Holly's Folly by John Dillinger - Short, Drama, Crime - A professional party planner's plan to turn a negative into a positive backfires. 4 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

My humble opinion, etc.

I could really easily visualize this in my mind on what was going on.  Some interesting little touches kept my attention. The writing is pretty good. Amusing, a nice light touch.  But not really laugh out loud funny.  By the end I was hoping for some sort of twist.  Didn't get it.  

Anyway, I like what you were going for.  Good work on meeting the parameters!


Ghost

Tsk tsk, Holly.

This was a fun, breezy read. Fast paced, amusing, and SUPER topical. I wish you were making this stuff up. Loved the line: "In Texas, herds get slaughtered". Ouch!

Quoted Text DEPUTY SHERIFF (CONT'D) Almost two hundred Covid 19 positives are directly linked to your party. And a couple of deaths. You’re under arrest, ma’am. Detectives at the station will Mirandize you.

They Mirandize you at arrest. But why have this at all??  - not needed.

I found the story a bit pedestrian. Sorry.  An anti-lockdown gal has a party and gets arrested.  It might be all you could do with it given how much the lock down or no lock done conversations are already in our heads - hope that makes sense. Was just looking for some oomph somewhere.

So I’m on the fence about this one.  It seems more like a political commentary than a script, but that’s fine, as long as you make the script interesting.  For the most part you did that.  I do think the conversation with Vicky wasn’t needed.  You basically had the same information in Holly’s convo with her dad, so I would lose the Vicky sequence and save yourself half a page.  

The writing is pretty solid and the ending is satisfying enough, so I’ll say you gave this one a good effort here.  Best of luck with it.

You got a lotta slug problems.

And now I'm going to be really boring by giving you a couple of tips you might find useful...
AMBULANCE, SIREN
blaring

The actual sound, if you're going to cap sounds, should be BLARING, in this case.

Also, when capitalising - Dad should be capped if you can replace Dad with the person's actual name e.g.,

Okay so far, daddy.  - Daddy should be capped in this example.

I’m getting a call
from my dad.
(beat)
That one's correct, cause you wouldn't write: I'm getting a call from my Tom, Dick, or Harry.

Hi, dad.
But this ^ again, that should be capped. You can replace it with Hi, Tom. Get it?

Bit patchy, story wise. Just not enough to it imho.
Gary's spot on about 'Vicky' being redundant.

This was amusing:  ;D
HOLLY
I was just trying to promote herd
immunity.
DEPUTY SHERIFF
In Texas, herds get slaughtered.

On the fence about this one because I do love political commentary in scripts.

So if I have to flesh out the logic of this, a COVID-themed party with 200 attendees would have been national news and there would have been tons of cell phone video of it. So the expository call to Vicky was probably not needed. I liked the call to her father, I think that was needed to deliver the motive for throwing the party.

I have trouble buying that she's anywhere near her brick-and-mortar store with all this heat on her, though.

Also, nitpicky, what do you mean when you describe a FACE "MASK"? Since the mask protects the other person, i would think that the Statey would have a face "shield" on, since he's looking for people who aren't wearing masks and thus not protecting the other person.

AJR

This one didn't do it for me. It was a decent read but it just felt like a lot explaining going on to provide context. The premise is relatable, we're seeing a lot of stuff like this on the news -- a pro athlete (I think Dak Prescott from the Cowboys) was questioned by police for having a party.

This wasn't bad by any means, I just didn't find it very entertaining.

PAGE 1:

Quoted Text HOLLY (CONT'D) Yeah, there was a fake-news van outside my store an hour ago. I had to sneak out the back door. The street’s spooky empty, Vicky.

Nitpicking here, but this dialogue sounded strange to me, specifically the last three words -- "spooky empty, Vicky". Not sure if it was purposely written like that for comedic effect, but I immediately thought of "Airplane" and that whole, "Roger, roger" scene.

PAGE 2:

Quoted Text DAVID, a graying man of 50, looks out at Holly, a worried frown on his face.

Where is he looking out at Holly from? Is this a face time call?

Quoted Text Holly dives behind another car as an AMBULANCE, SIREN blaring, shoots past. Once it disappears down the street, Holly stands and resumes her walk.

Not sure if "dives" is the right word. Maybe ducks? As is, it sounds like she, well, dove behind a car, to the ground. A little dramatic.

PAGE 3:

Quoted Text smack into a DEPUTY SHERIFF. He’s a severe-looking man of 30, in a khaki uniform, cowboy boots, stetson hat, and has a tooled leather holster holding a six-shooter. The fivepointed star pinned to his shirt gleams brightly. And he’s wearing a face mask. His sheriff’s car is angle-parked to the curb behind him.

A bit of an eye-sore.

Quoted Text DEPUTY SHERIFF (CONT'D) Almost two hundred Covid 19 positives are directly linked to your party. And a couple of deaths. You’re under arrest, ma’am. Detectives at the station will Mirandize you.

I know the circumstances are strange, but I'm pretty sure he HAS TO read her miranda rights if she's under arrest.

The dialog is on the nose and
And if I wanted to film it myself I wouldn't be able to. But it does say "ideally" in the requirement, so I don't penalize for that.

But these are my two major gripes.

The dialog is a bit one. It sounds stilted and revolves around the same thought. I wish it was more, had some texture. Otherwise it feels like they shout at each ohter constantly.

Not a huge fan of 'Political Drama', which is pretty evident here. The reason for this is, they get pretty talky, which in this case is also evident.

Few suggestions:

1) Work on your sluglines. They are insufficient at the very least. A script without proper sluglines is like a pizza without base.

2) Capitalize your nouns and verbs carefully.

It is understandable that a political drama is difficult to write. On the top of it, it is more difficult to accumulate a political drama( not a hardcore one) in 4-pages. So, kudos for that.

Nice effort.

Good luck.

This raises an interesting topic of what should be allowed to reopen, and what consequences can arise.

The clash between the law, the police, common sense, jobs, freedom, safety etc all being played out

Story wise this needs a tidy for me, and some focus. I would like to know Holly more, understand her dilemma etc the party could have been filmed for example. Maybe the authorities want to know who was there to track folk down, but as it was illegal, say, she is reluctant

Some decent options to play with

All the best

I like the core idea here: the criminal party-thrower. Very much "of the times."

But, the execution just didn't hit for me. I never felt much tension, which, for a drama, is crucial.

In fact, it felt like it was trying to be a comedy. Maybe because the weirdness of parties being criminal acts... it just naturally pulls that direction.

Of course, it's a serious issue... I just never felt that seriousness come through.

This is an interesting combination of light and breezy and sinister. Holly seems harmless, until it is revealed that she's actually caused a lot of harm. Nice interaction with the deputy--good lines. Texas was a great place to set this. Maybe a bit more tension can be added somewhere, but I can't quite place where that might be. What if Holly got a little violent or tried to run away from the officer? She's more of a flat-out criminal than we imagined.

This one just didn't do much for me. Some on-the-nose dialogue and clunky at times. I was hoping for a big twist or reveal but it just didn't pay off. It was like live feed from the nightly news.

I see what you were going for here, but IMHO, you need to have a better balance between the two sides for it to work so it doesn't come off as too one sided. This could've worked a lot better if your characters were a little more interesting. They both seem pretty bland here. Better more interesting characters would make for a more interesting argument from both.

Writing was fine. I had no problem following along.

Hi!

"A professional party planner's plan…"

Why do you sell humor/irony when doing crime?

Title tends same direction btw

Reads like a comedy, satire, about the situation we're in.

I liked the deputy sheriff character.

The two last dialogue blocks worked very well and made it somehow balanced while I originally feared you hammer a one-sided sentiment at the end. Not easy to achieve that. Kudos for having found this structural twist-

All best

Meets the criteria but too on the nose political commentary.

You have a strong opinion and want to get it out to the world, I get that. But a good writer coaxes the audience into a great story and gets the message across in subtle ways using subtext and other methods. So in the end, the audience thinks they've watched an enjoyable piece of entertainment and, whether they realise it or not, they take the message with them.