A Taste Of Hell by Dante on the beach - Short, Horror - When all the planets in the solar system align with the sun, the Earth is briefly transported into another dimension. As it does, a father playing on the beach and his daughter gets to experience their own personal hell.  - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hey writer,

Errrrrrrr...

You met the brief! Congrats there, there was some heat and some suspense, a big tick.

Right, the rest of it. Sorry to say but it was littered with typos, especially the first page, and quite a lot of repetitions of words. It's a really odd criticism I know, but when you read something you subconsciously get into a rhythm, and whilst it's not poetry, to see the same words in back to back sentences does throw the mind off. Just drag the thesaurus out and you'll be fine. Also, lose page 5, a bit sloppy.

The story was nuts, absolutely bonkers. Loved the man's struggle against the crabs, which weirdly turned into ghost crabs for some reason, but it really was absolutely crazy.

I certainly didn't hate it but it does need work. A good scan for typos, make it flow better with some re-wording and I'm sure some people will dig the story. Not really for me but alright none the less.

Cam

What's with so many Title pages being so off center?  Just a bad way to start...but then again, with a logline like you have here, I'm not sure if this is even supposed to be taken seriously.  Let's see what we have here.

With a lead character named Jeff, you'd think this would be winner, but alas, as I presumed, it's a pisser, and just too dumb for me to enjoy right now.

I'm out on Page 2, with the Big Bad Wolf aside.

Wow that was weird !

One minute he's playing with his daughter the next he's having a personal battle with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Crabs.

I stuck through to the end and it wasn't the worst but a lot of over explanation particularly in your logline.

It seemed like you put too much effort in to reach 6 pages when you could have just a bittersweet story and leave out the crabs in particular

good job on entering

Haven't read the other reviews yet so pardon if I repeat others.

- Lay on the earthshine beach... Eh? Odd.

- Jeff is not capitalized when introduced. He's tanned and athletic yet buried to his neck in sand.

This is starting off with a lot of unecessary detail, including names. We'll never know unless they're wearing name tags. A father and daughter. How do we know that he had a revelation that life can start after forty?

The story is kinda cool but a bit too bizarre. Rose is suddenly buried to her neck? I'm starting to think this is all a dream.

Not a dream...just really weird. With some work, it could work. Make it all a dream and it could work. IDK. Good effort!

Sorry, it lost me.

I will give you this - the image of a father and daughter buried in the sand up to their necks while the tide rolls in is spine tingling. Would like to see that concept woven into a better story.

The mutant crabs took me right out.

Quoted from eldave1 The mutant crabs took me right out.

Ghost crabs, even!  HA!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_crab

I see what you are going for with the story but what happened to your formatting? Weird title page and an extra page at the end. It's like  your final draft got possessed lol.

Anyway this one is imaginative for sure but it needs more of a setup for people to get what is going on.

-Mark

Jeff, eh?

Quoted Text Shadows circle the sand around him. He looks up to see a flock of seagulls circling [overhead], buzzard fashion.

And I raaaaaan, I ran so far awaaaaayyy

Quoted Text He squints, are they seagulls or buzzards?

Oh. An actual flock of actual seagulls. Anyway, "I Ran" needs to be on the soundtrack if this ever gets produced.

RIP Mr. Krabs.

Quoted Text There’s a Mexican standoff moment.

Cue Ennio Morricone.

Do crabs have Adam's apples?

Quoted Text He squints, turns his head as far as he can[,] left to right.

I caught an orphan.

Quoted Text The water[-]logged sand does not budge.

Quoted Text An ashen[-]faced Jeff

Quoted Text A seagull falls dead out of the sky. It makes him jump.

Writer you sure love your 80s synthesizers.

What's with the blank fifth page? Pleading the Fifth?

This was pretty good. Solid writing, solid story, the weather factors into it. Short and sweet. Great job.

You know what, despite the numerous issues with this, there is something in this.

A nice day at the beach goes bad due to some event. An accessible concept with the potential for deep terror. Nature is against you.

The reversal of the animals is an interesting angle. Could have done with a bit for foreshadowing - animals react way before humans.

As to what actually changed, is still not clear for me, other than the animals attacked,and the sea came in.

Wasn’t sure why Rose was suddenly buried either.

I think there is a filmable script in here...lurking under the sand

This was imaginative. Not sure what to make of it really, if there was any unifying theme to it. You open with this perfect sunny day and Jeff totally at peace with the world... then by the end "nothing will ever be the same"... so maybe something about how fragile life is, how fleeting happiness can be?

Tonally, it didn't quite gel. Some of the descriptions seemed to be veering into comedy... like the big-bad wolf and the Mexican standoff lines... not sure that was intentional. I do think this could potentially work as a dark comedy. When it did go very dark at the end with the father and daughter drowning that was pretty intense.

Writer,

Hate to sound like a broken record, as I just read a script I had no idea what happened, but... I have no idea what happened. I thought the earth was hurtling into space or something, but what transpired was just plain old strange and didn't make much sense to me. Sorry, not for me.


Steve

Logline long and messy. Not my kind of story at all by the sounds of it.

Whoever wrote this has definitely got a good imagination.

Few typos here and there, unnecessary detail and repetitive action lines.

It's surreal, had plenty of suspense and the weather certainly played its part.

Wasn't for me, though, I'm afraid.  

Be very careful with your editing. A script with a typo ("lay" instead of "laying") right at the start would very likely be rejected by a busy reader.
Sound cues like "squawk" should be capitalized.
At the start of para. 5 use "Rose" not "her" to make it easier for the reader.
"A gust of air that would impress the big bad wolf" for me is not screenwriting. Just tell us what we can see: "A powerful jet of air" (or something like that).
Ghost crab? Could you visualize for us?
Once the scene is back to normal after the alignment ends, why would the fairground music be out of key? It's just a recording, probably, so how could it be out of key?
Heat isn't really an influential factor here, is it?
Watch for ways to take out some words. For example, could "The water that splashes Jeff is less than gentle' become something like "A wave hammers Jeff."
This is creative. I feel like a little more character development would take it to the next level. Right now it feels like some weird stuff happens, but I have no real reason to care about the characters and how they are changed.
Keep going! Nice draft.

Hmm
A planetary alignment of that magnitude would be known years ahead so people would be ready and waiting for it.

The writer here is going for a spiritual thing here but parts of it work as Dave alluded too.

The weather is kind of impacting I guess - more so than in the majority of entries lol - but the non dialogue is so-so; Jeff and Rosie would be yelling to each other when they were buried

The writing was pretty good as I could picture it nicely just needs a tweak