Savage Frontier by P. Tomson (pia) - Short, Western - A timid father and shop owner finds encouragement in an unexpected hero to stand up against the town bullies and help put an end to their reign of terror.  12 pages - pdf, format

Thanks Don for letting me take up space on your server.

I think I need to mention that this was for the One Week Exercise back in January, western/general store. I missed the deadline with just a few hours.

Thanks also to those who encouraged me to post this one.

Quoted from tomson I think I need to mention that this was for the One Week Exercise back in January, western/general store. I missed the deadline with just a few hours.

A few hours?  You missed it by five months.

This was a good story with the groundwork for becoming a feature length concept.  You're good at writing visuals.


Phil

Finally! Something from Pia!

Anyway, this was a very good read. A lot of dark humor, which I like. Some of it was just downright twisted. There was some great action and gunplay as well. Very fitting for the Western genre. The twist was great although I wish you'd foreshadowed it somewhat in the begining. Maybe have some say something like "When's the new sheriff coming in?" or something to that effect. Nothing really to complain about here. I do think your writing could be a little less descriptive though. Do we really need to know what is sold at the general store? "Bare essentials" will suffice.

All in all, a solid read. Good job, Pia!

I was somewhat disappointed but in a good way.  You pretty much set the intensity/craziness bar for yourself with "Be My Valentine" back in February.  Although this did have its twisted moments, I didn't feel it was as twisted as your other work.  The story as a whole I think is better because you have your obvious villains in here and then they get their asses handed to them in awesome fashion as opposed to BMV when the guy raped and killed the woman and then got shot and that was it.  Much more style here which is what I really liked.

*Very good descriptions here.  Explicit, detailed, lots of good imagery.  On the first page you have some signs.  Rather than use "say" I'd use "read."  A sign in the window reads VACANT.  Same with the next line.  I'd change it to something like "The sign above the entrance reads DUNKERTON'S GENERAL STORE."

*Jessie and James haha.  

*The whole attempted rape sequence gave this that craziness and created that sense of evil.  If you went through with the rape then it would have been that more twisted and stuff, but I think cutting it short and then having the Woman beating the cr** out of the guys was a better way to go.

So again, not as twisted as BMV, but it still had that craziness in it.  The characters and story were excellent.  Overall, a real pleasure to read!  Two very entertaining shorts that I've read from you.  I can only wonder how entertaining a feature would be from you...

Hey Pia,

Glad you finally got this up. The logline is great IMO.Good job.

Like I already told you, I really enjoyed the story. I really like your twisted sensibility.Your descriptions are top notch as I feel they pull me into the story and you never let me go until the very end. But even still you leave me wanting more.I love stories like that.

The intensity in your writing reminds me of James Elroy.

I can't wait to read the feature that you are working on!

Talk to you later.

Quoted from dogglebe A few hours?  You missed it by five months.

WOW! A smiley? I thought you never use those?

That's like finding a $2 bill in the parking lot, rare and special.
You pick it up and save it.

And yeah I know, I'm slow to the post.

Quoted from James McClung Some of it was just downright twisted.   The twist was great although I wish you'd foreshadowed it somewhat in the begining.   I do think your writing could be a little less descriptive though.

Thanks for reading it James.

So you thought it was twisted eh. Well. there should be another one of mine up next week. It's that Valentines Day thing that's been revised. I don't remember if you already read that one, because when I asked to have the script taken down the thread went away too. Hopefully I did end up using a lot of the good advice I got then. If you never read that one and you like a little bit of brutality and gore and do I dare say a little bit of originality, check that one out.

About foreshadowing the sheriff part I thought I did that by having the sign in the sheriffs window saying "VACANT".

Yes, I guess I was a little wordy. I'll try to be more terse in the future.

Hey Pia! Hip, hip hurray! Fanally, one of you!

It seems Stormville meets Bamby! Hehe! Just kiding, kid. I loved it too much, because it  looks like me, thousands light years ahead!

I've just one thing that I thought didn't flow well, the time of the action when Jessie, James, Joe and the woman are confront themself...

Do you know my English is too bad to explain here what this means, don't you? So I will try to explain slowly in a PM for you. Of course if you wish.

Great job, you have passed the test! Hahaha!

I did read this about a week ago but I can't really say much that I didn't already.

The story is good, descriptions are what make you unique as a writer.

I thought the villains had unique personalities which helped make the dialogue flow and the uncomfortable stuff go.

You did have a From Dusk Till Dawn moment when the one brother was having visions of the girl(s) but I forgive you for that.

Nevertheless with the nice little western story (Kind of) and the female hero I thought it was a good show of what you can do.

Well, it's certainly been awhile since I've had the opportunity to read anything from you, about five months to be exact, but I'm on a review streak tonight, so I figured this would be perfect to keep it going.

A vacant sign in the Sherrif's window means one thing and one thing only.  Vigilante justice is on the horizon!  Ok, I'm setting myself to expect something now, let's see how it works out.

You got on me about my "sea of cubicles" line,  so I'm going to get on you about bare essentials.  Two virtually back to back.

Nice descriptive writing all the way through so far, but Willie just standing there phantom boxing seems pretty damn weird to me.

Ok, so it was almost vigilante justice, at least until the last few lines.  I can try right.

I think you did a nice job of capturing the western feel here,  and I enjoyed the suspense between the brothers and Dunkerton's early on, which was paid off nicely by a fine wave of violence.

I do think though, that with the force that the "woman" hits Jessie in the nose, he'd be dead instantly.  The old cartilage into the brain thing came to mind, and I was quite surprised by his "return".

Overall, a nice job, and I think it would have been one of the better submissions had it actually been up at the time of the contest/exercise.

Quoted from Greg I was somewhat disappointed but in a good way.  You pretty much set the intensity/craziness bar for yourself with "Be My Valentine" back in February.

I actually thought about that while touching this one up. I didn't want to disappoint those who liked BMV, but I also didn't want people to think there was a lot of violence and craziness just for the sake of it. I tried to find a happy medium.

Quoted from Greg The characters and story were excellent.  Overall, a real pleasure to read!  Two very entertaining shorts that I've read from you.  I can only wonder how entertaining a feature would be from you...

To be honest with you, I have almost come to the conclusion that I do my best when I sit down and just start typing. My features I plan and plan and plan and they bore me to death. We'll see how it turns out.

Thanks for reading Greg.
I mean it.

Quoted from Kotton The logline is great IMO.Good job.

Hey K.
Didn't expect to see you commenting here.

Yes, as you know I did struggle with the logline, but then I Wiki'd it and ended up with this http://www.screenwriting-on-the-net.com/log-line.html and all of a sudden it was super easy. I guess I didn't have a clear understanding of what a logline should contain.

PS. hope you figure out how to send me those pictures.

Somehow I've overlooked this one. I love westerns and not enough people write them. At only 14 pages I blew through it rather quick and here's what I'd have to say.

I was utterly repulsed by the "MAKE A KITTEN PUR" thing... reference... I don't know why but I had to take a shower after that line.

Moving on, though.

This is a really, really, good script. I'm partial to westerns cause of the setting and characters one can dream up anyways, but when you have good writing involved, it makes them that much better.

The dialogue was good overall. I think you could've used a little more authentic dialogue in there here and there... for instance back in the day they'd call "SEX" a "POKE" and such and such and so forth and so on... Not that it was needed or anything, but to add that into the mix would've went a long ways when the two were talking about what she did to him in the dream and such.

The characters were very sharp. I liked everyone of them. The descriptions were spot on and they flowed just as well as the dialogue did.  I hate nothing more than when I see a script with action lines that read stale or not as good as the dialogue does... Here, it was no problem at all.

All in all really decent script. The woman outlaw/sheriff bit at the end didn't even Yurik me like it does in some movies... It all seemed pretty plausible.

Good job... and I know I don't say that enough anymore.

Pia

You write a mean story. Very descriptive, with a beginning, middle, and ah ha conclusion. Great job. And as you know we can't improve without positive critique. If thats how ya spell it.

I see a bit of myself in your writing style. Very descriptive. Almost too much so. A lot of you descriptive sentences could be trimmed and written with much more brevity. Think staccato.

Here is an example from page 7:

Mr. Dunkerton moves to grab the shotgun on the counter, but James beats him to it while snatching his S&W at the same time.

Try it like this.

Dunkerton grabs the shotgun from the counter - James snatches his S&W, trouncing Dunkerton to the draw.

24 words -vs- 16. That is what I am learning to do with my writing. And I am doing this at the beckoning of my writing coach. He states that Hollywood will not read a script that has been "overwritten." My question is; will they read any script.

Ok one more. On page 8:

Willie passes out from the pain.

Well we already know it pain. We saw it as as Jessie stomps on Willie. We heard it as Jessie actively crushes his knee. So... we don't need too much description.

Try this.

Passes out.

6 words down to 2.

Now, you have some really good dialogue. It flows really good and I liked what Baltis had to say about making it authentic. Also, I liked the fact that you gave a stutter to one of your characters. A great flaw. All people in life have flaws. And so should a great character.

I look forward to reading more of your stuff.

Spencer

Hey Pia.  Been meaning to read this for a few days, but seems like every time I log on there is a fire to put out somewhere.  It is still a mystery to me why you are so shy about putting your work out there.  You've obviously got a burgeoning talent -- particularly for stories that might not be so pretty.

(SPOILERS)

*  The "vacant" sign is a nice touch.  I suspect already that this detail will come into play, and you have me looking forward to it.  That is how it's supposed to be done.
*  I like how you describe the brothers a lot, but the three names, all with "J", got a little confusing from time to time.
*  Sometimes the language is a bit anachronistic, as the characters use words that might not have existed at that time.  One character refers to another as a "retard", and another uses the term "wet dream".  These words seem like modern conventions, although I must admit that I do not know this for certain.  But you might want to go through and fish out words like that, keeping the time period in mind.
*  You might consider giving "The Woman" an actual name.  Referring to her as "The Woman" throughout the entire piece gives this the unintentional (?) feel of a 1970's women's lib manifesto.  But much of her dialogue is sharp, and she fills the "superhero" role you have created for her well.  A bigger-than-life character that doesn't even have to obey the laws of conventional physics.  Have you pictured this as animated, in a "Heavy Metal" kind of style?
*  At the very end, I am not sure that Sam should smile.

As far as the story itself, I wish you had put this one out there with the rest.  It would have been very popular, I am sure -- even if several of us would probably have no problem figuring out who the author was haha.

There is one point that gave me pause.  It is important to the story that Ellie remain, but I don't buy her father telling her that she should hang around.  Regardless of what happened "last time", seems like he would tell her to "go in back" or something.  I would recommend that he tell her this, but that the Savage boys burst in before she can comply.  That would be an easy fix.

So, anyway, despite your adequate description of The Woman, if you want to know the truth, I couldn't help but picture the avatar you occasionally use.  A lightning-haired defender of justice, if you will.  You say you are actually gonna finish that feature one of these days?  Based upon the short works you have allowed us to see, I am sure there are several readers looking forward to it.

I liked this, Pia. Storywise, I haven't got any suggestions because I didn't have any problems with this. The story works well on every level for me.

I specially liked:
-The brother's dreams about Ellie.
-Joe asking for Ellie as if he was ordering a can of beans.
-Joe's twisted allucinations.

There was a good amount of dark humor in here, which kept me interested.

Format and writing style were good as well. I've only got a couple of suggestions.

-Bert is right about the brother's names. Try something different to make things easier for the reader who might forget who's who.

-The woman's clothes description was a little bit long. Watch out for static description. When things aren't happening, the mental movie in the readers mind stops and this isn't good. You can't avoid it, since the eye is much quicker to get information from the theatre screen than from sentences in the page. Nevertheless try to keep static description to a minimum.

Give us an idea of how this woman looks like, for example: "A tall, gorgeous, rough looking cowgirl dressed entirely in black steps in; her big silver spurs hit the floor with every step." Leave the specifics to the custom designer.

-Stick to present tense.

"Is slowly rocking back and forth" should be something like "He slowly rocks back and forth".

Not much of a difference, I know, but I read from lots of different sources that professional readers are quite nitpicky about this. And it's easy to fix.

I hope to see more of your work, Pia. Good job.