Place Your Seatbacks And Tray Tables In The Upright Position by The Mad Hatter - A Mile Hi Wedding Hits some Stormy Weather.  Short, Drama

This certainly hits the mark of the bad guy is revealed at the end, the only problem is it is so far out of left field I didn't buy it. Why does the FAM just kill everyone? The reason we are given, is just because she could. It isn't enough for me.

Up until that point you did really well. I'd say there were way too many characters and I lost track of who was who, but you pulled off a busy flight with a Halloween party, a wedding and a terrorist which isn't easy to do. The story has a beginning, middle but no end, which is frustrating.

Just when I thought it was safe to fly again!

Wow. You crammed a lot into this. I'm not sure Houdini could have pulled that off. God knows, I'm not infallible. I could be dead wrong. but I think this suffers from too many characters. More to the point, I question, did you need that many Flight Attendants? If it was your intention to have a bunch of suspects to throw us off...it was a valiant effort, but I had her pegged right away. Caught this too; the homage to Dan Cooper...  who bailed out at an altitude of 8,000 feet. Nice. Not sure how I feel about the ending. Overall, I thought this was solid. Best of Irish Luck. :)

Sorry but your own bit of dialogue sums this one up ...

ELAINE
No reason. Just because I could.


There is no reason behind the story or all the characters. It's all unrelated. You can write but maybe this one was thrown together 'on the fly' mwahahaha.

Writer,

Well, that was adventurous. Holy character count, Batman. Didn't you want to throw some cheerleaders and a herd of sheep on that plane, too? JK. Anyway, this script had it all at 30,000 ft. Halloween was sort of an afterthought here. I would have been inclined to like this a touch more had I understood the reason why Elaine did what she did at the end. Any tension you had built wasn't sustained because you kept jumping around -- so much side story that you had to, I guess. Hard to cram this all into 12 pages.

That said, good effort but misses the mark because just too much going on left this story without much direction. For what it's worth, it was entertaining.

Steve

I lost count of the characters at 8 and lost my comprehension of the story at page 6.

It was a little convoluted. I just can't enjoy what I don't understand.

All the best

Hey Mad Hatter,

I was really quite enjoying this read - Flowed really well, clever humorous dialogue. Certainly efficiently written.

There was a planes worth of characters to get my head around - I don't think half of them needed names let alone characters descriptions, they hardly featured in the plot. I'm mainly talking about the flight attendants.

The marriage and consummation on the plane was great, I loved that.

The terrorist subplot did up the ante but I felt the federal Marshall found it way too easy to deal with it. Perhaps that could have been stretched out a bit.

As for the Marshall being the ultimate bad guy or bad girl - Not sure it worked for me, but the challenges criteria was very difficult to meet, so this is a good effort.
Good luck.

I gotta give it to you for the twist the obvious one was Farouk!

So kudos on that!

Packed everyone into that Airplane and then some. Now throw a Halloween party and a wedding in there... sure why not :D  

No... reason just because I could :D:D  yeah. For all your action packed, multiple characters you could have come full circle...  Maybe she hated the bride??? Had some weird fantasy for the future husband?? Anything would have better.

Good job on entering

Dangit. You had me curious, wondering how this was all going to play out... then, you just threw the door open and bailed.

"Because I can" is just not a satisfying character motivation.

As a result, any good work done before that was wasted.

Too bad, because there are some good bits in here to work with.

I love a suspenseful midair story! This hits some of those notes.

Realistically, the story ended on Page 5 before they left the ground, because someone nearby would've reacted much more forcefully to Farouk's comments (who is written too stereotypical, though I appreciate his timely motivation). The reveal of the true villain is a good touch but even with the little bit of backstory we have for them, there must be more motivation than "because I can" to satisfy an audience.

In a story with this many characters, consider introducing minor speaking roles in prose right before they speak (I had to scroll back in the script to remind myself who characters were, like Felix). Following on that, in a script this brief, consider consolidating minor speaking roles to avoid confusion for the reader.

A suggestion that has saved lines in my prose, and streamlined the read, is to look at any instance where a character "is doing" something, and see if they can "do" instead. ex: "Gail is escorting four nuns" vs "Gail escorts four nuns." A small thing, and there are times when you may need that 'is,' but it will improve the flow of your prose.

I'm glad I'm not planning to fly any time soon!

If you're writing a short, that takes place in a location that has a lot of people, then just create the smallest number of characters possible and stick with them throughout. This just has way too many characters to keep track of. By page 4 I couldn't even remember who anyone was. It seems like every page you introduce someone new. By page 5, I was wondering if you were going to introduce all 172 passengers by name. After that I just found myself skimming.

Writing was okay in parts. Some on the nose dialogue, or just irrelevant banter throughout. The setting is unique, I give you that, but the reveal was completely tacked on and without any motive.

Overall, this didn't work for me, sorry.

Hi writer,

The story had a twist at the end which I liked. The writing here is a bit off and I think it could use some polishing to make it leaner. Surely, there are a lot of characters, but considering it is a commercial aircraft, it is understandable. Although, I feel that the character introductions could be improved.

Good luck.  

This one appeared intriguing at the outset -- with its initial SUPER that feels both ominous and prescient -- but it quickly lost me with the character dump on page two.

That is not how it's done if you appreciate your reader.

And then we get Farouk, and oh boy, this character is...something.

And then this thing truly careens off the rails. I kind of respect the audacity of the storytelling, but this one just doesn't work for me.  It's too much to swallow.  

Hmm, it's competently written but I didn't buy it with the setup of the would be terrorist, air marshall etc...

And then the twist... sorry, not for me.

Alright... The title and logline. What's going on there? How does that happen? Not a good start...

The writing is MUCH better than the title and logline would suggest. Not perfect, quite a few typos, but nothing terrible.

The issue with this one, besides the awful title and logline, is that it's just far too bloated. I tuned out on page 2 when you dumped a handful of characters in my lap. Bizzare choice for a short script. It's hard to connect with any of these characters, let alone remember who is who.

"Just because I could." Yeah, that's a tough sell that you didn't earn.

This is a good effort, but you've got to keep at it. Read more and write more. You'll get there. :)

Setting up a Middle Easterner, Farouk, to be a terrorist seemed like the height of clichedom, until it turned out he was just a distraction, not the real terrorist. Having him go ragenuts gave Elaine the opportunity to convince Marvin, the captain, to drop the plane down to a lower altitude, which supposedly would somehow help calm Farouk down.

Having saved the day, makes it easier for Elaine to talk her way into the cabin, where she proceeds to kill both pilots. She then jumps out of the airplane, now flying at a lower, more survivable, altitude.

The problem with the story is that no way does Elaine get into the cockpit unless it’s an emergency. And the only way it’s an emergency is if Farouk makes his play. But how could Elaine depend on him to go nuts at just the right time? Does she control him in some way? Another thing: she dooms the plane and all it’s passengers “Just because I could,” isn’t going to fly in Hollywood or anywhere else.

Hey Writer,

This one started pretty shakily for me. A lot of -ing endings in the action lines, on the nose dialogue and characters introduced oddly. You gave them personality traits when introducing. Show, don't tell.

Overall, nice build up but the payoff doesn't land. The villain is a villain but with absolutely no reasoning behind it, it's hard to get behind. Lots of characters too for a 12 page story. The villain could've been literally anyone on the plane and the ending would've had similar impact.

Good luck,
Glenn

This one had too many characters, a lot of unnecessary dialog, and characters that didn't make sense to me.
I'm really sorry to be this harsh. It might be that Faroukh character, he was agravating.

It didn't work for me, the set up, the story, sorry to say.

It's a good exercise and you came up with something as opposed to me though, so very good on that.

And the writing itself was good, that's important. You know your tools.