Repentance by Fausto Lucignani - Short, Drama, Inspirational - While walking the streets, a young, terminally ill prostitute experiences a spiritual event. 8 pages  - pdf, format

production: This is the story of Roma, a young prostitute affected by terminal breast cancer. Forced to walk the streets by Boris a pitiless pimp, one night she meets an elegant, middle aged man who offers her the way to deliverance. (Revised Script)

contest: This short inspirational drama has a low production cost with a high emotional impact.

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Not a bad effort here. My thoughts:

Quoted Text ELEGANT MAN Okay.

I think you need something other than the repeated okays. It is kind of blah vocabulary for an elegant man and in stark contrast to the dialogue later. Maybe ' "as you wish." or something.

Quoted Text ELEGANT MAN You have to repent of your sins and pray God.

pray to God

I don't think you need Man # 1 and Man # 2. I would go with a single pimp and maybe have a ominous conversation with Roma and the pimp in the car about her duties before she is released to the street.

Best of luck with this

Hi Fausto, I have to say I thought this was good! Interesting ideas at play.

I agree with Dave on this one regarding Man #1 and Man #2, the characters just seem to be kind of expositional and the fact that they don't have actual names tells me they're not very important. As Dave said, I would make it a single pimp, maybe a scene where Roma and him speak etc. It also means that if someone was every interested in filming this there's one less character to cast.

Also I feel like having something like breast cancer, or cancer of any kind for that matter, is very personal. Emotional. In my opinion I feel like Roma's reactions are unrealistic when the Elegant Man says she knows she has terminal breast cancer. This man is a stranger, a stranger whom she assumes is wanting to have sex with her. Wouldn't she be angry, more upset? Her reaction later on - "who are you?! Just tell me?!l" - I would have expected something like this earlier.

Good job though with this, I enjoyed it a lot :)

Curtis

E1 & AIK, first of all, thank you very much for your reading and suggestions! They make a lot of sense and I'll start working on rewriting immediately. I like the idea of one pimp....with a name.
To E1, I repeated "Okay" to emphasize that the Elegant Man did not really care about sex etc. he just wanted to be alone with Roma for her soul. But I see your point, "Okay" can be expressed in various ways.
I'm glad you liked the story.
Have a great week.
Fausto

Hi, Fausto, I thought this was excellent and read well. I have to agree with Dave, and Curtis, regarding man 1 and man 2. Also, I believe there is a typo.

(You're right, a few hundreds will pay
for the rent.)

Don't know if that should be HUNDRED?

Nice job

Gary

Gary,
thank you for your analysis. Regarding "hundred" or "hundreds" I believe that this is the rule "a few hundred dollars" or  "two hundred dollars" but "hundreds" in "a few hundreds."
I'll will eliminate the second man.
Thanks again.
My best,
Fausto

Some notes.

I think others have pointed out the opening and the two guys who do the info dump.  Doesn't seem to work.  Why not put the woman and pimp together before he drops her off at the corner?  Same or similar info.  If you can keep the malady vague, then the audience will follow along to find out what she has.

You might consider making the black man more difficult to suss out.  If he looks more like a John than a messiah, then you lead the audience down the wrong path until you do the reveal.  You might consider having her strip in order to symbolically show her putting away her sins.  And he can put her on her knees in front of him.  And he can lay hands on her head, and the audience is thinking oral sex, but it's not that.  It's absolution.

It's only then that you do the reveal.  He's here to save her--and all the rest of us--including the pimp.

Best
Richard

Hi Richard,
I made some changes to the script. I think it will be on the board soon. I made one pimp and added some dialogue between the pimp and Roma. I've also improved the messiah's dialogue.
Thank you very much for your valuable feedback.
My best,
Fausto