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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board  /  The 2018 Writers' Tournament  /  Incident At The Super Save Mart - WT
Posted by: Don, March 18th, 2018, 10:01pm
Incident At The Super Save Mart by 0 - Short, Sci Fi - After being in contact with an asteroid, Tommy must try to train the new employee Andrew.  - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Posted by: khamanna, March 19th, 2018, 4:23am; Reply: 1
Ahaha, I kept laughing through the whole thing.
This is too good for this challenge.

I think I know who it is. You're always funny.

Great job.
Posted by: DustinBowcot (Guest), March 19th, 2018, 5:16am; Reply: 2
Writing is off in places. I'll give a couple examples from the 1st page:

Code

The falling ball of fire plummets to the Earth... 



If something is plummeting it is falling.

Code

TOMMY, a pimple faced, braces wearing teenager holds a...



Braces-wearing

Code

A BLUE vine like



vine-like.

Code

He grabs his neck immediately
and passes out.



You mean he immediately passes out?

Code

Carl nods his head



Carl nods is enough.

That's from the first half page.

The action lines lack flow.

Code

ANDREW
Oh my God, dude. Your finger just
fall off. Are you okay?



Fell off.



Writing: 2.5
Story: 2.5

Total: 2.5
Posted by: Stumpzian, March 19th, 2018, 12:07pm; Reply: 3
Amusing in places ("those aren't my fingers"). Not sure why the Alien/Tommy can't tell the truth, other than the parameter. No one in the supermarket heard the asteroid crash out back?
Posted by: CameronD, March 19th, 2018, 12:15pm; Reply: 4
This was pretty funny, lol.

Absurd in all the right places, but considering the constrained parameters of your challenge you did quite well in executing.

The homo line actually made me laugh and the rest of the script had me snickering.

Very good.
Posted by: eldave1, March 19th, 2018, 12:18pm; Reply: 5
Okay - I laughed at parts and comedy is tough.

Overall  not a bad effort for a short time.

Break up your action blocks as distinct actions occur.  There were several places where they ran together making the read denser than it need be.
Posted by: DanC, March 19th, 2018, 12:52pm; Reply: 6
I found this very funny.  I prefer this one, honestly.

I think you should have Tommy talk in a robotic or some alien-type "English is your second language" accent.

I think he has to lie to keep up appearances that he's normal and OK while they look around to see what the Earth has to offer.  

It does need a bit of a story and a reason for all this, but, after only 48ish hours and some real laugh-out-loud parts, great job.

Dan
Posted by: MarkItZero, March 19th, 2018, 1:28pm; Reply: 7
This started out really, really funny but then kept hitting the same note for too long. Not much of a payout with the ending and Carl wanting to be the cool boss never pays off.

But, like I said with the other script, this was a ridiculously hard challenge topic.

You started out on fire so this definitely gets the win. Nice job.
Posted by: PKCardinal, March 19th, 2018, 3:37pm; Reply: 8
Nicely done. A couple of solid laughs.

It's a bit one-note in the joke telling... but, hey, five pages... it's tough to get too far from any single element.

Good job.
Posted by: Warren, March 19th, 2018, 4:00pm; Reply: 9
Some pretty obvious typos.

I really enjoyed this though. I laughed a few times and thought the writing was quite good overall.
Posted by: JEStaats, March 19th, 2018, 7:41pm; Reply: 10
Was having a character named Tommy part of this head-to-head? Kidding.

Very funny. Great dialog and banter. Great ending too. Very good work for 48 hours.
Posted by: Pale Yellow, March 19th, 2018, 7:42pm; Reply: 11
INCIDENT AT THE SUPER SAVE MART
Great OPENING for sci-fi. Love the opening!
Ya dig? Love this ;)
Really great dialogue in this. Good job!
Omg lol at dude your ear just fell off.
Very funny all the way through. GREAT job.
Posted by: AnthonyCawood, March 19th, 2018, 8:24pm; Reply: 12
Invasion of the body snatchers with jokes, okay I'll go with that, decent effort,
Posted by: Zombie Sean, March 19th, 2018, 8:33pm; Reply: 13
This was great. I was laughing the whole time. Goofy and outrageous. Good job.
Posted by: ajr, March 20th, 2018, 6:38am; Reply: 14
As Anthony said, it's basically invasion of the body snatchers with sight gags.

Granted, there are laughs here, but they're obvious. Body parts falling off, mostly.

Again, if I'm looking for the boxes, sci-fi - check, supermarket, check - not sure about the lying part.

Hate to be the stick in the mud here, but denying is not the same as lying.

Kant said that lying is predicated on everyone else telling the truth. A lie is not a lie if the lie is the norm. So liars depend on truth-tellers. From that standpoint, this script's counterpart did a better job with a key element of the challenge.

But good for you writer for eliciting some laughs with a very difficult challenge.
Posted by: stevie, March 21st, 2018, 4:37pm; Reply: 15
Technically no one was lying and it wasn't meant to be a comedy but I guess you did it ok so I'l let that go.
Posted by: ScottM, March 22nd, 2018, 2:45am; Reply: 16
Great Job writer, I thought that was a really funny entry.

The homo line was pure gold :) but I laughed several times.

There are some really obvious mistakes but you will easily see them if you go through your script again.

Well done.

Sorry I just read the previous comment and kind of disagree. The part about it having to be a comedy, because it is still a Sci-fi, comedy or not.

You will struggle to find a sci-fi that isn't automatically something else as well. Sci-fi/comedy, Sci-fi/horror, Sci-fi/action. I think this statement is true for almost every genre.

You laugh in dramas, you cry in comedies, there are horror comedies and comedies that are scary. Where do you draw the line that something is too much of another thing?

That got a bit ranty, sorry :)
Posted by: PrussianMosby, March 22nd, 2018, 3:46am; Reply: 17
Incident At The Super Save Mart

Short notes: Unfortunately, I quickly felt this does not work as a story experience for the screen. Then it dragged along with the same plotting around his illness over and over and I wished you'd go on to something else. I hoped for a great ending which then eventually didn't deliver. Your topic was so hard and at least you have found a certain way through which is an accomplishment on its own here.

story (0-5): 2

character (0-5): 2

presentation (0-5): 3

total: 7
Posted by: ReaperCreeper, March 22nd, 2018, 11:04am; Reply: 18
A bright streak of light ignites the sky. The falling ball of fire plummets to the Earth and crashes behind a dumpster in the back of a SUPER SAVE MART.
This isn't written terribly or anything, but there's a redundancy to it that really weakens the passage:
-"plummets" already implies falling. Delete "falling" and the sentence flows much better.
-"to The Earth" is similarly unnecessary here, though it's not as bad as the above... again, delete it and you'll lose nothing. The passage will only read better.

TOMMY, a pimple faced, braces wearing teenager
-Pimply and pimpled are words. I would use them, but if not, do hyphenate "pimple-faced."
-Hyphenate "brace-wearing," though I'd argue that simply "with braces" would work better, as in... "a pimply teenager with braces."

Vine like should be vine-like. Please, watch those hyphens like your life depends on it. It reads really poorly when writers don't apply them properly.

No need to worry about me human. This dialogue lacks a direct-address comma. I see this mistake with a lot of writers on here and it drives me absolutely nuts. Should be "... about me, human."

Rulebook is a word. Rule book is not. OK, I'll stop.

There are a lot of grammatical errors and typos beyond just these ones, so I'd definitely suggest a thorough revision down the line (understandable given the time limit). Story time...

Maybe I misunderstood this, but I thought the "asteroid" crashed behind a dumpster, in which case it could not possibly be an asteroid under any circumstances, as the noise and damage would have been gigantic and would have attracted countless onlookers. I think you probably meant for it to be a smaller rock, like a meteorite (asteroids are the size of small planets...).

The description also says the rock falls "behind" a dumpster... but dumpsters are usually against a wall of some sort. Could use some clarity here.

Tommy pisses himself and neither Carl nor Andrew ever notice or smell it. Weird. If you're not going to do anything with that, you may as well delete that he soils himself.

I did like Andrew's increasingly worried reactions to Tommy's body decomposition, and Tommy's nonchalant attitude to it. I did laugh, despite the grossness.

The ending felt like a bit of an anti-climax to me, personally. It was just a repetition of what happened to Tommy.

Still, the script did make me laugh despite my misgivings about it.
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