The story I chose to review is the one where the main character has dreams about his female friend that died years ago (who he could never admit his love for while she was alive). Even though the actual story was emotional, I feel like it could be even better – I remember it (thought my memory of it may not be exactly right) as being just a transition from real life to dream to real life to dream (unknowingly this time) to real life again, which I feel was a little boring and undeveloped. If this were adapted, there would need to be something to make the real life scenes more than just waking up and thinking about it – maybe the character having a girlfriend and how his dreams have changed his opinions on their relationship.
There should also be some flashbacks to show how important the female friend was in the main character’s life – To make it less confusing, he could merely be talking about things she did for him with someone else instead of the setting shifting again into the past.
I’m not sure if the first dream really needs to be changed – If I remember correctly it was a quick, but effective look at the female friend on a sidewalk or something similar. I’m having trouble remembering how it ended, though. Did she get hit by a car here? Was that how she was supposed to have died? If that’s not in the story already, it might be effective to add that, to show how in the first dream he was not able to save her at all (he wasn’t really in the second dream either, but I’m about to talk about that).
I also don’t remember exactly what led up to the parking lot scene where the action starts in the second dream, but I definitely like the fact that we don’t know this one is a dream. It makes the audience feel like the main character can now actually help his friend and tell her he loves her, only to have those hopes whisked away again at the end. But that’s something I don’t quite get: I remember the protagonist being happy that he declared his love for the girl, and tried to save her, but should he really be happy? It was all just a dream; the situation is still exactly as it was in real life. I’m not sure what could be done to fix this, and I definitely like the happy ending we got, but it feels weird. Perhaps he could find some old possession of hers that brings closure, or something less cheesy (though it would make sense as a sort of “Seizing the Sword” moment).
Something that might also need to be better is the situation of the second dream. In real life, things in our dreams represent things in our lives, and the dreams in this story should be no different. I remember very clearly that the protagonist sees another girl running across the parking lot, shouting “They’ve got her!” This girl should have some sort of importance – It could be someone he knows in real life, maybe even that current girlfriend I suggested. And the dream’s shady villains too – maybe these people could represent some archetypes.
Though I should note that, despite all this criticism, I still thought it was a very good story.
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