The Fixer by Anne Chovey - Short, Family Horror - How far will one boy go to gain some friends? - pdf, format

This one was okay. Well written. I had no issues with how you write. A couple of typos, but they didn't bother me.

The story was dull though. Sorry...  A bit cliche I think to have a really handsome guy and an extremely pretty girl and the bad guy Duncan being ugly and rat faced. i wished you had told us their ages too. At that age there's a big difference between a 13 year old and a 15 year old.

Nothing really happened in this story either. It was all told to us in dialogue. Dialogue which didn't sound like kids. At least not to me. All the characters also spoke with the same voice.

This was "family" friendly and would be considered horror.

So, all in all, not bad, but not great either.

This was far to dialogue heavy for my liking, and as Pia points out, there is no sense that they are different people, they all sound alike. And how old are they?

It reminded me of one of the earlier Buffy episodes, before it matured, and I could see Buffy or Cordelia and Xander changed up at the mercy of some monster of the week!

I liked the premise even if "nobody understands me except the monster" is a horror standard. Story could have been developed more through action rather than dialogue. You certainly had the unused pages to do it. Dialogue over four lines per character at a time gets tiresome fast.

Good effort but could use some story doctoring.

Gary

The premise of this is story has some merit...but it is a bit too predictable in some aspects.

I feel as though it didn't end...but rather hasn't been finished yet...

No wrap up or closure...Not my favorite by any means.

Morgan

This is just okay, mainly because of the dull opening page and setup. The story did progress better at the end.

In the first paragraph, this sticks out: "It hasn't been cleaned in a year." You sure we will know that on screen?

The problem with the beginning is too talky. Alexander and Roxanne are just relaying information (that they knew very well already) to the audience. And then when Duncan and pals come in, you repeat the same beats over and over again. Duncan keeps on whining about why he's doing the deed and Alex and Roxanne keeps on pleading no.

Nevertheless, I didn't expect Alex and Roxanne to get killed. I thought something is going to happen to save them. So this moves in a different direction than I expected.

On the positive, you fit the challenge well and you finished it under one week.

So far, I think I am the only here who kind of likes that most of the characters were rounded out through dialogue. Though, since this is a family horror film, just talking will bore a lot of kids and maybe even teenagers, but action would be better in this challenge. I, though, enjoy a lot of talking (like in Death Proof or The Descent).

But, I do feel as though there wasn't enough closure to the story. The Fixer and the creature fed, and then suddenly turn on Duncan. You still had five more pages to fill in. You could have done something, like, have Duncan go to a real Halloween festival and have The Fixer and the creature eat people there, enough to where they had the power to live forever. But they suddenly turned on him and left him for dead.

One thing that really stuck out to me, though, was: "The Fixer GRIPS his STAFF. A DARK, BLINDING LIGHT bursts from the tip. " Is that an oxymoron or what!

Sean

Nope, sorry, this didn't work for me at all.  Doesn't meet the challenge either.  No festival, and this defintely isn't family horror...it's actually quite dark and mean spirited, as well.

Can't say the writing is good either.  Lots of problems everywhere.  First 3 passages are a good example of what's wrong throughout.  Opening description of this "lair" isn't well done at all.  Character descriptions are also rather poorly done, and we don't even get ages of anyone, which makes it impossible to picture this.  At times there is way too much detail, in terms of things that mean nothing, at others, not nearly enough.  You repeatedly use "and" again and again, and in reality, you should use that word very rarely, as it's just not neccessary in a script.

I guess the 2 biggest problems are the amount of dialogue (which comes off as almost comical), and the beleivability of this situation.

You ended on page 6, which tells me you either ran out of time, or just gave up. There is so much you could have done here to flesh this out and make it so much more interesting.

Sorry, but I don't like it at all.

No Festival
Not Family Horror

Too scary and brutal for my tastes, and for the kids.

I kind of got into this one. Ok, there was zero Festival, vague Halloween, and absolutely no family horror.
But it had a good flow to it and i was wondering what the payoff was gonna be.

Then came the end, and well, i was left a dejected, tired-after-reading-29 scripts-man.

Well I think this is a bit too scary for young kids and there was no type of festival so you missed the challenge theme.  the story itself was missing something.  It was pretty much just a demented Duncan wanting to torture people who hurt him.

I actually thought it was gonna be a dream.  I think I would have liked it better if it was.  And you have about 3 pages of the smae thing happening.  Duncan telling them that they betrayed him and how he's going to get revenge by torturing them...I think one page is enough.  don't overdo it cus then it begins to drag.  

I don't think this would go into the kids catagory. I've never actually heard a kid talk the way these characters do..and while we're at it. They tend to talk a little too much. I like well rounded characters shaped through dialogue, but only when the dialogue is interesting. This to me felt dull and with more pages to use you could've filled out your story a bit more.

All in all this to me feels incomplete. Maybe with some mroe time something could come out of it..But what it is now, to me feels like a drag.

I know it's a OWC and there never easy and what with work and everything else, the time constraints can be tight. But even so...

Look at your opening sequence and dialogue. You've got Alexander and his girl chained to a wall, having just had his friend imprison them with the help of a few monsters and he says.

He tricked us! I knew Duncan had
been feeling down lately, and all I
wanted to do was try and make him
feel better by coming to his stupid
party! Now look at us? What were
those things? I thought they were
just dressed up, like us! I’m sorry
I got you into all this mess.

Teenagers, in that sittuation - seriously. I think my sons just may have been a bit more vocal.

Unfortunately the whole script was flat - nothing believable, including the characters.

Not for me this one.

Issues with lengthy and a bit clunky word usage aside, I thought the story was extremely intriguing and I could feel it.

I'll address the wordiness first. This here:

>A re-furnished basement of a house, fitted with desks and
filled with scientific equipment. Test tubes filled with
liquid. It’s dark and dusty. The place is a mess. It hasn’t
been cleaned in a year.

Consider what is really integral to the story and when you write don't repeat what is already evident as in:

>The place is a mess. It hasn't been cleaned in a year.

Just say: It's dark, dusty - a complete mess. Also, you might want to zero in on a specific gruesome object that exists here.

I would suggest losing "re-furnished" and just saying "basement".

The Fixer needs more description for us to get a handle on what he looks like.
When the Fixer feeds on Alexander, it needs to be drawn out in time and scope. This is like a climax here, the rising action, and it's important.

Definitely keep writing because I sense something very palpable in this which proves it's not just the writing itself, but something behind the language.

See the Sapir Whorf thread where people disagree with me left and right and miss center.  

I think you've really captured the horror element here and really met the challenge on genre, where many of us have failed.

Sandra