Poison for sale

Ok, only ever put a few thing's up here and you have pretty much hated both of them (a sketch and sitcom extract) I have a day off from college thought I would post this one.

SCENE EXT. A MAN IN A CHEAP SUIT WALKS UPTO THE DOOR OF A HOUSE.

HE KNOCKS ON THE DOOR A WOMEN ANSWERS.

SALESMEN -(smiling like a prat) Hello I'm John and I'm here to solve all your poison need's.

WOMEN - I'm sorry your selling what now?

SALESMEN - why poison of course, for all your assassination and home needs.

WOMEN - Ok I get it your selling poison, I don't want poison.

SALESMEN - Oh but you do! You never know when you need a vial of small pox; I bet you want to finish that husband of yours. (chuckles)

WOMEN - For the last time I don't want poison!

SALESMEN - Ok then here's the prices...

WOMEN PULLS OUT A GUN AND SHOOTS THE SALESMEN. HE FALLS TO THE FLOOR DEAD.

WOMEN - luckily the gun salesmen came first.

HUSBAND WALKS IN.

HUSBAND - Honey I'm hom...

WOMEN SHOOTS HUSBAND.

WOMEN - Maybe I should have used the poison this is going to leave a right mess (in deep thought).

END.

Judgement time.

'WOMEN - Ok I get it your selling poison, I don't want poison.' was unnecessary as was 'WOMEN - For the last time I don't want poison!' as there wasn't the friction build-up for her impatience. Also, the sketch should have ended on "Luckily the gun salesmen came first".

I don't normally argue with criticism, but the friction was built up, for one the women owns a gun so she clearly isn’t a clear-headed person and secondly the salesmen does go on a bit about what he is selling.

Mine was just an observation and as this is a critique thread I thought this was what you wanted. But OK, fair enough, you write what you want to write and I'm sure it will be an excellent piece of writing.

Paul, I agree with Baumski on:

'WOMEN - Ok I get it your selling poison, I don't want poison.'

She does get too frustrated too quickly, but it's easy to fix, for me it would be fine with just 'I don't want poison', then carry on as normal.
At first when I read it I didn't like it. Felt it was trying too hard to be 'a bit crazy. But when I read it and imagined it differently in my head I quite liked it.

I do have an issue with this line though:

'WOMAN - luckily the gun salesmen came first.'

For me that's making the joke too obvious, sort of explaining it. That's not a biggie to rectify either, think you just need to find a different way of saying it, you know, a more subtle way to tell the viewer what's happened here. I'll repost if I can think of anything myself.

I really like the last line about it making a mess, thought that was a nice touch.

I think just generally work on making the dialogue sound a bit more natural. Apart from that I ended up liking this sketch.

Baumski I'm not sure Paul was arguing or trying to rubbish your advice, just explaining where he was coming from. I think confusion came when you used the word 'argue' Paul

Gotta agree with Baumski on this one. The salesman doesn't go overboard re. the poison. He has to be really annoying, regardless of whether the woman is unhinged. You jump too quickly from the woman saying 'I don't want any poison' to the woman pulling out a gun and shooting the salesman. You need to extend the argument between them and think about taking it in a different direction. At the moment it feels like you've put together a quick exchange between the pair and then decided that you're not sure where to go with it, hence the predictable 'woman pulls out gun' ending.

Can I just make another observation and quite an important one at that. If the new sketch show project that we're all going to be working on is going to come to anything, it would help if we, as highly talented comedy writers, be a lttle less sensitive to constructive criticism.

Paul, I liked the general ide. An alternative sketch could be the salesman ringing the bell, listing all his poisons and then the woman saying something like 'no thanks, the antidote salesman came yesterday.' Just a thought.

It appears the people have spoken. I'll go for a re-write on this one possibly increasing the length of the sketch to justify the women getting in a mood.

I'm not over sensitive if you mean me baumski, I personally like this sketch, but I was looking for views so it’s my own fault when I get people who don't like it. I like this website more for rating peoples work because you don't pull any punches. 4laughs can be a bit to much on the side of "protecting feelings" which doesn’t help anyone at the end of the day except egos

Anyways, I'll get on a re-write. Ta.

Yeah I like that ajp29.

Paul, you're a gentleman.

I just read this through with a mate telling him something along the lines of "I think this aint to bad" and as we both sat and read it... all of a sudden I relised that this is possibly one of my worst sketches... it has taken all this time to hit me...(me mate hated it as well).

Don't worry my next one will be better, I swear!!!

Hey Paul

I quite like this. Think it should have finished with the 'gun salesman came first line' as the rest seems a bit superfluous. Just realised I thought this independent of Baumski's exact same thought!

Use something like 'toxin' or 'intoxicant' or something like that instead of 'poison' in the first line so the woman is genuinely confused. Then she should just say 'I don't want any poison'. Maybe mention a list of arsenic/cyanide/deadly nightshade rather than smallpox <pedantic, anal mode>as that's a virus, not a poison </anal retention>

Hope this helps

Dan

thats nice of you but I truely think its a bad sketch now... but I see potential in the format and I'm going to have a re-write of it as I rarely re-write my sketches have no idea why.

and yes it does help cheers swerytd

Paul

It's not bad; it was funny.

You'll have to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite sketches if you make it as a writer. Even when it seems you can't rewrite it any more. If you don't work on this one I think it'll be a shame as I like it, whatever you think

Dan

Well most of the time when I write a sketch it will unfortunately (as I am a unsolicited writer) will end up sitting in a draw until I can do something with it (used to enter them into 4laughs competitions) possibly that’s why I don't rewrite them very often.

Bump...