Escape by Nikki A Lee - Short, Drama - In a society where a family's social status is controlled by a daughter's husband's good graces, a spirited, determined young Indian woman takes the greatest risk to help her sister escape a deadly arranged marriage.  37 pages - pdf, format 8)

Nikki,

Your logline is overwritten. I'd consider a rewrite. Opening scene confused me a bit.

You describe 2 young adults playing in a field who are these kind, wonderful,  sweet, innocent people and yet what are they doing?

Knife fighting! People don't practice knife fighting with MotherTheresa smiles on their faces. I don't buy it.

Then you get into vaginal cauterizing... ehh.

A lot of pages pass where I don't attach to anyone in this culture. As a matter of fact, this whole region of the world would be a place I'd stand to avoid. I guess I just don't get it.

Gl,

Tony

Hi Nikki,

There are a couple of grammar issues in the first page the sixth paragraph starts weird. (Khadim
bounce around as he continue...)

First page has me interested. The setting lends for some great landscape shots and a cool action scene.

Thank you for placing the pronunciation of the names in there. You should probably get rid of them if you want to send it to some producers but it’s nice for now.

Just a little too easy that Sanja can hear two women giving deposition about the husband.

Once again too easy to just show the husband giving evil smirks. It’s not realistic. His role as an antagonist should be revealed not just shown. I want to know who this person is.

Between pages 13 and 15 is too much dialogue about the same thing. It can be stripped down and still carry the same weight.

Khadim mentions that the city is very far away but the characters seem to be able to go to and from the city easily. Like how Khadim is there waiting for them after Sanja kills Jaipal. By what he said earlier he should take at least a few hours to make it there. Small things can fix this. Have the family stay in the city for a visit and Have Sanja come up with the plan a day before.

They should search the house. They don’t know if Ms. Katika is lying or not.

In all:

Action blocks are over written. It’s a problem everyone has. I still have to work on it. Over writing can turn off readers. Let them visualize for themselves.

The dialogue is a bit flat and on the surface. Too much explanation from the characters. Let the dialogue be brief and full of meaning.

The story is too big for only 30 pages. New characters in act 3 don’t help anything and the scenes feel pushed along instead of taking their time. I don’t feel connected with the characters if the scenes only last a minute.
There is a cool action story about family in here and if you give the story some tweaking and let some scenes breathe you could really have something.
Best,
Logan McDonald