Lily by Anthony Cawood - Short, Drama - The purchase of a funeral plant has sinister undertones when it's final resting place is revealed. 2 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi Anthony,

I don’t think I missed anything.

****SPOILER ALERT****

Summarising:
Nathaniel is a ‘sick puppy’ who gets aroused at his victims picking their favourite flower, before killing and burying them.

Wow!! That’s dark.


Daniel

When I read a book (normal book or screenplay), I always wonder, what is the message of the book? Where does the character experience her or his ups and downs? Where and how does a character change? I can not see all this here. It seems somehow unfinished to me, a final point (last twist) has the script also not.
I know that you can do it better! It always helped me to think about the characters and the plot before writing the script. Maybe it will help you too?

We'll, it's a micro-short Gerlinde, and the clue (apart from the obvious creepiness) is in the slugline which reads: 'walled garden', i.e., not cemetery.

It's a nearly there for me, Anthony. Very creepy either way.

Just a couple of queries...
When Nathanial asks: 'and this?' is he pointing to another flower, other than the lily?

'Lilies suggest that the soul of the deceased has returned to a peaceful state of innocence', Lillies are definitely flowers for a funeral in my neck of the woods, and most any flowers are suitable for visiting a grave.

Jeepers he's being bold parading the little girl around, isn't he?

Anyway, like I said, nearly brilliantly creepy, if that makes sense.  :)

Thanks all

This was one of my 'spare' scripts for the recent OWC 1 page round... hence the brevity.

Daniel - thanks, I like dark ;-)

Gerlinde - it's a micro short so the normal arc is replaced for a quick sharp shock.

Libby - Yes. And this? is because he's not actually answered the plant question as yet, but same plant. And glad you found it brilliantly creepy - definitely what I was going for ;-)

Andrew

"looking  forlorn  and  pertified"

- Can someone express these two emotions concurrently? I dunno, finding it hard to visualise.

NATHANIEL
Not  good  they'll  die,  sorry,  died.

- I don't understand this line. I take it he's referring to the flower but don't all flowers die? What's his point?

NATHANIEL
Sally  doesn't  speak.

- I'm off on a tangent here but it's really struck me how many films I've seen recently that feature a character who doesn't speak. I can name 5. 3 from the past year, 1 from 2016, 1 from 2014. A curious trend.

Didn't really get much from the ending. Is the current Sally number 12? What is the significance of them all being Sallys and Alices? I'm lost. A shocking ending only really hits home if it has been set up within the script, through some clever misdirection or sleight of hand maybe. Here it just lands without any forewarning, seems to come out of nowhere. Then again, its a 2 page script so...not sure what you're trying to achieve with it.

Col.  

Hey, Anthony.

Good story but I do have some reservations about it. You're telling the story but leaving it a bit bare for my liking. I mean that you didn't make it personal enough to elicit much emotion from me. And therefore there's no emotional connection.
I think that the nature of the theme calls for emotion.

Maybe its because theres no interaction with Sally - not sure.

Quoted from khamanna Hey, Anthony. Good story but I do have some reservations about it. You're telling the story but leaving it a bit bare for my liking. I mean that you didn't make it personal enough to elicit much emotion from me. And therefore there's no emotional connection. I think that the nature of the theme calls for emotion. Maybe its because theres no interaction with Sally - not sure.

To tell a story in which the reader is thrilled with the characters, three things are necessary.
1. Interaction between at least two persons.
2. A storyline that has an up and down relation to a figure, and
3. a surprising ending.
I miss two of these three points in the script.

Well, the story is about a sick man who has a decency to let a soon-to-be-dead girl pick a flower for her grave.
But I don't want to sympathise with him, I want to stay with the victim. That's why I said "missing interraction with the girl" - just want a bit more about her to really feel for her.

Come on, hop to!

Sally is just the next one in a whole line of girls, (his victims) and they are not all of the same name. The visual you'd see on screen is a row of graves in his back yard. Her headstone is already placed and she's next. Least that the meaning I got.

I think the genre should be detailed as 'horror', Anthony, not drama.
Unless of course I'm completely off base and have just been watching too much spooky stuff of late.

Thanks for the additional comments all, appreciated...

Col - They'll die was meant to be a ref to his victim, but it reads awkwardly so will revise.

Kham - this was a spare from the 1 pager of the current writers challenge, so yes it's a little sparse due to that...

Gerlinde - 1) is covered in the story - two people interact whilst a third watches. 2) Not sure what you mean. 3) So the surprise is that he's not attending a funeral, he's buying flowers for the girl he's about to murder.

Kham - I didn't mean for it to read that way, in my mind he's buying the flowers to further torture her, but your reading works too,

Libby - spot on... and I thought I'd put in it in Horror... ah well.

Quoted from khamanna Well, the story is about a sick man who has a decency to let a soon-to-be-dead girl pick a flower for her grave. But I don't want to sympathise with him, I want to stay with the victim. That's why I said "missing interraction with the girl" - just want a bit more about her to really feel for her.

We see sick people (men) every day in the White House, and the American government. We do not need them in films. What I meant is that you do not feel anything with any figure. Neither with the perpetrator, nor the victim. The theme in and of itself is not bad, but you should have given it more room for the characters to evolve. Why does the perpetrator murder? What is his motivation? Why does he choose a particular victim type?

Quoted from AnthonyCawood Gerlinde - 1) is covered in the story - two people interact whilst a third watches. 2) Not sure what you mean. 3) So the surprise is that he's not attending a funeral, he's buying flowers for the girl he's about to murder.

To 1: If two people interact with each other, it does not mean a well-groomed conversation in which one's feet fall asleep (and the brain, anyway), but that both express different opinions, arguing with each other.
To 2: Each book or script tells this up and down a figure, the protagonist, or the antagonist. An example: Unemployed man finds lottery ticket, puts it in (offense of the story, positive). The man loses the lottery ticket (plot point 1 of the story, negative for the character). He learns that his lottery ticket has won, and seeks it (midpoint of the figure, positive). He sees someone else put the lottery ticket in his pocket(Plot Point 2, negative for the protagonist). And as a last twist, the protagonist finds a job.
To 3: This is not a last twist, at best the climax of the story

Gerlinde - I think your view of what constitutes a good story is just your own view, and this is intentionally a micro-short so your expectations will never be met, so we will have to agree to disagree. Thanks for contributing though.

Gerlinde, there are more shorty shorts here (some are micro-budget):
http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?m-1523630223/

All had to fit in one page. See if you like any.

As to your three questions here "the guy's motivation, the reason he murders and the type of his victims" - all of it is covered by his sickness I think. He's a sick man who prefers little girls - that's a given. I don't need to know what he does with them, but I see he murders them.

Hi Anthony,

I enjoyed it for what it was. Very similar in theme to the stuff I generally gravitate towards so it's right up my ally.

All the best.

Thanks Warren

Anthony, I thought this was great. Very clever, hard hitting, short,  creepy, horrific but not a gore fest. Definitely needs to be under the horror genre.

Nice one!

K.

Quoted from Don Lily by Anthony Cawood - Short, Drama - The purchase of a funeral plant has sinister undertones when it's final resting place is revealed. 2 pages - pdf, format Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi Anthony,

the ending didn't shock me, but left me scratching my head. I don't think you have a story, you have what's called a "Hook". The Hook is suppose to grab our attention, and it leads some where. Your script stops right at the "Hook", I felt like the whole thing was an incomplete thought.

As it reads right now, Nathaniel isn't a character, he reads like a caricature of some one nefarious. When Nathaniel was speaking a bit esoterically, I knew right away you was going to kill the girl.

I agree with Gerlinde that every story needs to have a message. Maybe it's something that cannot be done in one page. But  I would add, at the very least a story should have a controlling idea. What is the controlling idea behind this script?


EricP

Kirsten, Eric, thanks for taking a read, much appreciated.