A Line Crossed by Steven Dilworth - Short, Sci Fi - In order to unlock the secrets of creation, a brilliant young physicist conducts an experiment which threatens to tear his world apart. 10 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hey Steven,

I like this subject matter so I took a look.

I was never big on that title. A LINE CROSSED just doesn't really flow off the tongue. And in your opening, you have the characters repeating this phrase over and over. It comes off more high-school play-ish, like you're trying to hammer the point home.

And take this for what it's worth, because I know only enough about physics to be dangerous - but I think anything that happens at CERN with the large hadron collider gets press months in advance, and gets scrutinized by, like, a billion people. I don't think one young scientist could go rogue and press a button that was not supported by dozens of calculations.

And I get what you're going after here, and I dig where you're trying to end up, but this didn't get me here. You've got three pages of stiff dialogue and, because the point of your story is that we're caught in an endless loop, you repeat it twice more.

This left me with more questions than answers, and your last SUPER basically says "who created the universe?" which is the oldest question in, ahem, the universe, and I don't think you really added anything to the conversation.

These guys need to be rogue - perhaps they are brilliant hackers that have exploited a vulnerability in one of the CERN computers, and they can redirect the experiment? Maybe they're working for the Russians or the North Koreans? And in your conclusion, tell us more. Is this the only universe? Did they create another, or an infinite number? And hey, if I'm stuck in a loop, and I can't tell and don't realize it... why would I care?

Good luck with this -

AJR

Thank,s AJR.  I appreciate all the input.  All very sensible and taken seriously.  You can't always hit the nail on the head, and not every project captures everyone's imagination.  I will certainly be looking it over for ways to improve the execution.  That is why I posted it.  

I have to say that I wasn't really trying to 'add anything to the conversation', or even ask who created everything.  It all just sprung into my mind after I read an article saying physicists believe they might be able to reproduce the conditions of the Big Bang, thus actually producing a parallel universe.  The theory was that a universe would spring up from creating a black hole.  The theory believed that the black hole would only exist for a millisecond, producing the start of a universe 'on the other side', then vanish.  What I thought was, what if the experiment didn't actually create a new universe, but overwrote the existing one.  The experimenters would never know, but would just eventually be born to do the whole  thing over again.  It was at the end of the project that it occurred to me someone might ask, "Then who created their universe before they showed up?"  Hence the final SUPER.

Hey Steven,

So please don't take what I'm about to say to you the wrong way... but if you want to be a writer? You're ALWAYS adding to the conversation. There's no other reason to write.

So you described what gave you "the idea" of what to write. Recreating the Big Bang. But that's a pretty meaty subject. As I said, it wouldn't happen in a rogue fashion - meaning, one scientist is for it, and one is against it. You have to dig in. Think about what feels logical about this. Think about what the ramifications are.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by overwriting this universe. How can we "see" that in movie form?

So, movies are the stuff of drama. Not drama as in the genre, but real world events "dramatized." We can have a character that lives a completely mundane existence for all his days, except for one day. And that ONE DAY we spend with him, which is extraordinary, and contains watershed moments, is what drama is about. You have to find THAT in what you want to illustrate in this plot. Does that make sense?

Good luck with this -

AJR

This is terrific:

Quoted Text if you want to be a writer? You're ALWAYS adding to the conversation. There's no other reason to write.

More than terrific.  Nothing you said could be taken the wrong way, unless one isn't prepared to take constructive criticism.  I am...and everything you said just slammed right home.  Thank you so much for taking the time to give this awesome advice.  It's already started percolating ways to improve my script.  I won't reveal any of my ideas at this time, but once I've made progress, I will turn in a revision.

I've submitted the rewrite. It is a complete change, including the title and logline.  Not sure if Don will ovewrite this thread, or start a new one.

Steven, did you tick the box when resubmitting to Don?

This is an update to a script, logline, genre, or title already on the site.

Quoted from LC Steven, did you tick the box when resubmitting to Don? This is an update to a script, logline, genre, or title already on the site.

Yep, I did.

Well, this script made the quarterfinals of the Script Lab free screenplay contest but not the semi finals.  Not bad.  It made the top 7.6% out of 13,000+ scripts.  I feel good.

Hi Steven8

No matter the story. Good, bad or otherwise... halfway through I lost interest. You wrote an 11 pager which in fact is a 5 pager. Page 6 to 11 is a copy paste of 1 to 5.

I felt you could have shortened the "repeat" and still have come to the same ending / conclusion.

Well done on the quarterfinal.

All the best          

Thanks for taking a moment to give it a go.