An excerpt from my script review for I Saw the TV Glow which will be available 02/24/25:
2.) Plot Stability
Two things led to the mediocre story we were delivered here.
The first was the overall main plot.
I did not care about Owen and his story.
Past…present…future…none of it compelled me.
The only reason I kept reading was to finish it for this review.
That’s a huge problem, and something that relates to the previous section in that I don’t think the writer understood the type of story they were trying to tell.
Was it horror? Not really.
Sci-fi maybe. But is it really?
Was it a thriller? Maybe…but it certainly wasn’t thrilling.
This leads us to the second issue…bouncing back and forth between the present and various times in the past.
Listen, I’m not saying you can’t do this in your own story, but if you do you better make sure you got the first issue in this section covered.
If you’re not telling a story your reader identifies with or cares about, there’s little to no chance that they’ll suffer through the jarring jumps back and forth on your character’s timeline.
And don’t get me wrong, it was clearly defined what points in time we were in with Owen and Maddy, but again…I just didn’t care.
We’re being told a story of a young boy identifying with a Goosebumps-esque TV show from the 90s?
Okay, but it takes so long to get us to the lackluster twist of Maddy and Owen being the characters from that show and they’re stuck in the Midnight Realm with them watching the episodes that are supposed to be their memories…
Honestly, the first half of the story was Owen not fitting in and cheating/lying his way into watching the various episodes of the Pink Opaque.
And we don’t even really get to see it. Most of the action in the TV show we cut away to watch other people watch it.
That’s it really…and they made a film about this?
In conclusion to this section, remember to do two things with the plot of your story.
Make it worth caring about.
If you’re going the non-linear storytelling route, make sure it’s comprehendible.
Certainly there are other attributes your story should have, but without the first particularly, you’re just wasting your time.
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