Later Gator by M. Robert Turnage ()  (OWC name - Ramoth)  - Short, Thriller - Two thieves elude the police and escape on a houseboat, only to realize too late that it is filled with alligators.   August '07 One Week Challenge entrant. - pdf, format 8)

I was printing this one out to read at my leisure -- great logline -- to me, anyway.

But the first page has the author's name plastered all over it.  THREE TIMES!

Boo.  Hiss.

I'll read something else.

Quoted from bert I was printing this one out to read at my leisure -- great logline -- to me, anyway. But the first page has the author's name plastered all over it.  THREE TIMES! Boo.  Hiss. I'll read something else.

Or does it?

Well, even if that name is real, I still don't know who it is. :)

I had a feeling that there was going to be a script or two concerning alligators or crocodiles. The first thing i noticed was that your paragraphs look too large. It clumps up the pages and doesn't look clean and easy to read (it's happened to me before too, so don't worry). Also, once you introduce a character, you put their name in CAPS, and that's it. You don't need to capitalize their names after you introduce them.

Now, at the end, is this same officer part of the same police department that the other police officers were in? The ones that were chasing the two convicts? Because if so, I'm pretty sure that the officer at the end would have also had a report come in on his radio about two robbers, one male, one female (possibly with money), and he'd be like, "Halt!" or something, haha I don't know.

Anyways, good short. Nice and actiony. If that's a word.

Sean

Hey Ramoth,

The story was good. You just need to disperse the descriptive paragraphs more with dialgoue. Have the girl and guy talk more or have the girl talk to the alligator, shown close to the end.

Also I think the cops would have arrested her since a pba would be put out for her capture as Sean suggested before.

Hope this helps,
Gabe

Had some thrilling moments with Mary Beth trying to evade the alligators.  But I think what would help this script most is giving us the opportunity to care more about Mary Beth and Randy.  I like beginning with the chase, but then maybe downshift for a little more character development.

I would go with capping characters names just the one time when they're introduced.

I got the impression that the cops were right on Randy and Mary Beth's tail.  Seems implausible that Randy would be able to jump out in time for the cops not to see the muscle car.

Their disdain for the boat was funny.  It was hideous.  A few typos (at least one omitted word); I would clean those up.

I liked the twist at the end of the cop showing up because they got word of someone screaming, and not putting two and two together.

This was a decent read, but it's a bit too short for iit's own good.

The format is good and so is the dialogue.

The story is interesting until things pick up. Everything moves way to fas.

Also, the ending was kinda disappointing. Overall, the script felt pointless.

~zack~

This was a nice and pretty straight forward story here. Not much to say that hasn't already been said. It was a bit too wordy when the gators first attack and that dragged the story a bit.

Other than that I thought it was a good solid piece.

It seems like a stretch that the police would have been hampered by a handful of dollar bills. I'd also imagine that Randy was pretty obsessive about his muscle car, as most guys who have them are. Pulling the rope would have been an incredibly painful act for him, as it might have scratched his baby.  If the hole in the boat was big enough for two large, hungry alligators to come through, wouldn't the boat have sunk? Alligators don't viciously chew; their power is the downward thrust of thier jaws. They would have chomped on Randy's leg and tried to drag him under the water. Where does the cop come from in the end? The boat is still in the middle of the river. Is he standing on the shore? Is he on a police boat? Who would have heard the screaming? I got the impression it was in the middle of nowhere, but then Tennessee isn't really known for thier fierce alligators, either. I'm just being picky about the logic, is all. Otherwise, I liked it.

Premise:

Bank robbers who use a houseboat as a getaway come under attack from man-eating alligators. Not bad. Not spectacularly original but not bad.  6/10

Relation to theme. Good use of the boat and thrilling at times, it dipped into monster movie and crime caper territory at points. 6/10

Story. Nicely told with a reasonably unexpected ending. 7/10

Could benefit from some character development, I never really cared about anyone in the script.

First let me tell you how happy i am that it's 7 pages. ok now to the real review..

Personally, i got tired of all the 'honey' parts.. I know that's how the characters talk..But again, it's just me.

WOAH, you have some full pages without any dialogue. That was a full force effort for me to get through. (maybe my A.D.D) Add some dialogue in between the actions.

This wasn't horrible, but actually pretty good. The statements above were just the things i didn't happen to enjoy.

Good luck with everything! and great job!

This was a pretty good read.

You don't need to cap their names throughout the script, just the first time when you introduce them. You didn't give any ages either, so I had no clue about who these people were.
Maybe if they said something while trying to get rid of the cops as to why they stole the money, then I would have cared about them. Did they just steal it to steal it? Or was it cos maybe she was pregnant, needed it to help care for a family member??? If it's just to steal it, then they got what they deserved.
You told instead of showed with the sound of frogs and crickets fill the air. Should be crickets CHIRP, and I don't know how to make a frog sound LOL, but you know what I mean.
I liked the scene where she was hitting the gator and telling it she hated it.

It was thrilling, but I don't know anything about these people...

Cindy

I had a few problems with this script.  I thought the cops were pretty close so nipping the car into a hiding place would be ok but the cops would soon notice they'd lost it and turn back to begin a search.

If the hole in the boat is big enough for an alligator to swim through surely by nightfall the boat would have sunk?  Randy stears the boat from inside which seems odd because usually the stearing would be outside on top so you could see where you were going.

If the cops had shot Mary Beth, she has a wounded shoulder, then they would still be looking for them and a cop coming across a woman near to where they lost the car would force him draw his weapon as a precaution surely?

On a positive this was nicely written and the dialogue was ok I just found too many holes in the story sorry.

I liked this one all the way to the end. I really liked the talk between Mary Beth and Randy. I kind of felt she was a little too indifferent when Randy was killed. In the beginning, they seemed as though they might really care for one another and I enjoyed their dialogue. It was a little disappointing to see there was no real connection between them but that they were essentially cold criminals.

I’m not sure what a muscle car is.

We start out in the interior of a car and then you move to the exterior without any sluglines.

I’m not sure the ole money out the window trick would work on the police.

There were a few grammar errors.

P3 - desk of the boat - deck. This same error occurred a couple more times.

I don’t think you need to tell us they go completely different directions if you’re going to say right afterward Mary Beth goes to the stern while Randy goes to the bow.

You might want to show the engine actually running out of gas since viewers would wonder why the boat is running in one scene and not in the next.

One thing I wondered is that if the boat is so full of water, there must be a hole in it somewhere. Why doesn’t it sink?

I was disappointed with the ending. I felt like the story had just found its stride when it abruptly ended anticlimactically.


Breanne

I thought this was alright.

Its biggest short coming I thought was the ending. To me it didn't really feel like an ending at all. You had some buildup but then there wasn't really a payoff.

Besides that, I didn't really get how there could be alligators in the boat. Are they in the hull, which is filled with water, or is this a house floating on a single piece of wood. I don't really know a lot about boats but this dosn't make sense to me.

Besides that as others have pointed out, some words have been omitted and you descriptions are a little wordy.

Format: OK.  Not enough white space.   You only need to CAP the first instance of a characters name.  
Actions: Good.  The actions were adequate to explain what was happening, but a few times I found my mind straying because they didn't hold my interest.  The need a bit more colour, a bit more variation of sentence length and structure.
Characters:  Ok.  Neither had much backstory or distinctive traits.  The alligators were almost more interesting. (just kidding).
Dialogue: Ok.  There wasn't much dialogue to judge here.  What dialogue there was didn't sparkle, but it wasn't bad either.
Story: Good.  A very simple story but it was a thriller.

This, for me, started off well, but once the gators showed up, I lost interest. Too much action, not enough story. That said, the biggest problem I had with the script was lack of character developement -- I wasn't allowed an opportunity to get to know the two leads, to care if they were made a meal of.

Seth

This was a lot of fun, as most creature features are. The dialogue was both sharp and humorous, the characters were flat but I think they don't need to be too developed for this kind of thing, and the action was entertaining. The opening chase scene was a new setup for the OWC, which was refreshing, and I have to admit, I've been disappointed at the lack of alligators in this OWC (there's only one other script I've read and it only had one). Best of all, I think, is this didn't seem to take itself too seriously, which made it much more entertaining. And it was short! When you're reading forty scripts, most a full 15 pages, and 6 page script is very welcome, as far as I'm concerned.

I actually don't have much to complain about here. I dug this one. That's about all I can say.

This is another one of those shorts that's in desperate need of expansion.  Adding another ten pages would've been a great improvement...something to consider if you choose to rewrite this.

The long stretch without the dialog was a major problem for me.  I can't imagine Mary Beth not saying anything aloud.  And dialog breaks up the blocks and blocks of action that you wrote.


Phil

I'm sorry, but I'm giddy already from all these scripts, so I had to laugh some.

Firstly, when I started reading this I was engaged until that darn boat showed up again and I thought: "Blasted!" I thought it was burnt up.  It's indestructible the darn thing.

The part about the money getting thrown out of the window and thinking outside the box, I found that amusing.  I could see the money hitting the police car's windshield.

This was rather short.  Only six pages.

I noticed too many "Mary Beths" beginning sentences.

Now please, I'm not trying to be rude, just like I said giddy, but the following I found funny:

>Two alligators resting back there... ???

Relaxing you know...  Having a couple of lattes...

>Mary Beth screams.  The alligators didn't react to the noise.

No, I guess they wouldn't.

>Mary Beth says to the Alligator: "I hate you.  I hate you..."

And the alligator says, "I'm not too fond of you either, but if you buy me some raw meat with all that money, I'm willing to overlook our differences."

Seriously, I liked some of the early parts.  The money flying, and I loved the idea they had about dropping all the tree branches down to cover the car.

This was a good effort.  And I really got a few laughs, but I don't mean anything.  I'm teasing here.

Anyways, Mary Beth's final action sums up my feelings on this challenge:

Sandra E. begins to laugh a weary worn out laugh, as she relaxes.

The End.