Epicenter by David Birch (slapshot) - Short, Young Adult, Horror - A Halloween joy ride turns into more than a three hour cruise. - pdf, format

This had a lot of potential, but dosn't quite make it...I did not like the ending at all...I think overall if you expanded on this subject, there is a lot there to work with...it almost seems like the opening scene to a bigger script.  

I'm not sure where the "hoax" came into play either...

Some spelling issues, small, general line info, but over all this could be something...

~m~

I thought that was an exciting read.  You knew where you were going with it and you took it there.  I thought for a while that you weren't going to include the hoax bit but you did at the end.  Unfortunately, I thought the ending was the weakest part.  It seemed like you tacked it on for the OWC or you rushed to include the hoax part.  

I thought it was interesting and creative to use Hydrophobic modules for your monster but it would have been better if you didn't typo on the name.  

I also have to question the wave in the Bay, especially around Alcatraz because waves form when the water is getting shallower not when it's getting deeper like it does around Alcatraz.  If it was just a swell then the boat should have managed to ride it easily with out taking on water.  Plus I'm not really sure a quake in the Bay would even make a wave there, I think the waves start some distance away from the epicenter, definitely outside of the Bay.      

The writer to this one was very creative. I don't think there'll be another one like it.

I thought the story was pretty neat. The waves didn't bother me. I thought they added some scare to the script. You came across on the hoax, and I liked the monster, too...

but was this an invasion?
I'm not sure. It was entertaining though.

Good job,
Cindy

This is definitely some solid writing on display here.  There are a bunch of typos, but with a 1 week timeframe, that's expected.

Very "big" concept here for a 13 pager.  Probably too big, as the finale does feel very rushed.  Not sure what exactly these monsters are.  I looked up Hydrophobic modules, and didn't see anything that made any sense to me, so I'm kinda clueless.

I'm not really sure that this hits the requirements of the OWC, as I don't really see much of a hoax, no warning, and really, no invasion.  Not sure I believe any of the characters either.  They sure don't seem like High Schoolers to me.

Good, solid, ambitious effort though!

As a sea-tale I thought this was pretty harrowing.  Like the others I thought the ending felt a bit rushed, like you bent it to fit the parameters of the genre but I guess the 13 page limit was a little tight for this particular theme.

The monster was unique but maybe a better description or at least scientific explanation might help me to visualize it better.  Honestly I think this would work best simply as a survival at sea tale.  The theme I think sort of got in the way a bit of a great story.

I thought you did a good job on this one.
I agree that the ending was its weakest part, but I still enjoyed it.
My biggest gripe was that Wendy didn't really seem that upset after her twin sister "dies". I think she should have been much more upset. Also think that there were a couple too many characters in this one for the length of script. In the beginning, the woman at the lab is not really important. See if you can't skip her. Since she's introduced right there in the beginning I thought she was going to play a major part.

I understood the hoax part. They Mayor misunderstood the kids and thought they were just making it up, but the two kids new the real story... and that's what the assignment was this time around.

Good job!  

The writing was good and really kept my attention. It was a fun read.

The main problems for me were the locations. Half the time I didn't know where we were, and which characters were on show. It was a bit all over the place - maybe a few too many characters?

I don't really think this fitted the challenge all that well. Firstly, the language was a bit too frequent for a YA movie. A lot of 'F' words kicking about.

I didn't get the sense that there was an invasion and I have no idea who the two kids that knew the truth were.

Maybe I just didn't get this one, but I'm left a bit lost as to what went on.

The beginning was very good, descriptive, attention-grabbing and it started to build. After that though I felt it kind of fell flat. The bit at sea didn't really hold my attention as it seemed to jump all over the place and try to do too much. I think if you expanded this one, keeping the first 3 pages or so, you'd have more room to work in all of your different ideas and have a little more room for suspense, as well as to develop all of the characters.

The twins' dialogue in particular sounded a little unrealistic and while someone else mentioned the language, I think it's pretty realistic for 16 year olds to be dropping f-bombs left and right, although their voices did seem a little too mature. Another thing that made the two male leads feel a bit more mature than young adults was their occupations. One was an intern, and maybe it's just something I wasn't aware of, but my high school didn't have anyone working as interns, as most people seem to wait until college before pursuing them. Also, I know here 16 is the minimum age for someone to drive a boat, so I found it a little hard to believe that someone who just recently obtained the legal ability to drive a boat was leading this expedition, even if he did want to impress the twins.

Like I said, I think this would work well as a feature but as it stands now, the middle felt too rushed and the ending revealed too much that should've been made clear earlier (maybe have the woman in the lab come across a newspaper article detailing Josh's research). Good luck!

Hi there,

Nice read but it didn't fit the challenge.  No hoax or invasion in sight.  It was fun though to read.  I was going this way and that way, trying to keep up.  The ending could be changed as it was the only let down.

Was this a story you wrote and thought it might fulfil the competiton rules as it had young adults in it?

All the best,


Javier

I didn’t get this one.  There seemed to be a lot happening on the boat, running around finding things, flares, matches torches,  then we loose one of our lead characters overboard to something nobody understands. The threat wasn’t really understood, only Josh knew the real danger and we find that out on the last page.  No invasion, who else knew about danger?  Writing and descriptions no too bad but went around in circles not really driving the story forward. walford

This is entertaining and original. It’s a little contrived and it takes a while for the tension to build up. Also in rewriting this you could make the monster deaths a bit more varied. Seems like they all lean over the edge with lights like idiots and get killed.

Berkeley has an extra "e". Normally I'd ignore this but it's the very first word in the thing and first impressions are much more important than they should be.

Some of the parentheticals are not required e.g. “(re: the mask)”.

This one was different and that's a good thing. Unique monsters are always a plus. The characters seemed believable for their age and the descriptions were solid. Kudos in regards to your death scenes. You did a great job of building up suspense but the ending didn't pay off. It was just lackluster.

If you're not going to offer any kind of resolution to the story, at least end the story on an interesting or shocking note. The mayor making fun of Brad and Wendy was neither. Anyway, good stuff here.  

I liked the opening of this with the earthquake. This one was definitely unique.

I didn't feel compelled by the characters at all, but the formatting looked really good to me and I certainly thought it looked like a pretty clean script so good on you for that.

A nice effort here.

Sandra