What a Wonderful World by Mem - Short - Sometimes, the world can seem like a downright cruel and ugly place.  But God protects his faithful...doesn't he? 9 pages - pdf, format

A worthy entry! Although a tad heavy on religion and Spanish in the beginning, the story establishes the girl as a true believer.

Thank you for not using “God works in mysterious ways…” line.

I thought this was going to be a have faith story, but it turned away from that so the title has a darker meaning.

No need for fade in/fade out besides at the front and end,

Now your talking. I found this powerful, dynamic and chilling.

Best of what I have read so far.

Do I have an issue? Is there one? The only things that jumped out were;

# boy appearing with gun?
# I thought the young girl had gone, so her final hurrah seemed a surprise.

Good stuff.

Created a mood, that's for sure, but I didn't really like this.  Frankly, 8 pages of a depressing self-destructive family isn't that much different than 8 pages of torture porn since everything for the characters is going to suck in the end.  Granted, you took a different route by not having anything uplifting at all, but that just leaves us with, well, blood, crack, and the cops.  But as it is, I didn't come away with anything from this story.  It was just depressing.  And the guy rapes his own sister?  Where the hell did that come from?  It just felt like piling crap on for the sake of doing it.  And then he goes after his niece.  Yeah, he's a messed up guy under the influence of who knows what but this just didn't work for me.

Well written, though.  Nice job on completing it in a week.

Greg

I kind of thought this had tragedyitis.  That's when so much tragedy get stuffed into such a small space that it becomes funny.   I'm ashamed to admit it but I laughed.

You did an absolutely splendid job with the writing, you just need to spread things out a bit more.

Good work for a week.  

There's an old saying:  God answers all prayers.  Most of the time, however, the answer is no.

This came off as an anti-drug PSA.  It really didn't do anything for me as it was extremely over the top.  While I understand this was written for the OWC, and the limitations affect the final result of the script, it appeared very rushed.  You had an idea for a script but it was not fully thought out and rushed.

There wasn't much here to work with.


Phil

Well, well, well...a nicely written script for a change.  Kudos.

Very dark, depressing, and brutal...but powerful as well.

Interesting take with all the Spanish dialogue.

Didn't think it was going where it ended up going.  It looked quite bleak up until the very end, and I'm glad the girl survived.

Congrats on completing an OWC entry.

The writing was excellent. the setting reminded me of home, not my home, but my town. How about the story?

I'm not sure what you have in mind for this ending. I may  be reading this differently than Gary did. His opinion is that the girl is the one of true faith. Perhaps that is the intent here. My interpretation is that the girl is basically saying "where the F are you God?" I am shot, my mother is a crack head, raped by her brother, and my innocent brother is now dead. Where the F are you? Thanks for nothing!"

I'm not sure I can buy into the boy's death, and we don't seem to see it either. The uncle's momentum carries him into the boy, the gun goes off, and the boy is dead. That seems very unlikely and probably convenient.

So I'm not sure I'm with ya on the story, though sometimes things have to percolate with me. I did enjoy the writing though, so very nice work in that regard.

Is there a problem with this file? I couldn’t zoom in to read it.
This one adheres to the less strict interpretation of the rules.
A well written, but ultimately bombastic, script for me.
Atmospheric, natural, authentic, but undone by static drama.
Too much of the same effective note and it loses its power.
Nice effort, I’d check out a feature of yours.

Regards,
E.D.

This was really good. Can't wait until we hear who the writer is.

This was depressing for sure because it felt real. Well written and great dialogue. Like some others have said though, a tad too much horrible stuff in such a short script. The situation these kids live in is horrific and would probably work really well as a longer script.

Having said that, this is the best one of the bunch I've read so far.

Excellent work!

Congratulations on completing a script for the challenge.

This was a very well written, but overall quite depressing read. As Michael stated: Your script does suffer from 'tragedyitis'. The amount of misfortune that befalls the family in such a short period of time does seem very over the top - in just 9 pages we have alcoholism, drug addiction, child neglect, incestuous rape and murder.

This wouldn't be a problem if it was spread over a 90 minute feature, but feels far too much for a short.

Despite the problems I had with the story, your writing was top notch, and I especially liked the mixture of English and Spanish dialogue which gave it an extra feel of authenticity.

After reading this script, it reminds me of a Palestinian boy who was mentally retarded, seen roaming the streets. He was taken by a group of terrorist types and
well, terrorized until he easily, walked up to the border with the instructions to press the button to a bomb attached to him. The Israeli soldiers, called out for him to halt and one, he came, disabled it and saved the Palestinian boy. Now in the future, however, the Palestinians said, "Ta hell with that idea. We'll just use remote control-- far more effective.

The thing is: Everything that goes on in this world is nothing but a collection of the firings within the human brain. It is "The Perceiver's or we might even say "Collective Perceivers' Thought Construct" that determines reality. It's the whole "I think therefore I am" sort of thing and what I'm getting at here is:

In this story, one (by my methodology) might conclude, that "the incidents occurring" were happening due to a faulty construct from the world of "the perceivers", who, will or will not (their choice) believe in G-d as an eternal entity or whatever the hell they want to imagine.

But let's say, for sake of argument, that G-d exists in this "Wonderful World", (love the title by the way), why in the hell would he create a world that would descend to such a corrupted level? Why would he cause "all those electric firings in the brain to be shitting on us? Maybe, because you can't know a godamned thing except through relativity? By comparison? Through its opposite? And what the hell would a person be but a godamned positron? Extending on and on through space with no resistance whatsoever or something like that.

So... after my rant...

You have collected a truthful set of circumstances of "the way reality can be perceived" and Man's job, is to work it all out, come to some kind of enlightenment and yes, finally determine that G-d really is there... and find Him-- not flying off in some damned boring eternal heaven with not a bloody thing to do, but right here... On earth, in flesh and blood. And then we can start talking all kinds of weird and crazy and wonderful worlds, so much better than this lowly one.

I applaud you for your effort with this and you know what? I think you can do more with it as a feature. Especially if you take some of my heady concepts and apply them.  

Sandra

Very well written but so depressing - suppose that is the idea.
A tiny bit over written and needlessly padded in places (e.g. Maria's last hit) but everything else is great.
I am new so not sure about foreign languages - I thought you were meant to write them in English and put "(in Spanish)". The script made me read words I didn't understand (even though Spanish is a beautiful language) so I became detached during those sections.
Emotionally engaging and will be remembered for it's very disturbing content.
Very good.

I think this is the best of what I've read so far and I will probably be voting for it.

I also think I know who wrote this, but I'm not going to give that away just yet.

You really pulled me in with this script and didn't let go even though I had a hard time reading it (couldn't enlarge the script).

There was a lot of tragedy. The way you have it written, I'm not sure if the girl or the boy dies.

I would have like to seen the kids make it out okay at the end.

Cindy