(Ariana is sitting on the bed and fiddling with her fingers, feeling anxious)
Ariana: Marc, he's been gone for almost an hour now. What do we do? We're gonna get our asses kicked if you don't act now.
Marc: I don't know... i just need to think of a plan. Just give me a second.
(pause)
Ariana: Let's just call him, we can't avoid him forever. He's definately going to find out one way or another.
Marc: No we can't do that. He'd kill us.
(Ariana stands up moving closer to Marc)
Ariana: Think about it Marc, he'd kill us either way. We've lost the boy. We've lost the job. The Boss doesn't tolerate this kind of stuff. That's why he hired us.
Marc: So what're we going to do? We can't tell him and we can't ignore him.
Ariana: I don't know... I can't believe he escaped. How could he anyway? This place is like a prison and there are barely any windows.
Marc: And he knew we had guns. He was a brave boy. He would've been a good addition to our group.
Ariana: Yeah, he would've.
(pause)
Marc: Okay so where is he most likely to be? He doesn't have any friends or family here... Well he doesn't even know where we are.
Ariana: He wouldn't've gone to the police. We would know by now. I mean Curt would've called us. Right?
Marc: Yeah. So that's off our list. And he can only be in this town cos of all the fences and security around here.
Ariana: So are we going to search for him? It probably won't take long. I mean, he can't go to the 'neighbours'.
Marc: (uncertainly) Yeah... Yeah we could do that.
(Ariana grabs her coat off the peg on the wall and heads towards the door)
Ariana: Come on, the longer we leave it the deeper we'll get in this situation.
Marc: But won't he be there? The Boss, i mean. He's waiting for us. We're already about (looks at watch) 10 minutes late. You know he doesn't tolerate that.
Ariana: (starting to get frustrated) Well i don't see you coming up with any great ideas!
Marc: I say we just wait. The boy has nowhere to go. He's bound to get scared and come running back.
Ariana: listen, why don't you stay here and wait while i go and look for him. Okay?
Marc: (uncertainly) yeah okay... don't take long.
(As Ariana reaches for the door, it bursts open. A man of around mid 40's stands there, gun in hand, aimed at Ariana. He shoots her right in the middle of her eyes and straight after shoots Marc.)
The Boss: (to the bodyguards on his sides) Dispose of the bodies.
This is a piece of astonishing verve and enjoyment, which really translates to the reader. I am very impressed with your writing of naturalistic dialogue and the breadth of voice; you’ve also taken a set of characters which could be clichéd – the shady members of a gang – and made them believable, even likeable.
ReplyDeleteYour punctuation and grammar are well-chosen and thought-out, with just a couple of slipups with things like capitalisation of “I” and so on. One thing I would say is that while, on the whole, you have cleverly managed to avoid over-explaining – and the arrival of the mysterious Boss at the end is great, darkly comic in its suddenness and starkness – sometimes his character is a bit too much discussed between two characters who obviously know him, or know of him, well. It’s about getting the balance between allowing the audience in on the information without having two people reiterate to each other what they both must already know: things like Marc saying “you know he doesn’t tolerate that” and “that’s why he hired us”. Unhelpfully, I’m not sure how to remove these things without leaving the audience mystified, so my advice would be to keep in one or two instances, so that the menace is hinted at rather than explained more than once.
Everything about this is fresh and interesting – even the names – which is really impressive, given that, as I said before, it’s dangerous territory in that it is classic material for tense drama. But you’ve even got away with calling a character The Boss, for which the strength and naturalism of your writing is to be thanked. Very well done.
Hello you,
ReplyDeleteYes I can only really agree with Penny...unhelpfully. Absolutely astonishing. Minimalist. Naturalist. Darkly Comic. Moving. Detached narration and absolutely no sense of an obtrusive narrator; just two very well fleshed-out, realistically flawed characters. The fact that there is so much plot information which you don't tell is establishes very quickly that what you have crafted is a character piece, and that Marc and Ariana are the main characters...despite the fact that in the objective overall scheme of things in this world you have created, the two main characters would instead be the Boy (protagonist), and the Boss (antagonist)...with Marc and Ariana as lackeys who can be killed off at a moment's notice so that the story can continue until the Boss gets his comeuppance. But you have very cleverly approached this from a different angle so that, once Marc and Ariana have died...nothing else is important...the finding of the boy is not important. The bringing of justice to the Boss is not important. In a sense, therefore, what you have very neatly demonstrated is the antithesis of the common Hollywood mold of storytelling...where an objective purpose is presented and the decision has already been made by the writers as to whose life is important and who'se isn't. In this, however, you have taken two less colourful characters...bonded us to them...and then made us feel the thrust of their demise, as surely as they felt it...so that we don't care about the rest of the story. Basically, therefore, what you have done, I feel, is to engender real empathy in your readers...which is an extremely difficult skill to master, and one which is at the forefront of good writing...and the fact that you have made your readers empathise with two people who are not drawn from a common walk of life is even more impressive.
The only one tiny comment I wanted to make in regards to improvement is just a line that always sticks out for me when anyone writes it, "He was a brave boy. He would've been a good addition to our group"...which has become so over-used it has become a massive cliche...but because your surrounding setting is so well-written and believable...all it should take to fix this is to just re-word it slightly to give it that little bit more naturalism, for example, "Brave kid. We could've used a brave kid."
But anyways, ignore me and my little niggles if you fancy...overall I feel you have produced...in just a tiny amount of space...a world and two characters that I could instantly believe in and empathise with, which bodes extremely well for a career in script-writing if you choose to pursue one,
Well done,
Eoghan
Thanks for your brilliant comments and i appreciate anything you might want to suggest that will improve my work in the future.
ReplyDeletecrazylike_woah :)
Hi crazylike_woah. Sorry for this late comment. I've just started a new job and haven't had a lot of time this week.
ReplyDeleteI really agree with Eoghan's comments. 'Minimalist. Naturalist. Darkly Comic. Moving.' - in a nutshell! To me, it had that 'Sin City' feeling too it (... you probably shouldn't have watched that film as it is rated 18... but once you turn 18, I highly recommend it.)
Again, echoing Eoghan, I thought it was very inventive to focus on this (basically) side characters in the bigger story. The ending was a great and shocking crescendo, highlighting how dispensable the characters were (and justifying their unease, which in turn justifies the tension that built).
However, I disagree slightly with Penny as I felt that some of the dialogue felt a bit unnatural. I felt that the characters were regurgitating facts that they both already knew, just for the sake of the audience. This is a very tricky problem to get round. Try to think 'what are the ESSENTIAL things that the audience need to know to understand what is going on', then think about the most natural and effective way of portraying those things.
'We're gonna get our asses kicked if you don't act now.'
'He'd kill us.'
'That's why he hired us.'
- This sort of dialogue I thought was unnecessary. You can create tension without having to tell us *why* they are tense. We know they have let someone escape. Drop a few stage directions in like [Marc checked the ammo in his gun] to let us know that these guys are immerse in a dangerous gang. That way we can figure out for ourselves that they are nervous because their necks are on the line.
'The Boss doesn't tolerate this kind of stuff. '
- This line is all you need. It makes the three lines above redundant for the same reasons I've mentioned above.
In all, great piece. Lots of tension, original angle, good ending. But could do with a bit of tightening up.