Woke by Mark Renshaw (markrenshaw) writing as Isaac A. Clarke - Short, Sci Fi, Horror - A man wakes up from an artificially induced dream state to find himself in a factory where humans are experimented on and slaughtered like cattle. He must escape while avoiding some very familiar faces.  6 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Look's like we've got Dead Space fan here.

Pretty creative story here, I liked it for the most part. Got a little confused at the end, but I think I get the gist of it.

Writing could be more clear, but I saw what you wanted me to see. A couple of typos and more than a few awkward phrases.

Really good effort here. Very creative.

I'm on page two and I've sort lost the geography of the scene, one pen is mentioned initially, a bunch of beds and cages and then someone steps into a second pen.

I don't think this is helped with the choice of names, or rather the lack of them Man, Worker, Supervisor it would be easier to track what's happening with real names.

The Worker jerks the wrong person off, says 'they all look the same' but then names the person she jerked off as she knows him... and then we find out they do literally all look the same.

I get what you are going for here but I found it confused and couldn't work out why they were all cloned, why you need sperm samples from clones, why they were watching VR scenes and why they needed to have a life via the new program if they were slaves of some sort.

I think there's something here but needs work imho

Quoted Text INT. HOLDING PEN AREA

Day OR night?

Quoted Text Although he’s a man and not a number, we’ll call him NUMBER ONE from now on.

How about not. This is too clever by one.

Okay - this is a real confusing read - I had to go back several times to get my bearings - there is a story here, but it is difficult to keep straight,

I like the futuristic cyberpunk feel of this. Could see it made in the vein of Love, Death and Robots.
Needs some tightening and clarity in another draft (esp towards the end), but a great gruesome feel to it and some creepy visuals.

I killed two
clones with one stone.

Hi writer,

Got a Cloud Atlas/Moon thing going on here that’s entertaining enough, but too many mash-ups of movies that have been there done that in recent years, maybe even Logan’s Run meets The Island too. Not to say it wasn’t good or didn’t meet the criteria, just… I dunno’. I feel it’s missing that Je ne sais quoi, or fresh elusive quality that I seek when digesting Sci-fi as of late.

The final scene was a little more surreal and complex than the over all tale, and forced me to re-scan a few times, but alas… it’s curious and spooky to think we as humans, with what we perceive to be concrete emotions and memories, may be nothing more than a synthetic/scripted reality that’s been uploaded into our conscious framework, all the while, our bodies lie in a meat locker plugged into a AI mainframe.

Got a bunch of single line action going on. Not necessary, definitely could have collapsed this by creating bigger text blocks, even two line action blocks would be OK, all good.

I liked the overall story, and the sci-fi/horror element is definitely there for the theme at hand. Best of luck.

Hey Issac!

Right then, I know this is a daft comment but given the graphic detail of “ripped” dudes and jerking getting mentioned, I half expected a Top Gun style volleyball game to break out in the first couple of pages!! I joke of course, this was something else, something much darker than Tom Cruise could ever deliver...

I ain’t a fan of the mad steam punky stuff, doesn’t really do it for me, but there is a story here and it meets the parameters. So, I’m in an unusual situation where I didn’t particularly enjoy it as it isn’t my sort of thing, but that’s a subjective opinion and dragging myself away from it I can see a decent piece of work that ticks the boxes.

I think it is good, not enjoyable but good. It is slightly confusing, but this could just be to my mind.

I’d say you’ve done a good job here.

Cheers,

Cam

Sci-fi & horror - check. Near future - seems to be. Budget? Maybe as long as you can get the use of a slaughterhouse.

Now the story.

With most of my scripts, I do try to be clever (maybe too clever) and a bit different, focusing on showing without telling. The result I find is some completely get it and others don't. I've had a revelation of late after a workshop with Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss discussing their work on Dracula and Sherlock. They said they have no problem with exposition as long as you are telling the audience something they don't already know!

So my suggestion is to maybe expand the last scene and just tell the reader what they may not have figured out by now to make it clearer.

-Mark  

I was lost but then I was found. Once I figured out what was going on, I enjoyed the read. Sci-fi and horror boxes checked. Not sure (or I hope this isn't) the setting is quite the near future.

The jerking scene is really quite a useless task since they've already figured out cloning. You don't need sperm for that, I'm pretty sure. Maybe it's just a jerk thing a mean supervisor would make a peon do since they're not smart enough to know better.

Good job, writer.

So the clones in captivity are there so their sperm and organs can be harvested? Some expense and effort was expended to grow them to adult size, right? Wouldn’t it have been cheaper and more efficient to grow the needed products in a lab? Regardless, this story is about a clone who wants to escape and lead a normal life. Pretty standard stuff in science fiction. Prime and Scientist bemoan how they’ve fucked everything up, and this is the only solution. So there’s an explanation for what’s happening here, but it would have been nice to at least get a hint of what that is. Number One is a decent character, but the other characters are the stock evil scientist types.

Story:  Well, it’s chocked full of future shock (future stunbolts?).  It’s not badly written, but it is a bit muddled in terms of clarity.  For example, we think Number One (what’s wrong with him having a name other than to make it more sci-fi like?) has escaped, but everyone around is a clone.  We’re then introduced to Number One’s corpse at the end, and it’s said that he only thought that he had escaped and now they’re playing billions of iterations of his life in the VR set.  What’s the point? To be humane with his killing? And why are all these people being killed?   That’s not explained either. I think just some clarity would take this a lot further.

Characters: Number One doesn’t have much personality to him other than he wants to escape.  We don’t know his background, why he’s there, etc.  In other words, he’s a superficial character and thus I don’t care whether he lives or dies.

Dialogue:  Okay. Nothing that bothered me.

Writing:  Pretty good from a writing standpoint. Just needs a little more clarity around the storyline and the characters.

Meeting the challenge:  It definitely was sci-fi.  Was it horror?  It was horrific what was happening to these people, but they were pretty much unaware of what was happening.  I’ll let it pass but it probably is not what I would consider a standalone horror script.

Hey Writer,

I think this is one of those I'd probably enjoy more if I just sat down and watched it. The writing, though generally decent, was confusing at times.

I liked the Never Let Me go/The Matrix/The Island angle though and think with a rewrite could be a cracking script. Address the plot holes mentioned by the other readers and I think you have something really good here.

Like the name “Forrest Glade.” It just feels like the type of place/company name you’d see in sci fi.

Dialogue between the workers isn’t great.

Slightly tedious to read, but overall a solid premise. A Little confusing at times, but it has potential for sure. I would go back and do a re-write, don't just give up on it due to the contest stipulations.

Good job.

I think this is a strong entry, but the idea is much better than the execution.

I lost the plot, so to speak, until you gave me the scene at the end.  That brought it back for me. I think we need to know though "why" we fucked it up. It is Coronavirus gone unchecked? Nuclear war? Famine?

I'm probably a little dense when it comes to these things, so... was he actually cloned for food and organ harvesting or was that all part of the VR?  If so, why? Are there people who are going to live "VR" free lives and thus need people for food and organs?  I also didn't understand what you meant by "Pacifier tech". These 2 words are your plot, so it has to be clear.

Also not sure about micro-budget if you've got rows of identical people in a lab with tubes, but there might be some camera trickery that can be employed, so I'll leave that judgment to those who have actually filmed something.

Again, super-cool idea that I kind of get and I think that free from the constraints of the challenge and page count, this could be a real winner with a great message.

AJR

Doesn’t really meet the parameter of tech that will be happening in the next 50 years. The condition of the world is still a bit sketchy. Not sure exactly what the clones are being used for. A good moment where he takes the guard’s helmet off and sees the guards are his clones too. Has potential if the world was described a little bit better but this kind of concept has been done so would really need a new strong angle to make it work I think.

I’m not quite sure what to make of that. It’s bold.

Seems like a blend of films - human organs like Coma,  the clones reminds me of Oblivion, fake lives etc Reminds me of the matrix.

Writing wise I think this tried too hard for six pages. The clones and number one’s did distract on occasions. Felt like a condensed feature in some ways. Man asleep, wakes up tries to escape, caught, escapes, the big plot revealed Etc

Waking up in a room of clones would be enough for a short and a very interesting concept

I would say the budget etc was probably outside of the criteria as well

All the best

You start out without a time element in your Slug, so I skimmed to the end and see you omitted this numerous times.  Uh...why?  You need a time element in your Slugs.  Just do it!

"goggles covers" - "goggles cover"

"observers" - "observes"?

I'm not exactly sure what I just read.  This does not seem to be "the near future"...at least I hope it's not.

Your writing style is interesting.  Mostly 1 line passages.  There are numerous 2 liners, but nothing over 2 lines.  There's alot of white on the page, and peeps like alot of white, because it makes for an easier read...but this is not an easy read.  Far from it, actually.  The reason is that your writing is not visual.  You're not painting images in our head...at all, and because of that, it's very hard to visualize anything that's going on here.

Yeah, I get it, and I've seen this movie many times, read this story many times, sung along to songs about the same thing.  Is there anything new here?  I'm sure there is, but without being able to visualize literally anything, I'm not really sure.

With no real characters to care for or root for, it's tough to enjoy something like this...at least for me.

I don't see or feel the horror, and I think you missed the idea about a future in our lifespans, so I think you missed the parameters.

**

A familiar premise revealed in a fun way. There's always a trick with these endings that undercut everything we've just watched. I'm not sure that this one manages to stick the landing, because there's nothing particularly satisfying about the escape story in and of itself (the black humour early on is probably the biggest success), and the last sequence doesn't really have much drama since it seems like it's just a decision of necessity. In the end, it's Prime's story, and I'm not sure you give us enough character there to really sell the weight of the decision. I think it would help to try and get Prime in the story from the start.

Very entertaining, anyway.

I am a fan of the opening images. The red goo is cool. I also like the idea of a fake escape being fed to the clones to keep them mollified. It is also interesting that the guards are just clones of captives.

I think the orientation concerns are legitimate. Hard to tell sometimes what is being done and said virtually vs. the actual world.

Is there a detail that could be added about Number One that would make us sympathize a little more with him?

Thanks for all the reads and comments. This obviously needs work and I think I have figured out how to make it more obvious what is going on while not just telling, so thank you for all the suggestions!

A brief explanation. Cloning humans is technically possible now. It's just illegal and immoral.

If we feck up the environment though, cloning maybe the human race's only option for a viable workforce, organ replacement, fertility, experimentation and even... food.

We'd try and be humane about it though. Hence the Pacifer project. A totally immersive VR experience combined with drugs that makes the clones believe they are living whatever full life the programmers design for them.

The story is about the start of the program and a trial which the Prime (think of an 80-year old Theresa May having to come out of retirement because all the other politicians are dead - shudder!) wants to oversea before she approves mass cloning all over the world. The scientist who the clones are based from decides to show her what the project would look like when it is up and running and show-off how realistic the Pacifier is by making the first clone believe he has 'Woke' up to the real world when, like Inception, he's in a VR within a VR.

Anyway, that's the basic idea. I'll extend it to 7 or 8 pages and flesh it out more. Thanks again.

-Mark