Image Problem by Frank MacCrory (FrankM)  writing as Star Witness - Short, Horror - A pop band of teens reach the cusp of superstardom, but a deranged fan threatens to ruin everything. 13 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Image Problem

Okay, okay… I like the first two pages, but directly said, it fell apart from there. You spend a lot of work on the girls and I imagine it must have been hard to keep an overview but the whole other structure of the 'story' is directionless to me. There's just no balance yet or any clarity about what the story is. The criteria, the horror aspect, haven't delivered either. On a positive note, there were some fine interactions between the girls and the script's beginning was fine.

Hello writer

WARNING: I'm getting horror genre fatigued.... hopefully I don't take it out on you lol

Quoted Text Three sixteen-year-old girls RUBY, SOPHIE, and TARA stream in wearing brightly-colored costumes passing before a concert poster of their four-girl pop band, Star. The fourth member, ARIA (16), walks in drinking from a water bottle.

I had to read that a couple of times - a rewrite can make it easier to read

on the first two pages I have given up following who is saying what - I don't think it matters to be honest, which makes me think - is any of it going to be relevant?

Jeez, you have twice as many characters as there are pages - You should heavily cut these, I have no idea who says what or where they are, what they are doign - Trying to tell a story with this many characters in 5 pages is tough, and you are not accomplishing it.

I have no idea what is going on, I don't think the characters know what is going on - If you (the writer) know what is going on, it's because the majority of this story is still in your head and not on paper. - the dialogue and action is all over the place, the revelation is unclear - for example, Ruby says "Mom" at the beginning of her dialogue on page 5 for absolutely no reason - her moms not there, she's dead already (I think)

Who was the killer? why? what Junk food place are they talking about? what decision does Sohpie have to make?

Ok, you need to cut this WAY down - lose like 70% of the characters - stop trying to do so much in such a small space. Focus this story, chop the deadwood and you could have something really good here.

Also lose stuff that is not important to story, like the mention of a movie coming out and the script writer being an ass - literally no point to it.

Comedy? where was the comedy lol

pg. 4 - the silent alarm at the receptionist desk seems too convenient to be there, and how does Tara’s mom know it was there?
pg. 5 - “There is a deranged fan of Star…” I had forgotten that the band’s name is Star, and this line had me wondering. I think you should choose a more profound name for the band, and re-introduce it in an action line or dialogue sooner.
pg. 5 - “You don’t have any daughters, do you?” You should make it more clear who Tara’s mom is speaking to.
pg. 5 - the dead lab tech description was too confusing for me, and I thought it was Sophie’s dad who sees this.
pg. 5 - The ending is very confusing, and sudden shift towards the band solving a mystery was kind of funny.

I like the concept, though I feel there is much room for improvement. Almost none of the comedy worked for me, and the horror elements weren’t particularly scary.

A real chore to get through and no pay-off. Yet another script that fails to hit the genre-fusion stipulation.

His one is a bit all over the place in terms of story, pacing, tone.  It really doesn’t make much logical sense for Ruby to be the deranged fan, but not many horror films make sense.

I’m not sure you met the criteria that required a psychiatrist’s office - you just sort of ran everyone in there in the end. Also not sure of the second genre — if it is comedy, it was very light on the humor.

I think you had the genesis of an idea, but it probably needs a reworking. Maybe have everyone to start in the doctor’s office talking about their problems and we get some exposition through flashbacks.

Best of luck,
Gary

You introed a lot of characters that are not in psychotherapist office. Then you kept adding the characters with the introduction of an intricate backstory which wasn't very clear to me at first. Not that it's very clear to me now. Maybe if I read it like three times.

Then you kept adding the characters. The plot didn't get easier to get. At the bottom page of 4 you decided to finally take us to the Dr's office.

Hey, our entries are alike. This one made the issues in mine apparent. Now I know what to do to fix mine. (that maybe a bread crumb, sorry)
Anyway, cut and simplify. Sounds easy but it's so hard.
I think I knowwho's behind it.

I like the general idea of a girl band discovering bobble heads made in their likenesses, but that's about it. It's confusing and convoluted, I had to reread sections.

It seems the writer had a bigger story that simply doesn't work in five pages. A frustrating read.

To attempt something like this in under 5 pages is downright foolish, and the proof of that statement is on display right here.

WAY, WAY too many characters, some named, some not.

Look at your opening passage - 4 lines, 4 characters intro'd and confusing as all Hell.

Story - None, as you can't tell this story in 5 pages.

Characters - so many that there's no time to get to know anyone.

Dialogue - not terrible from some, but nothing memorable.

Prose - not good by any means.

Criteria - No comedy here whatsoever.  Horror is there, Psychiatrist barely there, and bobbleheads nicely used.

Even at 12 to 15 pages, this is way too big a concept to pull off.

Hi writer,

I’m not a fan of capitalising dialogue, and don’t think there is ever a good enough reason to do it. A personal preference thing, I know, but still.

These characters are completely indistinguishable from each other, it makes it really hard to root for any of them.

This felt a lot longer than 5 pages, it was quite a slog to get through

Just way too many characters and not enough clarity of what is actually going on.

Sorry but this one didn’t work for me on any level.

All the best.

Hmmm, the psychiatrist surely didn't play much of a role in this, unless I lost it in all the teenage girl angst banter. If that's what you were going for, you nailed it.

Not much horror and weak humor. So many characters that I didn't keep track or care for any of them. It was a plodding read to the end.

This was a tough challenge and you made a valiant attempt. There's always NEXT week!

This was a strange bag of cats.

The core premise seems decent. You could imagine it working well as a teen horror.

I think you basically picked a story that needs more than five pages to tell because you've got a lot of set up, then it all just went totally random and as mad as a box of frogs.

Yeah, everyone pretty well covered things.

I was able to (barely) hang on to the story. One of the band members kills off the parents because of their lack of concern for their daughter's well-being.

The bobblehead use was very good.

As everyone else pointed out, it's just too ambitious to have this many characters in a short. That was the fatal decision.

There's a lot of this I like and there's some good lines too...

But, I struggled to differentiate between the girls so the last couple of pages lost me.

Loved how you used the bobblehead - nice, different, approach.

But thought the psychiatrist was a definite tag on,

Decent effort.

Hi writer

Don't get discouraged. This was a tough challenge and none of the scripts really succeeded(I have a few to read still).  I don't sense anything in your writing that indicates your next script might not hit it out of the park. This one didn't hold my attention. But I hope you stick around for the next week of this. You won't be the only one behind in the scores!

The melodramatic reaction of the girls to the dolls would be amusing, if people didn't start dying because of them. Diet, not murder is the answer, if you're that concerned about other people's reaction to your appearance. I think this premise might work if it were the dolls that did the killing for their owners

Hi Writer,

There's not much left to say. It's a decent effort but I also struggled to get through this, sorry.

I applaud the courage, but trying to write a story with so many characters in so few pages, and get it right, is almost impossible.

The premise isn't bad, I liked the use of the bobble-head, but the script needs some work.

For starters, the characters are so similar that, by the end, it was difficult to remember who was who.

Luckily there are four more rounds to come.

See you next one!
David

My problem was building an image.

For me, there was too much going on.  Lots of loose strands.  I get the horror vibe.  I don’t read loglines, I just jump in and see what I can feel.  I didn’t realise this was suppose to have comedy.  That was a surprise.

All the best.

Quoted from jayrex My problem was building an image.

An Image Problem?

Teenage girls are so funny.  ::)

There's nothing funny in this. It's just teenagers doing teenager things. The larger criteria problem is the psychiatrist's office is barely used at all, it doesn't even feature until well into page 4. That's not meeting the challenge requirements, especially since it's used like any other room with a door.

Way too many characters, and they all sound like. They all act alike. Not one of them stands out.

Most of it is pure exposition, and even when the "horror" gets going it's mostly describing what happens off-screen. I don't see how they can brush off someone's dad getting killed and continue on like nothing happened in what seems like minutes later. And what stabs? They saw severed arms, where's the rest of the body? Aria is the daughter, right? (It's so hard to tell.) And she's sitting casually in the very next scene and doesn't even speak a word, has zero actions...she's suddenly a background character in what should be her reaction scene if you want to keep up pretenses until the "twist."

The ending makes no sense at all. If the girls were behind it, why did Aria scream when she found Henry's arms? And they were killing their parents because of bobblehead dolls? My God, I'm shocked the parents weren't killed before then over something else just as trivial. But Sophie isn't in on it, she's surprised, and suddenly she has to choose which of her parents to kill because they share the same initials? Where do you go from there? Do they commit suicide on stage for their crazy fans? Actually, I hope so, that would be terrific.

Let this one go, dust yourself off, and give us more in the next round.

Hey everyone, this one is mine.

First, second, and third, I want to thank everyone who muscled through this and gave good feedback. As I mentioned in the contest thread, I typed this thing up in a rush, and it shows. It probably scored better than if I'd missed the week entirely.

This was an attempt at horror and comedy. I'm not strong in either genre, and other writers did orders of magnitude better at horror, at comedy, and at fusing. I thought a sixteen-year-old girl serial killing adults was a funny inversion of typical horror. Given that I know little-to-nothing about the horror genre, maybe a murderous teen is old hat? In any case, no one else got the joke.

The story ran about seven and a half pages at first, and apparently I cut it down badly. The more-or-less original version is at this link if anyone is interested (I re-arranged a couple lines for clarity). If there was some value in revising it, I'd probably stretch out the time between the deaths to build tension and suspense.

The girls were supposed to be differentiated, but that didn't come across well on the page. Here's a primer:

Sophie - business-savvy but non-empathic band leader
Tara - has impostor syndrome and she's relapsing into bulimia
Aria - pure artist in her own little world
Ruby - protector and quasi-parent to the other girls

They'd be easier to distinguish on screen (different color streaks in their hair, different ethnicities, whatever), but how they are distinguished isn't important to the story. Their roles in the band were cut completely from the five-pager. Sophie was the keyboardist, Tara the drummer, Aria the vocalist, and Ruby the guitarist.

"S.T.A.R." got shortened to "Star" as I was trying to save space, which probably led to some of the confusion over the girls' names.

PK got the gist of the story. My intention was to misdirect the audience into thinking Tara - who obviously has some psychological issues - is the one who snapped. She's conveniently off-screen when each attack seems to occur. Actually, it's Ruby who snapped from the self-imposed stress of watching over the others. Reading back over the whittle-down nub that I submitted, I see there weren't enough clues left about Ruby. Bad editing on my part. She's clearer about her motives in the longer version linked above.

Matthew, you spotted a mistake I noticed shortly after the deadline. That "Mom!" was originally Tara's line, in reaction to Ruby revealing herself but Tara's Mom being distracted by the phone, and got mooshed together in my attempt to fit this in five pages. Simply changing "Mom!" to "Hey!" would have fixed the problem, but I missed it.

henb, you probably weren't the only one who missed that the woman in the labcoat was Dr. Hayes. I thought it was obvious so trimmed the description, but it wasn't obvious. The slightly longer version describes her nametag.

Hang your head in shame, Frank. Haha. We all know you're better than this.

Okay everyone, I haven't given up on this story.

Kinda gave up on Sean's original parameters... more than 5 pages and no longer trying to blend horror with comedy. I think this version could work as straight horror with just the right music and visuals, but what I'd really like to do is find a way to make it actually read scarier.

Haven't figured that part out yet.