A Simple Question by Jack Reacher - Short - Having woken up bloodied and taped to a chair, will the PRISONER answer his CAPTORS seemingly simple question? 10 pages - pdf, format

Wow, that was awesome. Very instense. A few spelling errors throughout, but nothing you wouldn't catch in proof-reading. Very good.

No...sorry...but I have to say again that the writing on display here is just so irritating.

The action stacking may work for some but it sure doesn't for me.  You've got an 8 1/2 page script here that probably isn't more than 4 1/2 pages in reality.

It's so repetitive...pound me over the head repetitive.  For lack of a better word, we're looking at torture porn here, only we don't care for either our Protag or our Antag, cause we know nothing about either, and neither is even named.  Not naming either of your characters is a mistake.  Hard to care for someone without a name.  I don't understand why people keep doing this.

Poor punctuation is also a big issue here.  You continually omitted apostrophes at an alarming and shocking rate.

Odd phrasing and incomplete sentences make for an irritating read in my book.  Seems to read like wanna-be hipster cool, but again, for me, it's a big turnoff.

You know, I was thinking it would end with nothing happening, or the "captor" simply killing the "prisoner", so on a positive note, you did bring something to the table, but then again, it's a completely no win situation for our "prisoner"...and that kinda makes the "twist" ending lose it's power and punch.

Congrats on completing an OWC entry.

Effective use of a single location.  Story is nothing new, but I like how you didn't waste time and got right to the nasty.

You constantly used a lower case "mister", which got irritating.  Other spelling errors and grammatical mistakes also served to distract.

SPOILERS

I did like the twist, how it was all a test.  But I think you could have exploited this more effectively.  Like, if the Captor takes off his mask and the Prisoner sees it is Severus, it would have been more effective than the phone call, IMO.  

The torture did get a bit repetitive and I would have liked the prisoner to get even more desperate and willing to bargain.  But overall, not bad.

Congrats on completing the OWC  

The beginning of this one had me thinking Hostle, it was that creepy. Good job.

Half way though I knew the ending though, but I thought it would have been "the guy" he was asking about.

This OWC is an exercise. You've completed it and did a pretty good job. Were there some typos? Well, we all miss some.

Good job,

Cindy

I don't know.  

I thought this was written well enough but I didn't find it believable enough to get absorbed in it.  

I think part of it might be the generic names.  Perhaps if you used actual names I would have felt more attached to the characters as I read.  

But I think the whole premise of extreme torture of a guy to get him to talk and then killing him when he does didn't work for me.  Perhaps it needed more context.

Anyway, aside from that, you did have a couple of typos such as Peer for Pier.  Those can be easily fixed.  

So congrats on getting something fairly good together for the OWC.  It didn't really work all that well for me but I bet you'll get enough people that enjoy it.  
  

Okay read this one.

It reads "fast", and Im told thats a good thing. Its pretty well written IMO.

The story is pretty basic and not bad at all. I could see what was coming pretty early on.

Spoiler alert*


But the captor should have known that the prisoner was going to talk eventually (even if he didnt he would surely have died eventually from the injuries). He could have saved some time and effort just shooting him right off the bat lol.

Good job on getting it done.

I agree with Jeff that this went on way too long.  It was extremely repetitive; I began to wonder if any of the dialog was copied and pasted over.  

I don't understand the cheap theatrics of the captor.  Why the mask?  It wasn't needed.  Referring to it as a balaclava was even more unnecessary.  I had to stop reading to look this word up.  This specific mask was not necessary (even if a mask was).  Don't over-describe things like this; too much detail is irritating.

You should always name your characters.  The readers feel little more attached to the characters when they have actual names, even if they're just something simple like John and Mike.



SPOILER SPACE

Eight and a half pages of torture, all for a test?  Didn't like this at all.  It was silly.  Sorry.

END SPOILER



Phil

The issue here is that by the time we get any new information we're already several pages in and up until that point the story is mostly built on torture and one guy refusing to say something.  Not a whole hell of a lot happens up until the Prisoner decides to finally talk.  At that point I did like the twist, but at the same time what's its purpose?  The prisoner died anyway.  It didn't have the biggest payoff, but I thought it was okay for what it was.

Another thing is that while the captor is slicing off fingers and putting a blow torch to his feet, the prisoner says "He'll kill me."  Again, he says this while the captor has a blow torch to his feet and has already sliced off a couple fingers.  And has a gun.  I know you're trying to create a bigger quandary for this guy but saying "he'll kill me" while the captor is slicing and dicing I'm not sure was the best way.

So this was okay.  Not the most original twist but it was still okay.

Nice job for a week.

Greg

Just a thought that came to mind when I read the logline:

The Prisoner, the 1960s TV show, in which an unnamed character (No.6) is mentally tortured by his unnamed captors (represented by No.2) who want to know the answer to a simple question (Why did you resign?).

A SIMPLE QUESTION

The setup was for a tortured man to answer the question of a man’s location.

Setup worked. Criteria met. I liked the way the story started in the middle of things.

THE CAPTOR - Actors don’t like playing character whose features are hidden or obscured. He could either have been a little insane or tried to help the prisoner answer correctly. As he was, I didn’t think he was particularly nasty.

THE PRISONER – Not very smart or sympathetic. He could have tried talking about family, asked questions that would have made us care for him. Instead he yells. And yells.

This was about the torture of a prisoner not the torture of a human being.

BTW, a strange vetting procedure for a criminal to follow. It’s a one time only test.

A prisoner interrogation is a good choice for the parameters of this challenge. The twist at the end could be effective if the rest of the story is developed a little differently.

First problem is that we don't care at all about the prisoner. This needs to be solved. Obviously, if the prisoner is an innocent person we're going to care, but he doesn't have to be. In this case, he's a gangster or a thief, and that can work, but it requires a little more effort. Perhaps if he is really witty, or shows some quality such as courage or loyalty. He does initially hold out and lose a finger as a result, but I don't think this really raises him to a level of hero, as it's really nothing new.

I think the dialogue needs major tweaking. Doing that, you could create a few pages of space, and then maybe introduce another element. Not sure what.

You have something you can work with here. A foundation you can build on.

I'm sorry to say that I felt this was really weak. The whole foundation of this is the fact that the Prisoner is willing to be tortured because he's afraid of being tortured. All I had to do was scroll down and basically feel unaffected.

Sandra

A few thoughts.

# yes there were typos etc but that didn't stop the read for me
# torture scene does seem a good one for this challenge
# the repetitive asking of the fella did give it away to me that this was a test
# however, actually it wasn't that clear at the end who the man on the phone was speaking to - I read it differently
# if you were testing someone and they hadnt spoken after having two fingers cut off, well, call me soft but that would pass for me

Thought.

Maybe he could have given mis leading information at the end which sets up a dispute as to whether he has passed or failed.

Well done for entering.

This script adheres to the OWC rules and has a decent narrative.
The action repetition and stacking detracted from the read.
I felt the tone was protracted, shorten it up. Or...
Bring some sarcasm and banter into the scene. I prefer the latter.
The twist ending was not a surprise, and it wasn’t clear.
Why not save time and have the CAPTOR reveal his identity?
Logically, I didn’t suspend disbelief for the concept.

Regards,
E.D.