A Little Geeky Competition by Brandon Batista (ectoplasm) - Short, Romance - When Oliver and Sally compete for number one in their class, Oliver slowly finds Sally to be more than just a rival. 10 pages - pdf, format 8)

This was cute, but it didn't seem like high school seniors to me at all. The back and forth bickering was a tad child like. I would've liked it better if the two girls who knew about Sally's situation were making fun of her, not going"Aww". An oliver overheard that.

As I said, its cute, just not enough nastiness for me and i remember a shitload as a high school senior. Pretty good writing though. Missed  a few caps in sentences, but it didn't throw me off...

James

As I go:

Page 1:  There's got to be a more interesting way to tell us that Oliver always finishes early than Harlen's cliche line.  The visuals are strong enough to get this point across.  If you want Harlen to say something, it can fill more than one role here.  An example of what I mean is, say, "Oliver, I've repeatedly asked you to at least double-check your answers."  That's not a good line, but what I'm getting at here is that this fills two roles: it solidifies the idea that Oliver always goes quickly, but it also shows us that this pisses Harlen off.  See what I mean?  The way it is now it's very flat.
Harlen has no clear character.  Be great to get a sense of what he's like.

Page 2:  This is a pretty un-dynamic way of establishing their conflict.  Why not make Sally a new girl in class?  If they've already been in class together all year, it seems like whatever we're about see happen should already have happened.  Either that, or something that happens in the first scene needs to show us something has changed.
You prove your point earlier than you think you do.  As I noted above, your visuals on page one are strong enough to tell us that Oliver's a geek, and Harlen's first line isn't entirely necessary.  This is also true of the Oliver/Sally conflict.  They hand in their tests almost at the same time, she says it was easy and glances pointedly at him, that's all we need to know.  You could definitely lose a couple lines in the first scene, or -- and this is what I'd want to see -- show us a little of their personalities beyond nerd stereotypes.

Page 3:  Very repetitive dialogue here, too.

Page 4:  So you do have an inciting incident between them.  I dunno.  I would put this in the first scene if it's gonna go in.  We're done 35% of the story here and there's very little to grab you going in.  As I said, I think the main issue is that the conflict isn't introduced in a very dynamic way.  In a feature, it makes sense to have these scenes set up like this.  In something this short, I'd say cut to the chase.

Page 5: We really need to understand a little more about these people in order to root for them.  Maybe Reynold could hint at Oliver's problem in their scene?  I don't just mean, that he doesn't act like a teenager, or that he needs that scholarship, but WHY he doesn't act like a teenager.

Page 6:  No.  He can't find out that easily.  On page 6 we're way past the point where the character should be passive.  Oliver needs to be pushing against Sally harder than ever before we come to the realization that "she's not so bad."  Does that make sense?  He needs to be active in the major turning point of the story.

Page 9:  Ha!  I like the walking in the same direction.  Nice one.

Thoughts:

Mmmm...yes, there are interesting elements to the story here.  You may want to examine exactly what the moral is that you're trying to get across.  If the moral is that the way to a woman's heart is to treat her with a lack of respect, then we're doing okay.  Otherwise, I think the ground is a little shaky.  What I mean by this is that you have a simple cause and effect romance -- Oliver intentionally does poorly so girl will win, Oliver gets girl -- in which Oliver always has power over Sally.  Oliver is smarter than Sally for the entire script, misguidedly relinquishes the high grade out of pity, is rightfully admonished for disrespecting her with undue pity, and then immediately is shown to have wooed her.  What makes your story different than others is that Oliver doesn't realize his mistake.  Ordinarily in this rich-man-poor-woman-don't-pity-me kinda romance, the rich man's misguided pity leads to the second act crisis and his realization and acceptance of his mistake makes up the third act.  Here, the realization is skipped.  Oliver acted like a jerk and got away with it; the audience is told to side with Oliver.  That's not right.  Does that make sense?

I think the story here makes a lot of sense, except for what I've outlined above, but I do think that Oliver has to be far more active in it.  He can't just overhear the girls talking about Sally, and he can't just study; he needs to make strong active choices that move the story forward and further his conflict with Sally.  I think perhaps what is missing here is an understanding of Oliver's motivation.  As I said above, why is it that he doesn't want to act like a teenager?  What's driving this guy?  Why is it so important?  We need to know if we're going to feel validated when he sets aside that pursuit in order to help out Sally.  At the end of the film, Oliver's going to make a conscious choice to put Sally ahead of him.  Everything leads up to that.  Knowing that, we need everything preceding to increase the stakes of that one climactic decision.  

Thanks for the read!

Chris

A cute story, well written. Managed to create a little tension over schoolwork, not easy to do.

I wondered if a poor girl should have a cell phone. Not saying they don't, but for the sake of the script, maybe she shouldn't have any tech stuff.

One thing I would consider is the crossing out on the test. You don't want it to seem like a device just so the girl can learn he threw the test on purpose. But what you can do is show him taking the test, all set to turn it in, agonizing over what to do, then at the last second changing a few answers. That might do the trick, might give even a little more tension.

I like your work though. More stuff along these lines would be welcome.

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate all of it and will be sure to keep every piece of advice I get in mind for whatever I do next. I agree that Oliver should have better realized the negative effect of what he did.

Hey Brandon,

This was good little short and a good read.  A few capital letters were missing from the beginning of some sentences but nothing that interrupted the read for me.

The ending didn't work for me sorry to say, it seemed too convenient to overhear two girls talking about Sally and then hear Sally on the phone.  I think you need to find another way for Oliver to find out IMO.

I would have liked to see a different, more deceptive tone to this.  I was thinking along the lines of cheating to stay in 1st place which seemed so important to Oliver at the start.

Overall this is well written and for what it's about, school tests, I think you have done a wonderful job.

Good luck and keep writing.

Steve

This was cute, thought I thought it was an awkward length for the story.  Either tighten it up a bit or make it longer.  Perhaps show a little bit of the sparks between them before the big test.  Or go into some detail why Oliver feels the need to be the best.


Phil

havent read anyone else's feedback because i want to go in fresh. i'll be reviewing as i go.

still havent started but i'm guessing from your logline, the two rivals fall for each other? i certainly hope this one defies audience expectation. guess we'll find out.

p1
you forgot to capitalize "students." this might sound a bit hypocritical given my personal disregard for correct punctuation in this post, but come on dude. this is just basic.

not sure if sally and oliver should be 17. i would experiment with their ages a bit.

sally should speak more intelligently. i feel like you tried to do this, but statements such as "I personally found the entire test to be overly simple" sound awkward.

p2
you're missing an apostrophe. you're killing me! these characters are supposed to be smart. but you ruin their character when you....whatever

you're missing a question mark

i'm going to stop correcting your punctuation/spelling/grammar at this point. needless to say, it needs work. first time it's a mistake, second time it's a habit.

p5
these teens are 17 and they're taking an algebra test? do they ride the short bus every day to school too? would change it to trig or calc

p6
you have two girls rooting for the poor kid. they should make fun of her instead. theyre typical teen girls. plus it will conjure up more sympathy for sally. make it seem like gossip.

rolled my eyes when sally talked to her mom and told her not to spend too much. what a load of shit. you're trying to make us feel sympathetic for sally but it doesnt work for me and my cold, dark heart. it just feels forced. kind of like when a character's loved ones "died in the 9/11 attacks." this isn't as bad, but you're starting down that path. the audience already knows that they're poor. no need to tell us again. and a teen isnt going to be so open about her family's condition when there are other people around.

reached the ending. and you know what? i didnt hate it. even though it was super cheesy, i knew it was coming, and the dialogue around it is a bit cliched...i found it to be kind of sweet. flawed? yes. but sweet in a dumb sort of way.

but alas, i knew this was going to happen before i even read the script. and there's an important lesson to be learned here. it all surrounds audience expectation. take the movie "gran torino" for example. that film worked so well because of clint eastwood's public perception (which has taken years to be formulated). we all know eastwood to be that gunslingin', take-shit-from-nobody, badass who shoots first and asks questions later. the reason why gran torino worked so well is because, we, the audience, expected for eastwood to reign down god's fury at the climax of the film. but he doesnt. instead of taking out his gun. he pulls out a lighter. we, the audience, expect him to pull out a gun, and the film leads us to believe that he's going to, but he doesnt. and all those gangsters shoot the shit out of him

in the same way, your script could greatly benefit by defying audience expectation. we all expect us for these two teens to like each other by the end of the script. and guess what? they do. therefore its boring. now if oliver beat sally's score at the end or sally ended up resenting oliver even more so than before, then we'd be progressing the story and the characters.

hope this helps. would love to take another look once you rewrite it.

Hi

These are just my personal feelings on this one, so I may well be alone on my island.  Competently written, I liked the competitive edge but you lost me with the mention of Sally's poor background,  all the competitive energy just melted away, it seemed wasted.  

Personally I didn't like Oliver and would quiet happily see him up-seated,  Sally wasn't much better but at least she had a reason.  I don't like the fact that Oliver gets a kind of moral victory without even playing the game, there's a certain arrogance in thinking that he has to let her win, that she doesn't stand a chance on her own merits.  I'd much rather see Oliver in a guaranteed position of victory before he makes the decision to let her win, otherwise it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
I think Oliver needs to have something to loose too, because frankly dropping a few marks on a test doesn't seem like a worthy sacrifice.

Also if I was Sally, I would be offended by what Oliver did (at least initially), i think it's condescending that Oliver would allow her to win.

I think this needs to be longer, it felt a bit rushed at the end, how quickly he develops a conscience, and the romantic ending felt like it materialised out of nowhere.    

I think the beginning had me looking forward to some kind of competitive wrestling match with a burgeoning romance, so I wasn't a big fan of the soft turn it took.  But this was entertaining and it was still a sweet story.

Leon

Hey Brandon, was hoping to get all the way through this, but stopped on the top of Page 2, sorry to say.

It always surprises me when peeps praise writing that is obviously not praiseworthy.  And I apologize if that sounds mean or assholish.  Some reviewers pointed out obvious mistakes...and that's always good, but how others can call this "competent" is way beyond me.

Missing capital letters to start sentences, missing punctuation, apostrophes, etc...ARGH...I don't get it.

You started out with a very weak Slug that I would have immediately commented on if I were taking notes, cause I knew it would come back to bite you in the ass, and it did with your 2nd Slug. You start off with "INT. CLASSROOM", then go to "INT. SCHOOL HALLWAY".  See the problem here?  The classroom and the hallway are both in the same school.  NO big deal?  Well...some will say no, but as you expand your scenes and delve into bigger scripts, this kind of thing is a back breaker.

The dialogue here is not only way overboard, but also far from believable.  When all we have is dialogue, your characters suffer tremendously as well.

That was all for me and I knew whatever was going to happen was both obvious and something I didn't need to spend another 8 or 9 minutes on.

Sorry, but hopefully you will take this to heart and edit your work, first of all, then read it over numerous times to see what you've actually written.

Best of luck and happy Holidays!

Wow, didn't expect this to get any more reads but glad it did. I'm thankful for all the views and feedback as I'm always looking for opinions, even if negative. It can only help me improve, happy holidays.