helping his son through the grieving process but in reality he is helping himself.
-     Which leads to the ending. It just feels too melodramatic to have Adam kill himself. It would work better with the story ending with Adam calling out to Madison for help. Grief is an interesting theme and it’s just too easy to have your character end it all. It feels like nobody’s learned anything.
Keep working on it. There’s a good story here. Just don’t fall into the story lines you’ve seen a hundred times before.

Logan,
Thanks for the feedback.  I'm going to work this one over a bit and I'll take into consideration your suggestions.

I know you don't care much for the ending, I've heard that a lot from others who I have had read this.  Here's my thoughts:  Harvey is there to Nick get better, the problem arises when Madison discovers that Harvey isn't real and throws that out the window.  Nick can't handle the loss of his wife and child which makes this loss just adding on top of it, I mean after all it is someone whom he was really connected to.  Which is why he resorts to the same old routine, and this time succeeds.  I understand people don't like that its not a happy ending, I get that.   But as someone who had a step-brother commit suicide I know that not everything is a happy ending and people who struggle with their personal demons do sometimes succeed.  Something I may need to put more emphasis on is the looking back and seeing all of the clues that got us here.  That's something I know happens when someone commits suicide immediately the people around them begin to recognize that they missed "obvious" clues that in reality they only recognize in hindsight.  And that's the lesson that is meant to be learned from this - the clues were there we just didn't realize it until it was too late - so that's something I need to work on showing more in the rewrite.

Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it a lot!

From Evan,

" He told me that he had never been to the site before and someone suggested that he [the producer] check it out.  This was my first time around so I didn't know what to expect or really how to respond.  I'm happy with how everything worked out.  They are going to begin filming at the end of February and will be submitting it to their first film festival about 3 months after that. "

Congrats Evan!

Thank you so much!

Super duper congrats EvanD!!!! :)

Inspiring news, congrats Evan!

Great news indeed!

Thanks Everyone!

Hey everyone I just wanted to share the trailer for Undone.  It hits it's first film festival this month.

I'm sorry I'm not tech savy enough to know how to do this any other way so here is a link to the video on FB.

https://www.facebook.com/joshua.briscoe.16/posts/1050184131740556?comment_id=1050470735045229&notif_t=mentions_comment&notif_id=1462228419437684

Wow.. Compelling trailer, I certainly want to see it...Looks well filmed.

Congrats!!

Kudos

Richard

Nice job!

Thanks everyone! I haven't seen the completed version yet, but from what I saw from being on set and then this it looks pretty good.

Congrats, man.

Trailer looks decent!