Our Doors Are Always Open by Brian Lewis - Short, Horror - Louie, an aimless street-punk, seeks refuge from the rain in a mysterious church.  Unfortunately, God has little to do with this house of worship. 7 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Thanks for getting this up!

i liked it, dude. I like how you end it w/ Saul pulling up in front of the same church, and me knowing that he's in for a world of shit.

Some thoughts for your consideration:

since charlotte od's on pills, maybe have the pill bottle fall out of louise's backpack onto the floor -- setting up/ foreshadowing what's to come when he "wakes up." Also, maybe have louise talk to us/himself a little more before the action starts... one spot could be when he's washing himself off in the holy water. That would help break up some of the (although small) blocks of descriptions/action lines. Another note would be, Louie says he would rather sleep in the rain, but is that because of the overpowering stench wafting around him? Or is it because his Discman isn't working? I assume it's because of the smell, so you might-could reiterate that by using a (re:stench) before his dl.  I was a little confused  when you wrote "each swipe takes bigger and bigger chunks..." I think I know what you mean by swipe, but it's just a weird word choice to me, opposed to something like slash. When I think of the word "swipe", i think of swiping a credit card. MAybe that's what you mean, as the tornado of glass swirls around her, the broken shards of glass swipes at her body taking bigger and bigger...?

My biggest hang up would be this: Louise goes from apologizing to Charlotte to calling her a stupid bitch, very quickly -- and he says (before that) "what now Charlotte?" But how does he know Charlotte's behind what's going on at this point?  The reason is prolly there, so i'll just assume that i missed the connection, but did want to point that out to you.  

Anyway, fun read, thanks for posting :)

Horror's not my thing, but thought this was a good story. A few nit issues:

Quoted Text From his bag, he grabs a dry shirt, pulling it over his head. In front of him, another set of double doors. He opens them into- INT. CHAPEL

A real nit, but sense you are using a mini-slug, don't think you need the INT. Could simply be:

He opens them into the

CHAPEL

Quoted Text Pews line both sides of the walkway.

I would go with "aisle" rather than walkway.

Quoted Text CHARLOTTE Why? Because you left me?

Thought this line was a little too OTN and really don't think you need it.

Nice job.

Brian, this is pretty good.  Pretty intense, and pretty crazy, actually.

Some issues you need to pay attention to, as yuo seem to make these same mistakes in your scripts.

Keep your passages contained to a single thought, shot, action, or description. If the subject or POV changes, you need to start a new passage.

Keep your characters' names 100% constant in your prose.  Characters can call them as many different names as they want, but one you intro them as whatever you choose, don't change this.

Keep 'em coming, bro.  I like your ideas.

Thanks so much for the feedback guys!

Mr. Breakfast, I almost had Louie crush up a pill and snort it off the pew, but decided against it because I was trying to rush into the meat of the story.  I agree, I think something like that would have paid off with the reveal in the third act.

Eldave, hahahaha, yeah Aisle would have worked WAAAAAAY better.  Sometimes my brain completely forgets certain words.  Agreed about the mini slug.

Dreamscale, glad you liked it!  Yeah, I definitely let my passages run wild sometimes.  It's weird that when I read other's work I have no issue with single sentence passages, but when I do it myself I always feel inclined to expand  too much, which often leads to mishmash of character POVs.

Thanks guys!  Let me know if you have anything you want me to take a look at.

Brian

More than welcome

Hi Brian,

This was cool, good descriptions, lots of entertaining action.

I agree about the 'stupid bitch'  comment at the end. It stuck out for me.

SPOILER

At the risk of sounding stupid, is he dead now. He's in some kind of purgatory now, with her? Did she o.d., die, then he died? Or is he still alive. I'm a little lost on that one...it's me cause everyone else gets it lol, but I really would like to know.....;)

Hello Kirsten,

Thanks for reading!  I am glad you liked it.

The "stupid bitch" comment was me trying to show that Louie, while apologetic for Charlotte's death, is still at his center only concerned for himself.  Kind of my attempt to show that his story arc is less of an arc and more of a circle. :)

I didn't necessarily see the character's as dead and in purgatory, more like the church is a crack of supernatural vengeance where occasionally evil people slip into and are punished.  Ultimately, I wanted to leave it ambiguous for the reader to decide.

Thanks again!

Brian

DDF, talking about Horror...I don't follow this genre, however, I think that the script is brilliant. A little polishing (slugs, names) and it's ready for production. It would make a really scaring short.
Good luck with this.
Fausto

Fausto,

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my script and the compliment!  Yes, this is very much a first draft.  Hopefully my revisions will make this work a bit tighter.

Also, for the life of me, I can't figure out what DDF means.  :)

Thanks!
Brian

Hey Brian,

Haven't forgot about the read I owe ya'. Sorry for the long delay. I'll be reading and reviewing this one tonight. Hope you are well. :)

~Zack~

This has some pretty great visuals Brian. Some real nasty stuff here. Would be crazy on screen.

Unfortunately, besides the excellent visuals, this just didn't do much for me. Not bad, just not a whole lot of depth to it. Guy enters church, his dead girlfriend shows up and shit gets weird(in a very gory way), then he wakes up and the weirdness continues. Then we have a tacked on ending that more or less hints that this new character will have a similar fate to Louie.

I do love your writing style though. Very easy to visualize what is going on. For an exercise in pure macabre story telling, this is pretty good.

Also, I'm not a fan of most of the dialog. Probably just me, though.

Sorry again that it took me so long to read this.

~Zack~

Hello Zack,

Thanks so much for reading!

I definitely get your criticism regarding the character development and story depth.  This was a big exercise for me attempting to write a mostly visual film.  I wanted it to kind of echo Hellraiser or Jacob's Ladder.

Yeah, I struggle with dialogue more than anything else.  It's always such a precarious balancing act for me to write believable conversations while also trying to advance the plot.

Thanks again and I hope you're well!

Brian

Quoted from Digitaldecayfilms   This was a big exercise for me attempting to write a mostly visual film.

You've succeeded with flying colors.  :)

~Zack~

I like the story and the dialogue, but to me works much better in the short story format (in a book) where you can explore more of the protagonist thinking, and not like a short film, where sincerely is a story very difficult to pull it out, because the technical issues.
Maybe with CGI, but you have a lot of effect that, if there are not doing in the right way, could be distracting from the story.

Again, great script and I enjoy reading about it, but even it's cinematic (from a visual perspective) I feel it's hard to make it a short film.


Great job, keep the good work!