Play Dead by Stephen Wells (SteveUK)  writing as Anonymous 3 - Short, Apocalypse, Horror, YA - In the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, one man believes he has the perfect strategy to survive, but what will his plan cost him? 9 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Good script.

I was beginning to think it was losing focus, and had too many flashbacks, but the ending brought it together.

I think it could do without the last bit of dialogue, about checking and burrying him, for punch I would just have him shot and know it's his son

Well done.

This is a really good one. A recomended read and I'll learn from you. Thanks.

Yeh this is a goody. Cleverly written, a real feel to it, and it's got a nice twist too.

Not much to say really, I thoroughly enjoyed it and can't really find any faults worth mentioning.

Well done

Cam

This one works all the way around. Really good storytelling on display. Read it straight through, so that's always good.

Only noticed a couple of typos, besides that this one was very polished.

Tragic ending that I didn't see coming, so more props there.

Easily one of my favorites so far. Great job!

~Zack~

This was starting to meander for me and I was losing patience with the VO... but then the twist end redeemed it!

I think this could be shortened a little to get to the end quicker, but is a pretty solid entry,

Good job.

The best 'shorts, imh are always short simple effective ideas. You nailed it with this one.

Title: Big tick.
Logline: Big tick.

Story: At first I thought, oh no you're not using that 'ol trick, but then you gave it a great twist. Surprised it hasn't been done before actually.

I think they'll be coming out of the woodwork to produce this one. Hordes of them.  
Well done.

Just want to add a couple of typo corrections for you.:

lie not lay
'Several of the dead lie...'

You've written 'lie' correctly everywhere else so maybe a true typo.

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/lay-versus-lie
Above just in case.

aisle not isle (the latter is a small island)

as I said in the other zombie script review, I'll try not to show a bias, as i don't believe anything fresh can ever come from this genre again.  hopefully you change my mind...

... hey, you kinda did it.  cool.  we've seen people act like zombies 100 times, but to actually base a story around that isn't a bad idea at all.  props for that.

that being said, i would have really liked it if you tried to go about about this is a way other than voiceover.  it kinda cheapens it to me.

this isn't bad so far, but flashbacks now.  just seems like a cool idea but you took the easy way out with that and VO.  I'm rushing to judgement though... maybe... probably.

Ok, this is pretty good overall.  I'm nitpicking with the VO and Flashback critiques.  it's your script, I'm not gonna tell you ways I would have tried to write it to avoid the VO.  the flashback paid off in a nice way too.

While the zombie stuff was as generic and derivative as it always is, showing it through the eyes of a character pretending to be a zombie was a good angle.

Interesting comment Conz. If the writer had not used voice over it would have entailed him relating his tale to another character while on the run.

The story would have been a much messier monster imh.  

I'm a big fan of V.O. so...

I'll be interested to hear after the challenge (don't won't to load this thread) how otherwise Conz you think this could be any more effective.

i don't think you ever need the whole "how it happened" stuff, so that eliminates some dialogue.   he sees someone innocent running, and whispers for them to follow him.  we get our first look at him in his zombie get up.

there could have been a scene with him and that person laying low, and he tells them his methods of survival.  he gets all his backstory out in that scene, and the other person thinks he's nuts... immediately gets killed.  so the next few pages are all action, wouldn't even need dialogue until the climactic stuff.

... but again, I'm not trying to re-write the script.  I'm really not, just offering an alternative take.  i still liked it

Never repeat your Slug in the opening line of a passage...especially not your very first.  Poor start.

Oh no...another script with the main character named "man".

Extremely cliche so far.  VO, poorly formatted Flashbacks, characters with several different names...this ain't working for me at all.

Not for me, I'm afraid.  No named characters is a big mistake.

How's "the son" still alive?  And the mom?  Did I miss something in one of those Flashbacks?

2.5 is all I can throw out here.

I almost quit reading with the V.O. until I realized that it wasn't just a narrator. Maybe if that was made clear earlier, it wouldn't have distracted me so much. Agree that the backstory of how it all came to be could be shortened or lost all together. And agree that the son's dialog at the end could be lessened for more impact.

All in all, liked it. Good work!

Title works with the logline - sounds like an entertaining idea.  I’m in…  Zombies can work as long as there’s something fresh.  The Walking Dead have kind of made it a tough gig but...  

Nicely written - world feels grounded and ‘real’ with a story that pulls me along.  As a W.D fan, it’s hard for me to see past the whole ‘blending in’ angle; but despite that I actually liked where you took it.  I’m not sure I quite get the logic of Trapper Hat partaking in the eating - a step too far?  Other than that there’s a certain irony to the situation that carries this to a satisfying payoff.

I never liked a lot of narration, but as I kept reading I liked it.  Good story, Very ironic at the end.  Aint life a bitch..

It's been stated many times before, but the undead genre is about as fresh as a zombie's underpants.  The script read quickly and easily, but just about everything in the story I'd seen before in Walking Dead.  Virus spreading like wildfire.  Covering yourself with zombie guts to walk unnoticed.  Hiding from psycho survivors.  

One gruesomely nice touch was Trapper Hat joining in the feast on the fat guy's body.

The down ending was a good idea, but detailing the son's age would have been a way to show the passage of time.  I was confused how long Trapper Hat had been out there alone.

Why is a "Middle Aged Survivor" with the son and not the Wife?  Would have been a more impactful and tragic scene if the two of them had been searching for the Trapper all this time, only to shoot him.  

Yes! Put Mum in the picture.

Far more heart wrenching.

Not sure about this. The constant V.O. was pretty grating and I don't think the end packed as much punch as you wanted it to. Not for me anyway.

It's pretty well written and pretty original for a zombie story. Although "playing dead" has been done before.

I could imagine this one playing out well on screen.

This is very well written from a description and action point of view. It's easy to follow, the flow is smooth.

The V.O. is not needed at all. It cheapens this. For example, as an experiment, if take ALL the VO from the first two pages, can you figure out everything that is going on from the action? Yes you can, the VO adds nothing. The same can be said pretty much for all of it, apart from the Son aspect. You sacrifice a lot to get this in so you can do the twist.

I would argue, with a little bit of tweeking you can get everything you need across with no VO and it would be a lot more powerful.

As it is though, the Zombie thing has literally been done to death and this one offers nothing new.

Most of this is very much like Walking Dead, right down to the using zombie gore smothered all over themselves to blend in, with a bit of Zombieland thrown in. The ending was a decent attempt at a twist, but again, being mistaken for a zombie and killed by accident has also been done quite a lot, going as far back as the ending to the original Night of the Living Dead.

So top marks for me for the overall writing but not many for the dialogue and originality factor.

-Mark

I agree with the other comments.  Pretty clever idea.

I do think it needs some tightening up.  The VO does get a bit old.  

I LOVED the twist.  That was amazing...

It would have been better if he had looked up and seen his kids' hat.

OMG, imagine if he sees his kid's hat in a distance as he's biting the flesh.  He raises his head and even stands up, slowly, perhaps loses his balance.  Right as he gets shot in the head...

And perhaps they can see the tears and read his diary or something about his idea to play dead...

This will get sold too, I'm sure...

Dan

With zombie scripts, you have like twenty seconds to get to the unique hook.

3 - So these images; we've seen them all before. I say cut it all. First shot, Trapper hat in a crowd of zombies. Second shot, reveal Man. I've gotten very tired of looking at shots of empty streets while listening to voiceovers about plagues, and I'm not alone.

7 - I'm also for cutting al the V.O., while I'm at it. The visuals are telling a clear story and we'd think of these things without the V.O. spelling them out. Show us the photo, we understand the regret. Show us the sadistic looks on the Bikers' faces, we get the sorts of things he must have seen survivors do.

***

Reaching the end, I'm more sure than ever that I think you should cut the V.O. Sneak a couple lines in for Man, cut all the V.O...imagine how powerful that dialogue is gonna come through after eight minutes of silence.

I really like the story here. I gotta vote for just cutting out every zombie cliché, especially at the front end. I don't care about empty cities, the plague spreading, what survivors did, etc. I just wanna know about this one guy's experience, because it's an interesting and well-told story.

So it's a unique enough zombie story, I think, but it'd be good to prove it right from the start. It's also not entirely clear, I don't think, why he needs to actually eat...it doesn't seem like zombies would put two and two together if he didn't. But maybe that vagueness kinda works...maybe he's kinda living like a zombie anyway, which is exactly the point.

I would call this my favourite so far if it weren't about zombies. But then it kinda has to be zombies. A solid piece of work, anyway!

Hi Writer,

Zombie script… been there done that, kind of (or, Binder Dundat). This definitely had a unique angle, for me at least, cause I’ll be honest, I don’t watch much zombie shit, and I never got onto the Walking Dead thing, so ya… pretty cool.

Bummed out it ended the way it did actually. Even the Son stated he thought he saw tears on the Man’s face. I would have liked the Son to have held off for a moment to gauge the interaction of this one particular zombie… he is a hunter after all, and should be able to overcome and adapt to situations while in the field, including studying his prey for irregularities of the mutating virus.

I’m obviously in the majority, if there’s a majority, of having them ‘Unite’. That would have been the cat’s ass. Great visuals, methodical, smooth pace and, easy to get into and through. Well done.

Well presented opening. Then I don't understand the flashback since the first scenes imply the zombies just arose, so you'd be originally chronological correct - let's see.

You choose a complicated way of explaining Trapper Hat zombie is not truly a zombie. Be more reader-friendly with such stuff and draw out a better concept to guide us clearer, same with all the flashbacks. Not only the slugs - the content and descriptions should serve some orientation as well . VO's are a bit overloaded and could need a further cutting and polishing. Whatever, nothing of big concern to me: all these things can be easily fixed imo.

It's a creative zombie story. Very hard to impress me in the undead-genre and it was definitely entertaining. Especially the character driven core of a guy successfully imitating he's a monster did work well.

Okay, it wasn't completely what I was expecting. But it was pretty damn clever and it worked well all around. The only thing I wasn't crazy about was all the voice over, but in considering it, I don't know how else you could have done it, though.

Great job here.

Gary

I didn't pick this one because of the logline. The writer can definitely improve on it, IMHO. I read it because someone whispered in my ear that I should read it. Boy am I glad I did. This one was awesome. It hit all the spots IMO. The ending being the irony of being killed not by zombies, but the survivors is great. Not just any survivors, btw...

Excellent job, writer!  

And for all the people whining about the V.O, this is a great example where it works!!!!!

Shades of Bill Murray in Zombieland. That was my first thought.

The twist at the end definitely saves it. The problem is getting there.

But wait, I thought the Son and Wife died in the cabin fire. But they're still alive?

It's solidly written. But before the twist it's just another zombie story.

Nice title and logline.

First page tells us everything we need to know. You get all the setup out of the way. Nice.

Beautiful descriptions.

Had to Google what a trapper hat was. Reminds me of Cousin Eddie.

P3 I think I get the title now. Aha! Called t.

Quoted Text Playing dead is what keeps me alive.

I love this line, especially the irony.

Quoted Text And I intend to stay alive.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive

Oh not I, I will survive

That's a big Twinkie.

Quoted Text I. Will. Survive.

At first, I was afraid, I was petrified.

Wow. Didn't expect that ending. Beautiful, sad, gory. Bravo!

This is one of the best ones I've read. I didn't spot one mistake or issue, other than you could have maybe written more on page 10.

Excellent job.

Love your title and your logline.

Great writing on display here. We really feel for Trapper Hat. I have to admit I kinda figured it out before the ending. But it was still great.

One of my favorites. Good job.

This seemed like the same old, same old until the Trapper started eating people. There's a pretty good concept here and a decent ending too.

I wonder if the Trapper’s cannibalism wouldn't work better put upfront in the story. Right now there's two interesting twists back to back. The second twist diminishes the power of the first one because there's no time to reflect on it. If you played the cannibalism card from the get go, you could still tell the story of what brought the guy to this point while saving the cruelest twist (that his family never actually died) for the end.

Like I said, there's good ideas here, but right now it only works upon reflection. Reveal the information in a different order and you can get this to work in the moment, rather than after it's over.

Two different thoughts that kind of work together:

First, I don't have a problem with the voice over and flashback, but too often they're telling us things that anyone familiar with the zombie genre would already know. The “humans are the true danger” beat isn't only familiar, it's completely lost on this family centric story.

Second, I think a father would need to see more than a cabin on fire to be convinced his family is dead. I, personally, would be searching endlessly for them. Maybe that's what the flashbacks and narration should really be detailing. Not the well known details of the zombie apocalypse, but this guy’s exhaustive, unfruitful search for his family. There's a lot of journey between “I think my family's dead” and “I eat human flesh now”. Almost none of it is covered here.

It may seem like I'm coming down particularly hard on this one. Truth is it just got me thinking a lot. It's definitely one of the best I've read so far.

Writer,

Good job! Narration, I thought, read pretty natural, and you painted the action and the landscape well. And you threw in a nice twist that I only saw coming just before it happened, so good there, too. One of the better reads this go round.

Steve

Lots of V.O I've noticed in these scripts to set the stage for the Apocalypse. Maybe it's because I've read a bazillion scripts by now by it's growing old. I think your story might be stronger without the VO at the beginning. Show, don't tell right?

Nice tripping over a dead body. I like that and think it would play well on screen.

Oh, ok, a man playing dead as a zombie! LOL. Now the title is cracking me up. I guess the VO is a bit more acceptable now. Funny concept.

The Twinkie bit would be stronger if you played up the tension to the max. I love the idea of a Twinkie becoming the ultimate test of his willpower and it's right in front of him, tempting in all it's creamy spongy goodness.

Oh damn, nice ending!

First of all, major props for a proper zombie apocalypse script. I thought the OWC would be filled with em and ended up being a bit sad I hadn't really read one yet. I have never seen an episode of the Walking Dead (I'm that guy) so though these ideas may seem old to some, I really liked em all. This kinda comes off as a sad black comedy to me because Trapper Hat has obviously lost a bit of his mind from playing dead for so long. Just the idea of a guy covered in guts and gore like everyday is Halloween is amusing to me to no end.

The one weakness is that there is no real story or conflict here. It's just Trapper Hat's daily routine. It's interesting to see the depth's he sunk to to survive but it does start wearing a little thin towards the end. However the ending changes that quickly. It seems a bit random that the son just stumbles upon dad though. Maybe show in the flashback Trapper teaching his son how to track and stalk prey. I like the man with the son as it implies Mom has hooked up with another guy and is a bit more tragic.

Pretty sweet script! Glad I squeezed in this read before the deadline!

Play Dead - Apocalypse, Horror, YA - In the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, one man believes he has the perfect strategy to survive, but what will his plan cost him? 

Rating: 2
Thoughts: I'm assuming the plan is to play dead.  But even though that's the title, it should probably be included in the logline.  I like the idea but the reason it gets a '2' is because I've seen it before. 


TITLE: Play Dead

STORY

Concept is fresh/and or original - 5

Theme is well executed/interweaved - 5

Stakes are clear/conflict is strong and or compelling - 5

Story - 4

Ending - 5

CHARACTER/DIALOGUE

Protagonist(s) is (are) likable and/or compelling - 5

Dialogue reads naturally/believable within this story - 5

Dialogue reveals character -  4

READABILITY

Action text "shows" instead of "tells" - 4

Overall readability - 4

Total: 4.6

Steve, good job.  I hope you fix this up and show the struggle of walking with the dead.

Oh, when does he sleep?  He certainly can't sleep with the dead...

Dan