A Place Beyond the Heart by Marc Buckley - Short, Sci Fi - In a distant future a lone toy must use everything he has got to save the toys that have shunned him.  6 pages - pdf, format

New writer interested in feedback on this work

Give this a read, Marc.

First - you get A+ for or originality IMO - this certainly was unique.

There are some areas that need improvement, particularly in your descriptive passages,  IMO. They are way too long. Try to trim them down to 4 lines of less (one goes 19 lines - you are going to lose readers around 4). Check out some other scripts to get a sense of how lean these things should be.

The Opening

Quoted Text INT. FUTURISTIC RUN DOWN FACTORY FLOOR - NIGHT A storm rages outside seen through the large floor to ceiling window on the far side of the room. In the opening in the middle of the room, scores of zombie-like teddy bears stumble around in circles. Some with missing limbs, some with their robotic skeleton showing through their torn fur. The room is dark except for the bright light of the moon coming in through the window. The corners of the room are so dark you can barely make out the large pieces of machinery and large stacked boxes. INT. FUTURISTIC RUN DOWN FACTORY FLOOR - NIGHT In the corner of the room one teddy bear(MAT) sits alone on the floor with his head bowed down. He looks different to the rest. He looks more intelligent, more human. FASHBACK

FASHBACK is a typo.

You don't need the second scene heading - it is the same as the first and you have not changed time or location.

Best of luck with this - sure is original.

Some notes.

I have often thought that storytelling consists of two disciplines.  One is writing, putting the words, sentences, and paragraphs on the page.  The other is design, building a structure that will delight and surprise the audience.  Of the two, design is the harder and, therefore, the more rewarding.  

The problems arise when a good design is implemented with less than stellar writing.  

Mats is not Mat's.  A shoot is not a chute.  Where there is a few boxes is not where there are a few boxes.

Problem-filled writing will turn off the reader.  Why fight your way through error-prone text?  

So, for this one, sharpen your writing skills.  Find the right words, use the proper punctuation, and tell the story in a straightforward way.  

Best
Richard

Maybe your writing was a bit wordy, at times, but most of it was easy enough to understand. In particular, you should rewrite 'He locks eye contact with another bear and becomes hopeful but quickly realizes it has a dead blank look in its eyes and MATs hopeful look turns back to sadness.' You make the reader feel empathy for the nice teddy bear, but you almost cheated a bit, as teddy bears are cute. It would have been cleverer to make the reader feel empathy for typical robots, but your story was good anyway. Maybe the doctor's dialogue acts as mini spoilers. Maybe you could give him more cryptic things to say, that only make sense after the bear's actions. There are some things that a viewer couldn't really know, without an explanation. For example the bear 'Gazing at the lights wondering what life would be like to be free.' I guess you could make the bear look sad, at least.