Hello Mr. Oak,

Let me tell you that my first impressions of this were not bad at all. I felt like some of the descriptions were very well done and I could feel the lovely rural flavor you were injecting into this. It was "that" type of script and that came through really well.

I could tell that you were rushing at the end and trying to fit it all in. I would suggest you make this longer.

I liked the title of this and the neatness of the girl's name.

There is still room for tightening, but that is all just touch up.

I wasn't satisfied by the ending of this-- she seemed to be scruples-less, but I think I might have missed something.

What I'm going to mention here, and I know it sounds picky, but I really feel like the writer here isn't living up to their potential. I see here some moments of brilliance and then I see typos (especially in the opening) that look far too careless.

The thing I'm trying to point out is: Don't piss off a tired and struggling editor that has dreams of grandeur tied up in their own pitiful works collecting dust inside of his dead grandmother's armoire.

Don't give him a chance to toss your script because of carelessness. When you're famous, it won't matter. Unless the sheer writing brilliance shines so much on the page that it blinds the reader and they can't notice the errors, you can't afford to appear careless.

>[Break] (typo) lights glow in the fog as the car stops short.

>With a growl, the car disappears in the mist.

These are perfect examples of good clear, brief writing. (despite the error)

Also, these are perfect image shots. Way to go!

I really got the pictures with this read.

And I can still see Mercy walking up the road, picking up her belongings.

I don't think this script is tops, but I definitely think it has potential, (and I mean that). If you develop Mercede's character, this will definitely do a lot for this one since that's the title.

A very solid effort!!!!

Sandra

Holey moley and guacamole too! I just finished reading the reviews and I am totally in disagreement with most of yall.

Please, to the writer, I'm not lowering the work of this script. You probably worked long and hard or you are very talented and pulled it off rather quickly. It doesn't matter. I simply did not think it was anywhere near being the best that I've read so far and I'm now on my 12th read.(

I don't want to sugar coat anything. I always believe in giving an honest review. I felt in total agreement with Zombie Sean in his post. There were too many questions. And truthfully, I liked the writing in (what some have called the copycat Batman script) The Ballad of Uncle Sam) a lot more.

Use this comment to push yourself over the top. Don't pay attention to of a bunch of flaky critiques. (Sorry, but that's the way I feel here.)

Sandra

Hey Garry; Wow. Quite a mixed bag here.

I liked it overall, but agree that it did seem like you rushed it some, like maybe you put it off until Thursday, planned to work on the rewrite Friday night, but wound up staying at the beach too long to watch a amess of baby sea turtles get released, then made it home just in time to rewrite it into Final Draft before hitting the send button at 10:30 pm....But that's just a hunch.

That being said, take advantage of the 15 pages. Use the space. Give the characters a little bit more breathing room, and put a neat little bow on the short. This is a snippet, almost a prologue to the main feature...

to quote Sammy Era Van Halen..."finish what you started..."

BW

Quoted from Sandra Elstree. Don't pay attention to of a bunch of flaky critiques. (Sorry, but that's the way I feel here.)

That's a pretty bold statement.  I didn't find your review to be that much different than anyone else's, really.

Quoted from Shelton That's a pretty bold statement.  I didn't find your review to be that much different than anyone else's, really.

Huh.  I thought she was referring to her review!

Quoted from Shelton That's a pretty bold statement.  I didn't find your review to be that much different than anyone else's, really.

I agree. It was probably too bold, and not quite accurate because there were some good reviews in this thread, like Pwitcroft's and Chris Reid's come to mind as well as some others, but I think the one that got me was one that went something like:

Definitely top drawer stuff, better than anyone could do in a week.

It seemed to gush without offering anything substantial. Even if the person doing the crit absolutely LOVES the work, they should try and offer something more.

It's like Michael said, regarding Red Eye. It was late, it was his first read, and he was cranky.

When I read a fair amount of glimmering reviews that I didn't feel were truly substantial, I wrote boldly-- yes, I did. Maybe I was pulling a "Simon," but I felt I needed to be honest there.

To the person who wrote: "I thought she was referring to HER review." You don't know how many critiques I do each week in many milieux; so I see a lot. And how much &#@! I write in scripts, flash fiction, novels, articles... It's no different for me-- I see the mistakes in my own work fly at me left, right and center and sideways.

The thing is: That I see some young writers who I can tell worked hard on what they did even though they are still very green. And I think they need to be credited for their effort. On the other hand, a writer that shows some brilliance, but is careless or just burnt out, needs help to scrutinize their work; not just praise and very little else.

I'd rather have someone I respect tell me my work is garbage, then someone tell me my work is amazing, but the storyline needs work or something general like that. Sometimes a person really needs to dig, to figure out what's wrong.

And some people on here give excellent examples. Cindy, Blakkwolfe, Dogglebee, Pia... Even the High and Mighty Death Monkey are full of substance in what they say.

So I'll end with, give some examples when you critique.

Sandra  

Quoted from Grandma Bear I personally find it harder to write useful comments when the script is really good. My reviews at Mp are usually short for those I vote VERY GOOD or EXCELLENT on, but tend to get quite long for the ones I vote POOR or FAIR. I liked Mercy...

That happens to me too. It's hard to critique some works that you know are good, but you're still trying to offer up suggestions and you get tired after awhile. Plus, as we get on in reads, our crits I think naturally get shorter. I start writing: Read the other ones. And someone says, "Whah?"

Mercy isn't in my top three for this OWC, but I rank it (with still some reads to go) perhaps in around the top eight or so.

I would definitely like to watch its evolutions into a full feature , with those pesky little questions answered and see some real nice clean copy with it.

Sandra

Yeah Sandra that was my review, and not one of better ones. Seriously was impressed with this script though and couldn't think of any suggestions to improve it. Like Pia, my reviews seem to suffer the more I like a script.

This is getting a little off track.

I suggest moving the conversation here

Sorry Shelton,

For the sake of not spiraling this board way off topic, I went ahead and just deleted my last post.

Thanks for pointing it out.

Is this where my review for Mercy goes?  I'm not sure anymore.

No nay sayers. Good. Then I'll just proceed - shall I...

It wasn't a shabby job for a weeks worth.  I will give it that.  The characters were good (though there was almost too many) and there was story here (though it was story-lite).  For a short, I think left too many unanswered questions (but I do understand why you did that).  There were a number of typos as well.  Brake light not break light for one.

I would put this in down as one of the top OWC entries I read - but - I think this would be much improved with a few more pages added.  There isn't really enough time to get the know all the characters you have created and unfortunately this left me with a hankering for a bit more backstory.  

What you have here is quite good, though with a bit more development it could be excellent.

So I did like this story, and it was very well written. I got hooked into it immediately and it never let go until the very end, a really well done on that. My biggest problem though is exactly that, It was a fast paced script that seemed to be heading to a great climax and I got nothing in the end. No explanations, no hint of what she had done, nothing. But as Sniper has already said the great writing makes up for this somewhat.

Believable characters, believable dialogue and an interesting premise, not too shabby my friend.

BUT, and a big but here. The idea of having to incorporate a specific line into the story is to ensure that this is indeed written in a week. In fact Bert does ask that the line has at least some relevance to the story and not just thrown in from left field. In this scripts case I am not sure that you met the criteria, the post office line does indeed seem to have been thrown in there with no real story relevance at all. This could very easily have been a script you already had written with just that line thrown in. I am of course not suggesting for a minute this is the case but the story could have had more relevance to the post office.

It feels bad to find something to moan about in what was otherwise a really good script, well done.

Cheers

Interesting story. Would have liked to know what was going on at the end between Fred and Mercy. There's more to this story especially behind Mercy. The quote seemed misplace not structure wise but content wise as GM pointed out. It didn't make much sense in it.  But this was very visual and had great dialgoue.

Gabe

Hey blakkwolfe,

Just wanted to say once again nice script. They really had voices to them, even if it meant sparing story for good dialogue.

Did ya really rush to see sea turles? That's adorable.

Joseph,

Very well written but it's incomplete. I hope you write a new draft, I would love to read it.

Rob