Does this meet the criteria? I don' t think so. Sci-fi = yes but I doubt time travel will be invented in the next 50 years but maybe it will? Budget - Yes, easily. Horror - No. Murder, even the murdering of a parent isn't horror.

As for the story, it's well written and easy to follow. A very familiar tale which works on an emotional level as we feel for both versions of Joshua and his dilemma.

As with all time travel stories it struggles to work on a logical level as who killed the parent the first time around to drive Joshua to invent time travel? It's the old self-fulfilling prophecy thing which I always think is a bit of a get out of jail free card for writers.

Another bit of convenience is the 'forgetting' aspect which is used to fill a plot hole and yet there is no reason for Joshua to forget who killed his mother.

There's an expositional conversation in the middle which feels a little false, yet overall the story works for what it is and is quite decent.

-Mark

There’s something touching about this script - an older version helping the younger

But for me a few things need a tidy.

The dialogue is exposition heavy with lots of explaining, began to feel like a lecture. Hard to pull off when there’s a lot to explain, so a few more pages would help.

I can’t imagine that the invention of time travel is all great - in favt I wrote a script about the darker implications (ultimate weapon) so it sounds a bit like a sales ad in places

But I could picture the Older version  coming back to tweak something in his younger life, like getting the girl  with a view to breaking the machine after, only for it to go wrong


All the best

I don't have anything to add that hasn't already been said, but I did enjoy it.

Really good work there writer.

A simple, fun story, professionally told. Doesn't bring much new to the table, and the tropes are definitely on the cheesy side, but the dark edge to it keeps it spinning along.

I'd like to see the script dive a little deeper and open up the possibility that its paradox dangles...that there was no original murder and no original murderer. Exploring that might take this into new territory.

Interesting story. There's nothing really "wrong" with the writing, it's just not very visual. Made for a bit of a slow read.

Still, creative and it hits all the marks of the OWC criteria. Really good work here.

I see some people say it was hard to understand. Sorry but I feel the need to chime in:
I did understand it.

So, the time machine inventor went back in time once (and hence the dialog about going there 5 years from "now"). He saw that the boy was not moving towards making the time machine. That's why he decided to go back again, but earlier in time and kill the mother.

But the writer will do the better job at this. He just can't right now and I know how bad it feels lol.

As you might know, I was late to the party. I had this nugget of an idea right away, but I couldn't find an ending that satisfied me. Time travel stories are messy. It only sort of came together on deadline day and I wrote 80% of it in the two hours before submitting.

I pictured a couple of ways this time loop might have happened, but the one that rings most true to me is he actually did save his mother from being murdered by coming back in time, and loses his reason to invent time travel at all. He returns to a horrible, hopeless future, the only one who remembers a different timeline, and realizes he has to invent time travel to prevent this future from happening. Still armed with his knowledge of time travel, he rebuilds his machine. He goes back to the past, but he's going back from a different future, a future where he never went back in time because his mother was never killed. He can't stop himself from saving her because he was never there, and the murderer isn't there either because that event had to change for this future to exist. The way I see it, time repairs itself to resolve paradoxes, and alternate futures exist based on different events taking place, events based on decisions. So whatever the last decision was to bring the murderer into the home was changed and they never enter, allowing this alternate future to exist. So if there is no one to stop from killing his mother, he has to become the killer himself to ensure the peaceful future for all.

Obviously, there's WAY too much there for six pages. I had to be satisfied with knowing there's a way this time loop could exist, but there was no way I could explain why. I stuck to the loop itself, the self-fulfilling prophecy he's stuck in now, doomed to repeat it each time and not knowing why.

Of course, an audience wants to know why. I might return to this without the attempt at infusing horror into it, make it a sci-fi drama and see if I can figure out a way to inform the audience without completely changing the story. There's something there for a good short.

As for the whole story, it would make a cool feature, even low budget, depending on what that future looks like.

Time travel stories are messy, that's for sure. Thanks for reading and commenting.