To Be Remembered by Anonymous3 - Adult, Short, Drama - A caring detective does his part to ensure murder victims are remembered within the community. 8 pages - pdf, format

Athazagoraphobia Fear of being forgotten or ignored and fear of forgetting

Okay - again - format wise nothing to complain about here. The 2nd I have read and good to see solid frameworks in both the first two. - especially for one week.

Again - the opening dialogue was off for me - way too professorial unless the Detective was reading from a bible or something.

SPOILERS

I would have liked more on how the phobia impacted his life - so he said kind words when people died - okay, why isn't that just nice or empathetic.  

I liked the twist of a man fearing nor being remembered not being remembered - but no reason is given on why this would be true - would have liked that explored.

Good effort for one week. Needs a little more oomph.

Hmmm...writing not good out of the gate.

Missus Franklin?  Mrs. Williams?  Why are you spelling "Mrs." 2 different ways and who is missus Franklin?

Wow...that's alot of talking head dialogue going on and none of it sounds remotely realistic.  In fact, this entire setup and action seems very out of place and fake.

"VARIOUS" in a Slug?  WTF?  Dude...

I'm sorry, but this is not working, the writing is very poor, and I'm just not remotely into this.

NO GRADE

Solidly written but I felt myself skimming.  The dialogue felt unnatural and on the nose in parts, while others it was OK but not very compelling. I'm sure with another polish this would be sorted.

I didn't really see any evidence of a man dealing with a phobia, more like a man with a belief about human dignity, kind of like it was a mission of his rather than a reflection of a crushing phobia, but I believe this did meet the criteria of the OWC, just wasn't enough for me.  You entered though! Looking at the comments in the OWC thread, a lot jumped ship on this one.

-Mark

Hey writer.
Thanks for entering! I totally know who it belongs to)
Feel like noir to me at first.
The dialog in the cafeteria lacks conflict for me. I know Smith is thinking that Ayers is too kind to them, the criminal folk and they don't agree on that but I think both are too mellow toward each other. And I'm thinking disagreeing upon such a small thing isn't a good platform for a conflict. There should be more, something else.

So in the end Ayers was too kind toward all the criminals and he got shot by one. I get the message of the story but I want more.

Man, bummer read. He should've spent more time with the living than trying to commemorate the dead. Not sure that I'd classify it as a phobia but it was definitely a sociological issue. There was a source of his issue and he knows what it is. I wish you shared it with us.

Good formatting and arc. Dialog was kind of wordy, but your action was well done.

Good job.

Hmm,
Written okay  and easy to read.  The phobia was a little too "deep" for me.

The story was thought provoking but I'm not certain the fear of being forgotten registered.   It was more of a concern, hope, desire, or wish for others not to be forgotten.

JJ

Hey writer,

Well enough written, you've done this before. As a standalone short drama, it had a nice feel to it, but it didn't really go anywhere in particular.

The phobia completely passed me by. I hadn't checked it out before I read the piece, and I couldn't spot any real trace of it while I was doing my reading. That's a big issue.

Anyway, it read well, but didn't have much going on in the plot department, and the phobia seems to have gone walkies.

Well done for entering,

Cam

Like your title .... No conflict in your logline.

YAY Kudos for 8 pages! :) Wish more of these were this length!!

missus Franklin think you mean Williams?

Good writing on display here. Good dialogue. The dialogue of the detectives is excellent and sound in character.

Very sad that all he did to help others and then he had no one to remember him or even visit him.

Great story. Great writing on display.

Nice idea, but I wish that we could have got more of Ayer's fear through his actions, not a discussion over dinner. Took away from the potential tragedy at the end since you only really see his "phobia" in a conversation.

I kind of got sidetracked by the whole "criminals repeating the cycle" commentary in it, that didn't seem to connect with the overall theme anyway. Other than him getting shot by a criminal..

Also, for someone who has a phobia of being forgotten, he did not seem to try and rectify it in life at all. Even his co-workers don't care that he died. What did he do to merit this?

However, it was a good read and great concept with just a couple easily fixed flaws. Good job!

One of the better scripts for sure, but not really about a phobia. More of a story about a lonely man that isn't fully explored.

There's also no way a police officer shot on duty, and a good one at that, would have one guy at his funeral. The whole department and probably the mayor would be there.

Writer,

Not a bad story, but it didn't really have any oomph to it. The tone was pretty steady, writing was good. The phobia didn't have enough to do with the story, and we really didn't find out out why Ayer's has this phobia to begin with. Did something happen in his past? Hmm. We don't know, and I think it's so necessary in a story like this to give it some balance. Otherwise, it feels thrown in.

However, not a bad job for a weeks time.

Steve

Hi,

Quoted Text A couple of loud thuds are heard from the rear of the house. Ayers and Smith hear them.

I think we would assume they heard them.

I thought the writing was really good for a week, it had a great flow.

I didn't really feel the phobia shining through at all. It was kind of mentioned a few times but it didn't really seem to impact his life.

The story was okay.

All the best.

I thought the writing was good overall. So was the dialogue. Maybe some tweaks needed but a pretty good job. It didn't feel enough like Ayers has a phobia. It was obvious that he wanted to be remembered, but wanting something and being freaked out if you can't have it are two different things. He needs more story. I know that's hard to do in such limited pages, but the reader needs to know more about him, and the stakes need to be higher.

He just doesn't have an extreme need to feel remembered as shown in the script. It seems like if he's not remembered, he will continue to sulk about it. Bring emotion to it. Maybe a flashback showing something tragic happening to a family member who died too young before they had time to be remembered. There needs to be some type of emotional stake. And it's kind of hard to believe that Ayers wouldn't be cared about by his co-workers. He seems like a quiet guy who wouldn't ruffle any feathers. Fellow detectives would care unless he gave them reason not to.

This is a good idea for sure, but unfortunately I don't feel that Ayers had a phobia of being forgotten. I thought he was about to get into it and explain to his partner about it but you sidestepped that and instead he just waves him off saying he would wish it on no man. Would've preferred a little more depth in this scene and others. For an example .... maybe in the abandoned house scene have Ayers attempting to find identification of the two even if there isn't any. Have him believe there's a way to identify them and react to his failure at doing so. This may work well with getting more of his phobia into the story, what would he do when the two deceased go unidentified?

Writing was good, nice effort on this.

Frank's son runs to Ayers and hugs his leg, he pats him on the head. -- I saw this as Frank's son patting Ayers on the head.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but some of your character interactions just don't feel right.

SMITH
Good riddance. -- seems too harsh a comment, IMO.

SMITH
...Partner. -- Smith would know what the Nurse means and hence would answer friend. He would know it is a procedure the nurse needs to follow. Showing this just for the sake of making a point that Ayers has no one doesn't really work here. It does tie in with him showing his badge though, so maybe it's about him being unsure about how to answer.

Phobia - not really seen at all.

have to say that I got to the end of this and didn't really feel the feelings you are trying to evoke from it. It almost seemed too bland. It actually feels like the story itself is too big for the little snippets of information that you've given. With work and making this a bigger story it could really be good though.  

RJ

The irony of being forgotten by all those he remembered in the community is good, but it left me wondering what else he did to deserve this treatment. And the final scene at the graveyard isn't logical, because all cops who die in the line of duty are sent off in grand style, regardless of how other cops felt about him.

Logline doesn’t suggest excitement, but I like the idea - suggests a certain bittersweetness.

Something about leaving the pregnant woman there felt a bit off.  Wouldn’t paramedics take her in and at least check?  Even if there’s only the slightest chance.

‘Ayers lies in the bed, hooked up to various machines. There are no balloons, no get well soon cards, nothing.’

It’s mentioned later, but for clarity it might be an idea to let us know he’s unconscious at the outset.  And do you need to tell us what we’re not seeing regarding the balloons etc?

Alas, he would never be concise again…

A quick read and I do like what you were going for, but it feels like this needed more time to build.  More time to explore your main character and really drive that theme home.  

Showing Seth in a hospital before cutting to the funeral felt odd.  What’s the point of the hospital scene if the next scene reveals he didn’t make it?  Was it simply to show the lack of cards?  Okay, I missed the significance of the lack of cards and mourners.  I get it now - there’s no-one in his life.  He knows what it’s like to be forgotten.  Perhaps too subtle?  Would we pick up on your intent were we watching this on-screen?  The lack of mourners might work but not the lack of cards etc.  Wouldn't other cops be at his funeral?  I always thought that was a big thing?

Where was the phobia?  I didn’t get the sense of an irrational fear driving Seth; more civic responsibility and his own moral code.

At eight pages you had the room to explore this a little more - maybe ran out of time?  Again, I like the intention, but the execution didn’t land with enough impact.  Certainly one to come back to.

Good story but doesn't stick with the theme. It doesn't go deep enough to actually explore what the detective's phobia is.

Read this one prior to the deadline.

I agree with people saying the phobia didn't really show, or at least not to its full potential.

I also didn't get why no one liked Ayer. He seemed like an okay person. The reason has been explained to me already though. ;)

I thought this one was pretty good. Can definitely be tweaked into something more powerful and sad.

Good luck with it in the voting.

Title is okay, although there might be a better choice regarding your logline, which reads generally pretty intriguing.

P1 dialogue is overlong, cut some words if you want

The presentation is flawless but sorry to say I don't get in touch with the story. This whole remembrance angle felt written into the script and not organic; especially it's extremely driven by dialogue.

Well, at the ending, you fight to get some message in there and I appreciate that…

All in all the script has not enough entertainment value for my taste.
Reads like a perfect "writing" sample though, very clean performance.

I'd suggest thinking about balancing dialogues and massively compressing them to gain more context and quicker movement. Although there are other problems as well I fear.

Just my opinion, you know that you can't have them all :-)

Thanks to everyone who checked mine out.

I should have fleshed out more of this, but I wrote it in a rush which was my fault.