r/writingfeedback

Approx. 4.5 screenplay pages (standard formatting).

INT. ART DECO CINEMA — FOYER — NIGHT

STOLEN VALOUR glows on the readerboard. Beneath it, in a gold frame lit from above: THE PHOTOGRAPH.

A red carpet climbs the stairs. Limousines. Flashbulbs. A fashionable crowd.

EXT. BACK OF CINEMA — NIGHT

A single shaft of light cuts across the back alley from an exit door, propped open with a half-brick.

INT. CINEMA FOYER — NIGHT

A symmetrical, brightly lit lobby. A wide RED CARPET runner leads up three stairs to a BAR, flanked by a black-and-Polished BRASS HANDRAILS.

DEREK arrives arm-in-arm with a glamorous companion. Photographers snap away.

Waiters serve champagne.

LEO approaches, frazzled, checking his watch.

DEREK
(low voice)
Leo. You seen Marcus?

LEO
I was going to ask you the same! Marcus was going to say a few words before the kickoff.

DEREK
For fuck’s sake.

LEO
It’s your project, darling.

DEREK
Okay, okay.

Dereks companion takes his arm. Photographers call for a pose. They oblige.

At the edge of the crowd, a cameraman with a long lens aims past the others — at Derek.

A flicker of recognition. GRAHAM?

Flashbulbs erupt. Derek is briefly blinded.

When his vision clears, the cameraman is gone.

INT. THEATRE — NIGHT

LEO stands before the screen with a microphone.

LEO
Good evening. I’m Leo Hart, director of STOLEN VALOUR.

Applause.

LEO (CONT'D)
Our wonderful producer Marcus hasn’t arrived yet so….

LEO (CONT'D)
In his absence, I’d like to bring up the writer of STOLEN VALOUR — Derek Grassman.

Applause. Derek takes the stage. He looks comfortable, at home.

DEREK
Thank you, Leo.

He looks out at the room. Takes his time.

DEREK (CONT'D)
Thank you all for coming — and to everyone who helped bring this film to the screen. I’d hoped Marcus would be here tonight, but in his absence, I’ll borrow his favourite line: the show must go on.

Derek takes his seat. Rapturous applause as the lights dim. PEARL AND DEAN music plays.

Quiet.

ON SCREEN: The photograph fills the frame. Debussy — Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune — fills the theatre with sound.

The audience watches, entranced. Light from the screen washes across their faces as the music swells. The magic of cinema for 60 seconds.

Then — a MOBILE PHONE rings out.

Sharp. Obscene in the silence.

A few heads turn.

MAN IN FRONT
(loud whisper)
Off! Turn it off!

The ringing stops.

A beat.

It starts again.

WOMAN IN MIDDLE ROW
Unbelievable. Some people.

All heads turn toward the source: a MAN slumped in his seat.

A FEMALE EXECUTIVE beside him nudges him, irritated.

FEMALE EXECUTIVE
Sir? Your phone.

No response.

An USHER hurries over, torch low. The beam catches the man’s face.

MARCUS dead face is bloated and distorted, his skin tight and waxy.

Marcus breast pocket glows as the phone starts ringing again.

The usher freezes. The torch beam drops.

The body lolls sideways into the Executive’s lap. The hat falls off.

She SCREAMS.

The usher’s torch now swings to her horrified face.

A ripple of unease spreads through the audience. People begin to rise.

The phone starts ringing for a third time.

On screen, the film plays on.

CUT TO:

EXT. CINEMA — NIGHT — LATER

Chaos spills out. Police lights strobe across the façade. The readerboard still shines: STOLEN VALOUR.

Sirens wail. Shocked guests huddle on the steps, some still clutching champagne flutes.

The sign’s glow catches Derek’s face as he steps into the night air.

DI GULCH climbs the steps toward him. As she passes, she holds Derek’s gaze a moment — cold, unhurried — then continues inside.

GRAHAM photographs the scene from across the street.

He lowers the camera and disappears into the night.

I have been murdered by my classmates forty-nine times, and the worst part is that it’s never the same person twice.

By now, I have memorized the layout of Sehwa Private Academy perfectly.
I know where every flesh-eating monster spawns and how to keep my classmates alive. To them, I look like an omnipotent genius who can predict the future. I could easily carry them all to the exit.

But the System doesn't like easy, happy endings.

To keep the Viewers entertained, it secretly assigns one student as The Warden’s Hound at the start of every reset, granting them monster-tier stats and a single objective: slaughter the class from the shadows. And every time I die, the role shuffles to someone new.

In Loop 48, it was the class president. In Loop 49, it was my crush.

In Loop 50? It could be the quiet girl I just rescued, or the friend currently handing me a bottle of water.
Memorizing the school map is useless against the paranoia. My mind is eroding, my lives are running out and I can't trust a single smile.

[The Graduation Elimination Game has begun. Total Survivors Allowed: 1]

something has compelled me to write this journal, in the hope that somehow, it might save me.

On an ordinary night, the kind where I would sit on my balcony with my newly acquired telescope, the air soft against my skin as I looked up at a sky I never thought would change. I had always been interested in astronomy, not in a scientific way, but in the way a child looks at the Moon and feels like there is something behind it, something just out of reach, hidden behind a colourless wall that refuses to give anything away.

My tracking app told me Saturn was visible tonight. Clear enough for anyone with a telescope to see it. I am one of the people who finally spotted it for themselves.

I saw it then, 

At first I thought something was wrong with the telescope, or my eyes, because Saturn was red. Not faintly tinted, not slightly off-colour, but a deep, impossible crimson that felt like it did not belong to anything natural. The storm at its pole, the hexagonal formation I had read about so many times, was no longer still. It seemed to be moving, slowly rotating, like an eye turning toward me. Not toward Earth. Toward me.

For a moment I felt something I still cannot explain. Awe, comfort, recognition, all mixed together in a way that made my thoughts feel heavy. Then that feeling turned wrong. I stumbled back from the telescope and knocked it over, and I did not stay outside after that. I went straight to bed and hid under the covers like I was a child again, trying not to think about what I had seen. Eventually I slept.

And the dream began.

I was standing on a cliff-like surface beneath a sky that was no longer a sky. Everything was covered in thick red fog, the air smelling of sulphur and something else I can only describe as burnt meat. Above me there was a shape forming, a hexagon made of pulsing red light.

It did not behave like anything in reality should. It did not shift with perspective. It did not change angle depending on where I stood. It remained perfectly fixed in the sky, as if it existed independently of my perception. Even when I tried to move, it stayed exactly where it was.

It also cast a shadow that did not match its position.

That was the first moment I understood something was wrong, because even in dreams things should still follow some kind of logic. Then the sound began.

At first it was like recordings of Saturn’s storms, low and distant, almost natural. But it quickly changed. It became deeper, layered, and wrong in a way I cannot properly explain. It stopped feeling like sound and started feeling like pressure inside my mind, I might sound crazy but it felt like something was pulling at my thoughts from the inside. 

Then it became closer. And I was screaming.

Not alone. The sky itself seemed to react, as though everything around me had become aware of the same thing at once. Something inside my mind snapped, not painfully, but suddenly, and I was pulled back into my body.

I woke to screaming.

Laughing. Crying. All at once.

George. He was my neighbour and had always been loud. Drunk most nights, talking to himself, sometimes shouting, sometimes laughing for no reason at all. It was not unusual to hear noise from his room. But this was different. The noise was layered and wrong.

I could have sworn I saw a flash of red from outside my window. 

It was several days before I saw George again. When I did, he was unrecognisable.

Everything about him had changed. The bottles were gone. The smell of alcohol was gone. Even the chaos of his apartment had been erased. It looked cleaned, almost sterile, like it had never belonged to him at all. He was sober. Fully lucid. Present in a way he never had been before. It was strange but not unnatural.

His voice had changed too. Calm, controlled, almost too precise, like every word had been chosen carefully before being spoken. Even his appearance was different. His hair, once messy and unwashed, was now neatly cut and styled. Nothing about him looked accidental anymore. It was just so strange.

We spoke in the hallway when I came back from work. Normal conversation at first. Small talk. The kind you use when you are not sure what else to say. “Nice night, isn’t it?” the casual stuff. I noticed something behind his eyes. Something moving. I believe I saw a worm of some sorts crawling just behind his glassy pupil. At first I told myself I was imagining it. 

His iris was changed. Not quickly. Not violently. But slowly, The perfect circle became. Six-sided. A hexagon. I forced a smile, and excused myself, then went back into my apartment without looking at him again. Something I forgot to mention. Something I only began to notice after all of this started.

Saturn is getting closer. Am I the only one that can see it? The big red ball in the sky?.

It has been getting more noticeable recently but nobody has noticed it. 

They always looked up when they saw it. They pointed sometimes. But then they moved on, as if it was normal. As if the sky had always been that way and I was the only one remembering something different. I'm not sure if they are playing a cruel trick on me but I need to find out.

I have started hearing it recently, the sound of screaming. It reverberates across all my walls. Sometimes it sounds like it's coming from the sky, the walls. And now it's in my head.

A sound like storms, but distorted beyond recognition. I think it's listening to me. Maybe I can communicate with it?.

I woke up this morning with a sour taste in my mouth. I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, trying to understand what I was seeing. My reflection was wrong. I was seeing myself from above, even though the mirror was directly in front of me. At first I thought it was exhaustion, or stress, or something my mind would correct if I ignored it. But it did not correct itself. It simply stayed wrong. 

Things are getting weird, I’ve been noticing light seeping through the cracks in pavements and in the walls. 

People in town are changing.

I saw a man walking down the street in a perfect hexagon. Not turning corners normally, just walking in six equal movements, as if something else was guiding him. When he noticed, he stopped for a moment, confused, then continued walking in a straight line as if nothing had happened. But I know what it is.

And always, Saturn above it all.

Now it fills most of the sky.

I can feel it even when I am not looking at it, like pressure behind everything. Like the world is being slowly pressed into a shape it was not meant to take. Sometimes I hear it clearly now. Not just storms, but something that feels like screaming folded inside itself. It does not sound natural. It sounds aware.

Outside my apartment, I saw George again.

I could have sworn he was smiling at me. His eyes look hollow and lifeless but his body was perfect. They did not speak. They just watched. I do not think they are trying to hurt me.

They need me.I do not know why yet.

But I understand something now that I did not before.

I don't think I was dreaming.

Saturn is now so large that I cannot tell where the sky ends anymore. It is no longer something above us. It feels like something surrounding us. Something that has been slowly arriving without anyone noticing until it was already here. Still nobody has noticed, they still walk around not saying a word about it. And when i mention it they look confused, I think they are in on it, they know more than they are saying. 

Saturn has disappeared, but the screaming hasn't stopped. I can feel it in the depth of my mind, I think it has swallowed us whole, I can see it in the crimson red tint of the clouds. George has noticed my erratic behaviour. I think he is on to me. I hope that whoever reads this might know more, I need answers, I need an escape.

Well, I wasn't expecting this. When I decided to start writing seven months ago, I was looking forward to putting some ideas to paper. I had written some short stories and some really short stories, but the idea of a novel was daunting.

I've just written the last word of my approx. 59,000 word first draft and feel proud of how dedicated I have been to it. Obviously, now the hardest part begins. Cutting, restructuring and possibly realising it's not very good at all. Hopefully I read through it and it surprises me.

I'll probably give it a month or so before I come back to it, but I just wanted to share this feat with the group and now I will go out for some beers. Cheers! Any second draft advice is more than welcome.

please enjoy...

GRIEF

Hello, I am Nicole Biers. I am 29 and live in Toronto, Canada. I run a podcast called Stereotypes Squad(would love a listen, btw). I edit and upload everything myself to Spotify, and I’m mildly successful. I make enough to get by and don’t need another job right now.

I am not, and have never been, suicidal. I could never really understand that kind of thought.

But four months ago, my on-air partner, Main Yestown, died by suicide at 31. It came completely out of nowhere. He seemed fine. Normal. We had just finished planning the next set of episodes.

After it happened, everything changed. I got the messages everyone gets in situations like that. “Sorry for your loss.” “Let me know if you need anything.” And then the numbers started dropping. Listeners disappeared faster than I expected. It felt like the world moved on while I was still stuck in the moment it happened.

We used to have a routine. Tuesdays were recording days. Wednesdays were editing. Fridays were uploads. Main used to joke that I ran the podcast like a hospital schedule, like if one thing slipped the whole operation would collapse. I didn’t think much of it then. Now I do.

After he died, I tried to keep going. I really did. But I couldn’t focus. I’d sit in front of the editing timeline for hours and not move anything. Sometimes I’d just listen to my own voice over and over until it stopped sounding like me.

That’s when things started to slip. I started looking for answers. Not in a dramatic way. Just… trying to understand. Why someone would do that. What it feels like. What leads up to it. I told myself it was research. Curiosity. Nothing more.

Eventually I found a site.

I won’t describe it in detail. I don’t want anyone else going down the same path I did. It wasn’t obvious at first. It looked like a normal platform with categories and uploads, like any other media site. That was the worst part about it. At first I only looked briefly. Then longer. Then I started going back when I couldn’t sleep.

I told myself I was just trying to understand Main. That if I watched long enough, something would make sense. It didn’t.

I should have stopped then. But I didn’t. I made an account. I started spending hours there. It became part of my routine without me even deciding it was.

My podcast started suffering. I cancelled recordings. Stopped replying to sponsors. I kept telling myself I’d fix it once I figured everything out in my head. But the site started feeling less like something I was choosing to visit and more like something that was waiting for me. And I keep getting the feeling that if I stop watching, I’ll miss something important.

Is this a good idea?