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The Elevator Most Belonging To Alice - Semi Final Bluecat, Runner Up Nashville Inner Journey - Page Awards Finalist - Bluecat semi final Grieving Spell - winner - London Film Awards. Third - Honolulu Ultimate Weapon - Fresh Voices - second place IMDb link... http://www.imdb.com/name/nm7062725/?ref_=tt_ov_wr
The writing here is so confusing. It's like I get what you're trying to go for, but it still confounds. I'm one that usually sticks out an entire read, which I did here, but I have a feeling a lot of readers will bail out on it.
The sentence structure is arranged in a strange fashion, just mishandled in syntax. The dialogue comes across robotic at times. This was a very difficult story to visualize.
The ending was polarizing, and contradicts what comes before it.
It was a weird start. It's strange you'd say 'An illuminated aquarium.' then describe it for a while then mention it's 200 gallon. It changes the size of the thing completely, everyone will imagine one a few feet long at most. Why not say how big it it is straight away?
I maybe in a bad mood but I was bewildered with the plot. Breeding killer sharks and making a point of them being killers. And big. There's already huge harks in captivity. I've seen them. It's like saying 'We're gonna breed tigers. Big ones. And we're gonna make them killers.' They already are.
I'll read on. I'm stubborn that way.
Nope. Couldn't make a lick of sense out of it. Maybe it made sense in the writer's head. It certainly made no sense in mine.
Lots of long winding speeches and OTN dialog really slow this thing down to a crawl. Streange (over)description. You gave it a nice go but if you can't convey sonething with clarity visually a lot of folks will be scratching thier heads.
The writing here is so confusing. It's like I get what you're trying to go for, but it still confounds. I'm one that usually sticks out an entire read, which I did here, but I have a feeling a lot of readers will bail out on it.
The sentence structure is arranged in a strange fashion, just mishandled in syntax. The dialogue comes across robotic at times. This was a very difficult story to visualize.
The ending was polarizing, and contradicts what comes before it.
Respectfully, it wasn't for me. Best of luck.
Johnny
This summed up my thoughts to a T.
I wanted to like this, but I just really wasn't a fan of the writing at all. Why do you mention the aquarium being 200 gallons nearly two paragraphs AFTER you've introduced it? "An illuminated aquarium" should be "A two-hundred gallon illuminated aquarium." You write in such a way that everything needs to be read at least twice, and it killed whatever interest I may have had in the story.
I just could not invest myself in this one, but congrats on completing the challenge.
I think you had a genuine concept or ideology that you wanted to get on paper, but it somehow got lost in the formatting. The dialog itself didn't gel with me either, like;
PETE Since when have you learned to read, sweet heart.
CAROLINE Daddy, I'm in school for a long time. I'm a big girl.
Huh? Caroline is 6, this makes it sound more like she is 'impaired' than 'in school for a long time'. Consider aspects of deductive reasoning that will ensure dialog flows naturally.
Congrats for finishing the OWC, it's definitely a tricky topic to get out something original, and I think you gave it a go based on this idea you had, it just didn't work for me the way it could have if the formatting was cleaner.
The writing, although setting a good image, is a little awkward in the way its presented. Might need a good look over.
"He sits a bit diagonal as if he's involved in a studio talk with a person next to him." Funny, since I know exactly what you meant but it's just a stupid thing to put in a script.
Caroline's dialogue is poor, the other dialogue is also somewhat poor but it has this hilarious backbone to it that I quite like.
"Pete relaxed rows the boat forward." What?
Yeah, now the dialogue's lost that hilarity and just sounds poor again.
Where'd the cornfield come from? How does a 50 meter shark fit into a canal anyway?
"PETE Heellpp! God, noo!! Help me!!" Oh, man, Jeff is going to destroy you for this one. The gruesome image of the daughter's blood is comical more than anything, just not written the way you want it to.
I've just noticed, your dialogue boxes are too small, you should be able to fit more words inside there. Probably added an extra two pages to your script actually.
"I can't forgive me and I think I need to commit suicide." , come on, writer, you can do better than that?
"Pete limps, walks with a stick. He wears only black, a turtleneck jersey." Did he recieve the John Lennon treatment or something? Why does he even have a cane?
"Cederic Villas Boas" Who?
Ooo, yeah, okay, obviously written by a writer whose first language isn't English. The thing with scriptwriting is that you have to balance both the written part and then the story, and that's not including the business angle. It's just a hard job getting both of them right. There's no steadfast way to make your English or your screenwriting ability better than to just read scripts. Really, it's simply the best way to further yourself as a writer. Good luck!
Cool concept. Unique and imaginative approach to the parameters.
What a sad way to learn a lesson. With his daughter and all. I like how you show the weight of his guilt. He decides to now stop genetic research. I liked the message about modified foods. Some interesting commentary.
The strongest element is the concept of Dangerworld. It comments on seaworld and such. Homages Jurassic Park. And examines thematically why we seek danger and violence for entertainment? Why are we fascinated with monsters?
These themes could have been examined more obviously. A rewrite would also help with the dialogue. Sometimes it's awkward and too explanatory.
Some good visuals. Interesting concept. Nice commentary.
I was hooked on this and thought we had a winner here until half way through page 3 with the introduction of Cedric. Up until then I loved the dialogue, the descriptions of the scenes (even if they were a bit too descriptive). It was like Futureworld meets Jurassic Park and had huge potential. Peter seemed very much like the character you’d love to hate.
Then it all went strange. I genuinely thought from this point on it was Peter having a dream and I couldn’t follow it. I’ve no idea why Peter is surprised his daughter can’t read, why his character changes so abruptly, why there’s a shark in the canal or why they were in that canal in the first place. It was all so surreal.
Well done for entering the owc.
Mark
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The issues with the writing are well-covered. My problem with the story is that it seems like you’ve got the first 20-25 pages of a feature crammed uncomfortably into a ten page space.
At the mention of Dangerworld, I thought we were going to get Jurassic Park with sharks (which is actually Jaws 3 with dinosaurs). But this tried to do too much. Instead of a nifty little short about killer sharks running amok at a theme park, it turns into the start of something bigger. But even what’s here is rushed through.
In fact the park doesn’t really come into play at all. The characters stand inside it for half a page, then leave. Why were they there to begin with? It’s never really elaborated how the sharks escaped in the first place. That’s important no matter what kind of story this intends to be. Then at the end Cedric and Pete join forces, but against what exactly?
Too ambitious to work at this length, I think. But good luck going forward
Here’s a great example of why I always recommend writing in (mostly) complete sentences – we start with a fragment that tells us nothing, then in the 3rd passage, we find out how big the aquarium is we’ve been looking at.
I also recommend not using semi colons in screenwriting, as they just don’t work and here, you’re doing nothing but wasting a line.
Very poor dialogue early on.
“Pete swings the arm like a disco queen:” – WTF?
Page 3 – There’s some serious terrible writing on display here. I’m wondering if English is a 4th or 5th language?
Page 4 – Wow, Cederic’s dialogue is just awful. Now, I’m wondering if this is a pisser in disguise.
Page 5 – “sweet Caroline” – Huh? WTF? Really? This is a pisser, isn’t it? If it’s not…wo…
Page 6 – “CORNFIELD – CANAL” – HUH??????
“Then his smile falls out of his face.” – LOL. OK, this is either a giant pisser or the writer has major trouble with English.
Absolutely no clue what happened in that cornfield canal. Just terrible writing and dialogue.
Page 7 – Damn, bro, this dialogue is worse than any pisser I’ve ever written and that’s saying an awful lot. With your permission, I may need to borrow some of these classic lines, and even steal “sweet Caroline” as a character.
Wow! Almost speechless. A true pisser classic, if I ever have seen one, and trust me, I’ve seen a lot. True classic. Cornfields will never be the same again.
Thank you for entering as you’ve made my week, I think. I will be quoting many of these lines in future works.
I'm certainly not the defender of all things great and small, but I really don't think this was intended to be a pisser, nor do I think it's fair that one should assume it is. Seems like a sincere effort here, just that the writer approached the OWC from a different angle.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
With that said, the story wasn't for me. I read it the day it came out and decided not to comment on it until now. 'Bout all I can say at this point. Congrats on entering.