The Condition by Maroun Rached (Maroun) writing as Anonymous - Short, Horror, Fantasy - A young introvert, suffering from a sleepwalking condition, learns that his affliction is much grimmer than he would have expected. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Read this one first as the logline jumped out at me.

Entertaining story that I think is way overwritten. The ending isn’t a big surprise, but it’s a fun ride getting there — however, there’s just a lot more here than there needs to be.

The scene with the mom doesn’t add any info that we didn’t get from the previous discussion. But I think it’s the better place for a lot of this exposition. All he needs to say to the girl is “I can’t come, I have a sleepwalking thing.” She tells him that’s silly, and he, wanting to be normal finally, thinks yeah, that is silly, and decides to sneak out. Then when he talks with the mom, we get more of a picture of how dangerous this thing might be. When we get to the restraints and the locked door and so on, there’s a lot more suspense now.

Other than that, I mainly just wanted to know the ‘why now’ — what’s special about this girl or this party that makes him finally sneak out of the house? We generally want to know why our story had to happen, and why it had to happen right this moment.

Again, entertaining story here, but I think there’s a lot of room to make it more lean and mean and maybe also fill out their world of this guy’s life a bit.

Fun first read for me, cheers!

The script starts with quite a lot of passive writing. E.g. instead of 'a bunch of students are having lunch' could be 'a bunch of boisterous students eat lunch' essentially watch out for word ending in 'ing.

But on to the story.

I think the interaction between Fay and Lowell is good, liked the banter and Fay's lines, but...

It's clear very early on where the story is going and exactly what is going to happen, so there isn't really a twist here as we know where it is going.

Well written but needs a twist for this OWC.

You love the ellipsis... It's actually VERY distracting from the script.

How does he tie himself to the bed???   Then Fay says his Mom ties him up ??

I didn't know sleepwalking was hereditary.

I kinda knew what was happening and I believe it was a Black Mirror episode but ignore it if you've never seen it.

The writing could be tightened up a lot and get rid of all those ellipsis or at least most of them.

Good job on entering
  

Ellipsis on toast...

Action scenes must show not tell.

Example "Fay is now flabbergasted."

Better to show us. "Like her jaw drops as she stands aghast or agape."

When you watch a movie you only see a visual and hear voices. Everything else is written for instruction purposes only.

So the Condition is he’s a werewolf, a teen-wolf to be exact, but his mother say’s it’s hereditary so would that make her a werewolf as well? His Mom is a slim 40-year-old woman… could she be a were-MILF? That’d be awesome.

The story is hit and miss for me cause there’s just so much werewolfy things out there already. Lowell could be a were-Goth, he’s a nerd but once a month he’s super cool and suave with the ladies and holy shit Fay didn’t see that coming, and wished she didn’t invite him to her party cause now his secrets out of the bag and all her friends want to get with him, leaving Fay in the wind, so to speak. That’s just an opinion of course of where this could go with a quick rewrite.

What you have here hits all the theme elements for this OWC, is just the logistics of the story as a whole leave me wondering how a 14-year-old kid who turns once a month is unaware of what really transpires on those moonlit nights all his life. And then the hereditary part leaves you wondering as to how his mother (or Father) keep themselves at bay when it was their time to metamorphosize into a raging beast. Best of luck.

There's some good stuff here and I enjoyed the read.  It felt restrained.
A couple of thoughts here.
I was certain you were setting Lowell up to be bullied. He's a misfit
and when Fay insisted on him coming to her party, it seemed her motivation
was disingenuous.
The other thought I had was to have Fay throwing a Halloween bash. Everybody
comes in costume. That could lend itself to some fun moments.
Finally, this is 2023 and selfie photos and videos are the norm. Maybe during
that news station report of a aftermath, there could be footage of a wild beast
caught going on the rampage. And Lowell actually sees the secret his mom has
been hiding.
Lots of room to go wolf and wild. I like the story for what it could be.

Writer,

Like' d the two character intros. Forgot to CAP Mrs. Gray. too much of this... some typos.

Enough of that. Props, sleeping walking does run in families... too much time spent on the heredity angle. We get it. I'd streamline that aspect of it.

No mention of Halloween, so you're gonna loose some points. A decent story overall. UK writer???

All the best,

Ghost

Good story but excessive esposition tells where we are going. The Illness is already a big deal. I cant imagine anything more shocking than the onset of cancer. Writer I would suggest that you try shortening this piece down to 3 pages at max. And come up with a different shock matrix at the end. Otherwise it’s an excellent bit of horror.

For once in my life I saw the twist coming from the get-go. Maybe it's because I have the exact same condition, at least according to one of my last ex-girlfriends. She also claimed that all men were dogs.

Anyway, I enjoyed the story.

I don't think the word "weekend" has a hyphen in it.

I think you telegraphed the ending from the get go. He should have never had the conversation with the girl about why he couldn't come because of his condition.  Right there we know what's going to happen so it's not a shock when it materializes. a bit of overdiscussion throughout the script.  Would use a good paring down and maybe a little misdirection will help this a great deal.  Best of luck with it.

I really liked this story.  However, the first hint of "horror" I got as a Mom was the description of a 14 year old's party involving booze and no parents!  Now that's horror!  Anyway, a couple of nits:  As others have noted, there was no mention of Halloween - it would have been easy to denote the party as a Halloween party complete with costumes to hit that requirement.  Also, in your title you failed to capitalize "Condition".  That stuck out first thing to me.  IDK, maybe there was a reason -?  Overall, as above, I liked this story and maybe it could be fleshed out a bit in a longer version.  Good job writer and thanks for sharing!

Hey Writer,

I think this was really nicely written, a breeze to read. I was loving the dialogue between Fay and Lowell, it was humorous and awkward, everything I like in a dialogue scene but it was too long. Don't think it should have been that long given the limited page count.

Fay didn't seem to play any part in the last third of the story which I thought was a little strange given how central she was to the beginning.

Whilst the ending wasn't a big surprise I still enjoyed getting there, definitely appreciated your writing style!

Two things:
The dialogue felt a little forced and not how I would expect a conversation between teenagers to go down.

I saw the ending coming a mile away.

It's tough though only being given 6 pages so I totally understand. Good effort nonetheless!

This one holds few surprises.  It also holds no Halloween whatsoever.

Having read through nearly all of these scripts by now, I find diminishing patience for those not meeting the most basic criteria.

It is written well enough, but solidly middle-of-the-pack for this OWC batch of scripts.

Writer,

There’s a lot to like here, but I’ll start with the bad. Character descriptions should be toned way down. Elipses elipses elipses! Way too many of them, for Chrissake! Soon as I saw the full moon outside I knew exactly what was going to happen. That said…

This is a great premise and, if handled differently, would be an awesome script. A few tweaks here and there should get this in really good shape. I hope you do. It’s worth it!

Steve