You Couldn't Write This by Actually I Just Did - Short, Drama - A man fears for his life when he taken captive and asked questions he has no answers for. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Well written little story that just kind of ends. I was hoping for something sinister or a clue that the spouse was in on it somehow or some other twist but it just ends. Maybe she WAS sleeping with the captor and this was her way of getting out of it? IDK.

Minor detail but the captor never removed the gag in the beginning. You may want to lose the 'continued' on every page. Unnecessary and distracting.

Needs a title! Almost distracting to see if what you had actually had something to do with the story.

Meets criteria (shovel, sand, song).

Overall, well written and good tension. Good job, writer!

I deleted some posts that give away who wrote this.

Author, PM me if you want to take any other action.

The CON'T at the top and bottom of each page is unneeded and a tad distracting.

My first script I submitted here is a torture story, so this reminded me of that. The difference is you have a neat twist. I didn't see that aspect coming and elevated an otherwise straight forward story for me.

The dialogue is very one-note. You have the characters saying the same thing over and over for pages. Admit it you had sex with her...you got the wrong guy...rinse repeat. It gets way too repetitive and in the short page limit you should spice it up, change things.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you used 'sickness' as in the stalker is deranged? That's my best guess.

Solid and complete. Works as a "torture thriller", relying heavily on violence to create tension. Typically effective from an audio/visual standpoint.  The conclusion is satisfying (good guys win, bad guy loses). Not bad at all.

I would recommend giving Captor and Captive actual names. The similar spelling caused some eye strain during the back-and-forth dialogue.

Title is lazy. Just about any other title would be better.

Simple story. Actually didn't see the "twist" coming, so kudos there.

The writing could use some work. Typos and grammar issues throughout. And, please, name your characters.

Meets the criteria, but this one could have really benefited from a couple good rewrites.




:-/

IMO, Captor and Captive poor choices for the character IDs.  Note - when you refer to them later in action blocks it's not the captive or the captor - it's  the Captive or Captor - cap the first letter.

Hate "we sees" when not needed.  Not needed here.

The description blocks are pretty inefficient. By that I mean you say in ten words what could be said in five.

Despite the fact that there are errors throughout - once you get to the actual dialogue it's not bad at all - the pages when by fairly quickly.

Not crazy about the ending.

Anyway - I think you have some potential - you seem to have a good imagination. But you really need to read some scripts, research etc to try to get your work at a higher level of craftsmanship.

Congrats on entering.

Note: A bad title, IMO.

This was alright. Dialogue needs some work. I think I missed where the requirement were met. Action also needs work especially the first page, just too much and no flair to it. Overall though okay story and with a few more drafts could be decent.

Top three least favourite intros:

Alarm clock fumbles.
Chased through the woods.
Wakes up tied to a chair.

Just a personal gripe.  Just rare to find a setup that puts a fresh spin on the idea.  …I get it, tied to a chair/interrogation is easy to film, gives you that immediate tension.  Hard not to be sucked into these scenarios.

‘I think you’ve got the wrong man’ - 'think' seems like an odd thing to say given the circumstances. - Not sure I’d be giving him any room for doubt.

Okay, usually not a fan of this setup, but the twist here was actually a surprise so kudos for that.  That said, they’re married so I’m not entirely sure what the Stalker expected the answer to be.  But he’s a lunatic so maybe a pass on that.

Could have had more fun with the dialogue perhaps—felt a little standard for the situation.  A quick read and entertaining enough.

Good luck.

I thought this was pretty well written, I didn't expect the ending to go the way it did.

I think having "Captor" and Captive" is not good as it makes it a bit hard to read. Also at the end you say the "Captive" was in cuffs, should have been "Captor" seems you confused yourself.

I didn't get the title

Not a fan of the no name thing, not sure what it achieves here.

The script is pretty solid and moves along at a decent pace.

But it does seem a little cliche due to the familiarity of the setup.

The 'twist' is what I expected, but it was well delivered so kudos.

At the end you have the captive both on the gurney and with the police.  

Not bad

Hmm well written and all but you could do better with Character names.

Also, the twist is somehow easy. Not to use the dreaded "trivial" word.

I liked the dialog overal but it could use more characterization. Right now your characters do not jump off the pages for me.

Not a bad effort overall. And the criteria is well used.

Congrats on entering!

So the captor is a stalker obsessed with this woman who happens to be married. He believes her husband is actually the stalker and she is his wife, correct? OK, the writer says it's based on a true story so I won't argue with how it played out. Overall it was well written and formatted well. Easy to follow.

Hi there :),
I'm afraid I can't add anything that hasn't been already said - I enjoyed the twist, didn't like that the characters didn't have names, and I thought the dialogue was a bit one-sided. But overall a good, quick read!

Meaningless late comments...  not bad writer, you handled the twist well, but I think it can use some tightening up. Especially in the action lines. I'd heed the other comments about the dialogue, too.

Ghost

A metaphorical screen adaptation of a love-triangle pushed to the extreme. Maybe that's why it's a bit predictable - it's supposed to be so. The characters are painted in very broad strokes, more serving as functions, rather than being real people (I'm not criticizing this, just stating what it seems to me - maybe it's supposed to be this way and serves your script's purpose. Up to you to decide).

Kind of makes the viewer/reader bond with the Captive, since we don't know what's going on and his questions are our questions.

So who got arrested - the captive or the captor? And who got hospitalized? We kind of assume that the captive got hospitalized, but did he? That would be an additional twist - the woman frames the captive. But maybe that's redundant. This typo at the end ruins it somewhat (or is it meant to be this way?).

It also reads quite easy, so that is a great plus.

Hey,

the script lives from its twist, which should feel inventive - and it surely does plotting-wise. The back and forth, Q and A part, could have been shorter, so that we're out of the script with our satisfying twist quicker. There is not enough empathy (no clue who captive is) to prolong it or else there must be a fresher attempt as the fist to the face version – something that raises more tension, fear, excitement with fresh pictures to justify the length…  

Anyway, it's pretty okay and I generally like the structure you brought to the table.

I didn’t see the twist coming and enjoyed that aspect, the rest was quite cliché and nothing we haven’t seen before in many torture/interrogation scenes. You could have a lot of fun with this, play around with some cool Tarintino style dialogue and give it a lot of juice that would make it stand out. You have a great twist, now go work on making this a great script and you’ll have yourself a winner that would be very easy and cheap to produce.

-Mark

I could write this, but I wouldn’t.

Hi writer

Quoted Text CAPTIVE What the fuck?

There's that line again, fuck me do I hate that line lol not to take it out on you, but jeezus is it overused!

Well, that ended strangely - wife comes out of nowhere, kills him offscreen somehow - how did she know where they were? is he keeping him captive in his own garage?
Captive is led out in handcuffs towards police car and the next second he's on a gurney going into an ambulance.

The interrogation is a little stale, found myself drifting and skim reading - you need to find a way to heighten the tension in this. Maybe making the characters a little more interesting would help. but it's a constant
"did you fuck my wife?" - "no" - "did you fuck my wife" - "no" ... over and over, no escalation, no exchange of power, no reveal of new information, no nothing that could have spiced it up.

Anyhoo - Well done for entering

oh, I'm not giving you criteria met for this, others will I guess, but the song? what was the point? - I'll quote the criteria "It must have some impact on the action or your characters."
the song had no impact... no one even mentioned it or acknowledged it was playing.

I'm glad that I didn't write this. It's overwritten, passive, and poorly punctuated, making it a drag to read. Your action lines should flow. Commas matter.

Criteria Met (Y/N) – I don't care.
Story (1-5) –  0.5
Characters (1-5) – 0.5
Dialogue (1-5) – 0.5
Writing (1-5) – 0.5
Overall (1-10) – 1

Thanks to all who made the effort to read and give feedback. This is the first time I've entered so wasn't sure what I was supposed to do regards title. I know this is a shit title and doesn't relate, I think I had a blonde moment and thought the title didn't matter as it was anonymous.

Anyway, no excuse but I only wrote this the day before submitting. I've re-written it and added a bit at the beginning and the end and changed some of the dialogue. I've also given them all names.

Thanks again and well done to the winner.

Well done for getting stuck in with the comments and getting involved - it's what these things are all about (that, and providing inspiration for writing something new)

And Lol at not thinking you needed a title  ;D

Hope you enjoyed the experience and will take part in future challenges

Quoted from Matthew Taylor And Lol at not thinking you needed a title  ;D

I know, like I said, blonde moment.
Yeah of course I will enter again, I've got no problem with criticism and can take it. Most of what people said was valid and I've changed stuff to my script based on people's feedback.

Cheers mate

Quoted from Arundel So the captor is a stalker obsessed with this woman who happens to be married. He believes her husband is actually the stalker and she is his wife, correct?

Pretty much, but the captor is so obsessed with the woman he thinks she is his wife. He thinks the captive is basically having an affair with his wife and not a stalker.

I'm not sure about:

Quoted from Arundel OK, the writer says it's based on a true story

Not sure where you got that from, I certainly never said it was based on a true story. Maybe it was because the author was "Actually I just did"

Some, or perhaps most, of these comments have already been mentioned.

Personally, I liked your dialogue.  It was short. Crisp. Certainly not expository.  There MAY have been a couple sentences that could have been removed, such as repeating  "did you fuck her" because it was used more than a couple times, but overall, I thought it was quite good.

As far as ways to make it better, I have only a couple suggestions.

First, turn off the "continued" except when there's dialogue at the end of the page and top of the other page.

Delete the "cut to."  We know we're cutting to another scene when we see the new scene heading.

"Avoid similar sounding names for your characters and names beginning with the same first letter to make it less confusing for the actors.   If you want to use "Captive," then rather than use "Captor," try a synonym.  Abductor. Kidnapper.  Something along those lines.  

If you tighten the action lines, I believe there will be more "white space" in the script, and directors like white space.  So, for action lines,  no more than three lines.  Even fragments of sentences work.  And keep them in present tense.  By using words such as "is," "are" and "ing" words you're making them passive.  Example, your first action line reads:  

"A CAPTIVE, 30, wearing a suit and tie, his arms and legs tied to a chair in the centre of the room with a hood over his lowered head. A single light hanging from the ceiling illuminates the scene."

We know from the scene heading we"re in the garage so why not let the audience see the garage first. Here"s an idea  and that's all it is, an idea which can, of course, be completely disregarded.  I'm only throwing it out to give you something to consider.

"A single ceiling light illuminates the scene.

"In the middle of the room, a CAPTIVE, 30, arms and legs tied to a chair, hood over his lowered head."

After reading the script, I don't see where his attire has any relevance to the story, so leave that up to the wardrobe staff.


All-in-all though, well done.  And I love good endings.