Shrimps by Roland Moore ()  (OWC name - Wind Blossom)  - Short, Thriller - Shrimps follows three minnows of the criminal underworld as they attempt to wait on an isolated boat for twenty four hours. It may be the hardest thing they ever do.   August '07 One Week Challenge entrant. - pdf, format 8)

Not to be mean, but it took me a while to get into it. I didn't really finish. I haven't rated the story .

Here are my notes, though.

Page numbers would be nice. Don't depend on Adobe to give the reader the numbers. I'm not sure when the script is printed out if the numbers stay. Sounds aren't written any different than regular words. "Laughter comes from inside the boat." Try not to use "We". Character names are capitalized for two reasons, when they're first introduced and above dialogue. Anything more than that is overkill.

p3. Later belongs in the slugline. - LATER. Active voice. "Aiden and Barry play..." Sluglines: Dashes belong between the location - time. INT. ROOM - TIME.

Don't include things we can't see. "This is MRS DIXON. She and her tuxedo'd husband MR DIXON walk into the room, laughing, drunk." The "from a party" we can't see, so don't include it.

As far as the story goes, I really didn't get it. Three men rob a rich couple, and then go out to the bars? Pick up some girl? Sorry. Not my cup of tea.

There are, as ABsteel said, may technical issues. The good news is, many of them can be corrected easily by downloading a free formatting program, like RoughDraft or Celtex.

For me, this was a really tedious piece. I read it, and then reread it, and still the end confuses me. Did Mikey end up with the jewels? Or was it Mr. Dixon? I suspect I missed something.

On the plus side, I did find it interesting enough to reread. It seems all the elements for a good story are there, maybe just not executed in a way that allows the reader to fully appreciate it. This could be due to time constraints.

Seth

  

From the title, I thought it was going to be a cartoonish piece. I pictured three shrimps sailing in a dilemma. That would be interesting to see.

I was a bit confused with most of the dialgoue that took place. The story was conventional. robbers rob a guy, guy finds them and gets revenge. I understand the constraints but you show how the three robbers gave up their location or the guy find them.

Hope this helps,
Gabe  

Not really good but then again not really bad.

I didn't get all of the UK slang but that certainly didn't ruin the story or anything because it was pretty straight forward, which also made it a little bit boring. It wasn't thrilling at all.

I wasn't crazy about the writing. There was too much of "And then this", "And the that". It doesn't work in a script.

No need to CAP the names after you've introduced them the first time.

Premise:  Jewel thieves and chase, bit old hat and needed some real fizz to lift it out of the crowd.   5/10

Relation to Theme: Used the boat, but seemed to want to get off it at every available opportunity. More of a drama than a thriller   5/10

Story: Some good dialogue, occassionally some very good dialogue. Unfortunately the story didn't really get going till the very end.  Thrillers need to have an explosive inciting incident that really gets things moving, too many of these tinkle rather tahn throttle along. 5/10

Just a bit pedestrian, which is a shame because I think I know who wrote this and I like him : )

I found this to be a highly polished script as far as looks go.

Maybe my understanding of "thriller" is totally wrong, but I didn't find this to be in that category; it was however well done.

I think that you've got the screenplay style down well.

You're either extremely talented and have a knack or are a bit of a pro at this because it has definite flash and style.  It ranks way up there.

The pages aren't cluttered or bogged down by excess.

You might have spent the full 15 pages and built some more images or conflict into it.

Some things I didn't understand:

What's a babycham?

Why was he called Harry Potter jokingly?

Why is the script called "Shrimps"?

Is the spelling of yaght British?  I thought it was yacht.

A typo here:

>checks that the [cost] is clear--should be coasts

I loved the ending on this: the fact that we are left with the idea of the cost of it all.  What is the "true" value of something?  Well, that all depends...

I think this was really well done.

Good job!

Sandra

This was okay. I get the point. Robbers get their comeuppance at the hands of the robbed. Still, that aspect of the story seemed extremely downplayed here. For the most part, the script seemed to be about robbers being paranoid about their goods. It was more about what they'd already done than what they were planning to do next. Maybe that sounds a little weird. My point is the story lacked conflict. Nothing much happens except for the end and the flashback and the dialogue doesn't seem to be all that conflict-related. Speaking of dialogue, I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and say that the slang was confusing and I lost some of the story because of it. The logline was confusing too but for a different reason. It just didn't make sense. I still don't know who the "shrimps" are.

Anyway, there were bits and pieces of this I liked but for the most part, I think it could've been a lot better.

I thought this was pretty good. I wasn’t confused at all. A couple of parts could have been made clearer. I did have to reread a couple of places but I thought the story was interesting and I didn’t have any problems - other than the usual types of little snares.

The UK slang did snag me occasionally but that’s not your fault. Some of them I understood though. And quite frankly, I could sort of understand the rest just by the feel and mood at the time.

Inside, we hear LAUGHTER - “we hears,” “we passes,” “we sees,” etc., aren’t necessary. They just take the reader out of the story. The capitalized laughter denotes the laughter is audible. You could have just said; Inside, LAUGHTER.

Yaght - you keep spelling it that way instead of yacht. Is this an alternate spelling I’m unaware of? The rest of the writing was so good that I couldn’t believe you kept making this same error.

That trog pulling a bird -- haha.  I love that. Calling a woman a bird reminds me of a slang from an old movie classic but I love those old movies.

I found it inconceivable that neither would want to check the case to make sure the money is still there immediately after they’ve returned from the pub.

The very end with Aidan’s rings was a bit predictable but it was fitting.

I liked the style. The slangs made it a little more laborious than something more familiar but I thought the writing was really good and I liked the general tone of it. I liked it.


Breanne