Hey Matt, congrats on completing a script for this OWC.

Sorry to say it, but this is really, really poorly written.  So many mistakes, littering every single page, really made it a tough chug of a read.  Here's a few of the issues I noted...

No “FADE IN:”

Typos everywhere.

Grammar errors everywhere.

Punctuation errors everywhere.

Awkward phrasing everywhere.

Orphans running rampant.

Totally missed on the cast of 3, which is very odd.  Totally missed on the no one under 18.

Just shockingly poorly written throughout.  Extremely redundant…you continually use the same words over and over, right next to each other, when it's already assumed what you're referring to.  Very passively written with tons and tons of "ing" verbs.

Now for the good stuff...I think the story could have worked quite well if it was written better and developed better.  Charlotte could have been a great antag...a creepy antag.  Same with the father across the street.

Unlike others, I don't need to know exactly who or what Charlotte is, as long as she works as what you're after...which she totally could have.

Not sure of your writing history, but I'd suggest reading alot of scripts, looking into proper sentence structure, proper grammar, punctuation, and all things writing related.

Good effort though.  Keep at it!

Matt,

Gonna agree with most of the others. The little girl was creepy. Would rather have one of the see her outside. Then be like "That sure looks like the girl we killed in that robbery last week." Adds a little more creepiness to it. The whole thing with her daddy didn't work.

Maybe they could ask who her father is? She could say "He looks like that." She points out a window to a little kid in a devil costume.
The fight scene did drag a little. Could be shortened.

Other then not, not a bad

James

Matthew,

I chose this from Don's list of those up thus far 'cos it had the most compelling logline. My views on the script pretty much reflect those of the other SSers, in the main - although I do not think you need to start "looking into proper sentence structure, proper grammar, punctuation, and all things writing related." As ever, Jeff takes it too far.

The basic story was pretty obvious from the outset. That's not necessarily a problem, but there has to be something to make us truly care about the characters to fix that issue. Let's be fair, a lot of romantic comedies suffer from this problem, but the good ones create characters who through their flaws resonate with us. Frank and Daniel did differ but there were no distinctions in their differences that made them characters who would hold attention for too long. Their conversation just kinda wandered - although you can clearly write dialogue with a natural flow. I think you needed to use those early pages to up the ante on what they were doing. All we really gained was a disagreement on whether or not they should leave.

Charlotte's supernatural abilities could - and should - have been touched upon. As someone else said, the reaction to her truly remarkable - and slightly cliched - infallibility in the mission was oddly skewed to the subdued.  Perhaps she left an imprint on one of these guys from the early scam and when she turns up, they're truly spooked. Something has to be done to foreshadow her arrival or give her more meat 'cos I agree with Michael that you don't really have the page space to give her a backstory.

Hey guys,

Wow, thanks for all the feedback. I wrote this script in ten minutes and submitted it without doing a second read through for grammar, spelling and what not. No excuse I know, but I was in a rush and had to leave for a few days.

As for not meeting the guidelines. I read the requirements on the main page of the site, which did not state the ages of the characters. So I figured it was fine to use a young child, after reading more in the OWC thread, I came across the age issue and stated that my script did not follow that guideline. Hell, maybe the character is actually 900 years old and is trapped inside a little girl's body?

I was also under the impression that the three characters were just the main characters and not the ones in the background. My fault on that one.

I wanted the girl to be ambiguous as to what her story is, for something this short anyways. If it were longer, I can tie her and her backstory to whatever easily.

I like the idea of leaving her "supernatural powers" at the door and having her be a normal child wanting her candy back. I played up the horror element in the supernatural sense and not in a more creepy way like it was stated. Having her human and killing for her candy is more creepy. Thanks for the suggestion.

Thanks again everyone for the responses. More than I expected.

Usual, don't worry about the characters, Jeff seems to have a problem telling the difference between characters and actors. You can only have 3 actors but nowhere does it say you can only have 3 characters. One of your actor could also also be playing the part of the dad. This is Sam Raimi 101.

That However is where my issue came in with the wheelchair, the OWC rules don't actually state there must be a character in a wheelchair at all. You could have had a character who stayed sat on the floor, or stayed in bed the entire time and that would have been fine. It is the actor who was supposed to be in a wheelchair, but if you decide to have him play a character in a wheelchair then really he is not going to be able to stand up, like yours did.  

I think it's a good story but I want more as I did not understand it completely. I do not know who Charlotte and her father are, perhaps something supernatural but it would be nice to know their story and have some background info on them.

The idea is good - they are goofing around robbing kids of all the candy and there's finally the revenge at the door.

I think you could cut a lot of their dialog and the opening is a bit slow for me. Charlotte's lines are stilted, I think.

But you could rewrite...--I really liked the idea and it's funny in a way.

Quoted from Murphy That However is where my issue came in with the wheelchair, the OWC rules don't actually state there must be a character in a wheelchair at all. You could have had a character who stayed sat on the floor, or stayed in bed the entire time and that would have been fine. It is the actor who was supposed to be in a wheelchair, but if you decide to have him play a character in a wheelchair then really he is not going to be able to stand up, like yours did.

That was my misunderstanding of the rules. Actor/Character.

Hi Matt,

First three pages were a bit too passive for me. Dialogue was not great.
Sorry to say things didn't really get any better. It felt incredibly rushed.
On a positive side, I like the idea of a trick or treater getting revenge and there are quite a few possibilities that angle could go.

Well done on completing the script,

Malc

1 - Story: Well... that was an odd little story. It was okay, creepy enough. I'd cut the Frank & Daniel chatter to make more space for what happens when ghost girl's father arrives. Some real mayhem would ensue. And I understand the conundrum of Frank & Daniel speaking pretty much alike: they're of the same age, thus dialect, and friends, of sorts, so "yeah" they are going to speak almost indistinguishably alike. Tough. The actors will have to make the difference. I think you were channeling Miranda Cosgrove when you wrote Charlotte's anal retentive dialog.
2 - Filmable & Budget: Did we budget for a little kid? Prop, maybe? Migit! Oh, wait. They're "Little People" these days. Your Female is a little person. Cool. Nope. Too much screen time. Fail. Economical budget. Looks like all the camera work takes place within a few steps, which makes it cheap and simple to shoot. I think that will make it run rather boring, visually. The story given does make for a complete short, which is great. (Mostly we've been seeing sequences and partial sequences and parts of stories.) Wheelchair bound people can sometimes get up. I never received a referee's ruling on the scope of "wheelchair bound-ness" of the actor, so I say you're okay with that.
3 - Horror & Audience: Weak horror. Ahhhh. Scarry little ghost girl. Ahhh. Okay. I'm over it. PG-13 audience would complain about paying for this.
4 - Technicals & Format: Looks fine. Typos galore. A few "ing" words in there, but I don't care about those. Turn off that wretched (CONT'D) character dialog feature!
5 - Title & Logline: Title's a little generic. On rewrite, add "peculiar" or "really scary" just before "little", to add interest.
General Comments:
A - Speed up the front half to make room for dad breaking h3ll loose.
B - It's difficult to make a complete story in ten pages or minutes, but you did well. However, these ten-minute real time shorts kinda get boring to me. It's difficult to devise ways to string out time, or to condense it.

Poor proofing was a turn-off.  Always is.

As for the story, it starts a little slow, and despite all the banter, we are still left to wonder what these men actually did in this town.  Everything need not be explained, of course, but perhaps more of their banter could be used to reveal the nature of their misdeeds, as opposed to debating whether or not to leave town, which accomplishes little to reveal their true character.

Charlotte presents them with an interesting dilemma, and because these interactions form the heart of the story, this short piece might be better served by getting there quicker.  Ending with the suggestion of larger mayhem yet to come, compliments of her father, worked for me.  I agree that these final images are the most effective way to end the story.

If I were to change anything, I would lose the shooting and stabbing of Charlotte.  Not because of any objections to violence against child characters, but because these supernatural aspects seem to detract from the story.  If you were to tell the tale of a "normal" little girl who goes around on Halloween doing these things, I think it would be even more shocking.

Making her all ghostly or whatever is the cliché here -- making her an ordinary child capable of extraordinary acts would deliver more impact.  And then it makes you wonder even more just what her father might be capable of.

This left me really wanting to know more about Charlotte's back story. Her supernatural abilities aren't explained, but the script moves well. The description elements could use a little more life; lines like "Charlotte reaches into her bag of candy and pulls out a knife stabbing Daniel in the stomach" read like a long run-on sentence and sound anti-climactic. The final image of Charlotte's father staring at the two guys was effectively creepy. Maybe a follow-up piece explaining Charlotte's story?

Matthew,

This is too much of a "talking heads" piece to be effective.  If the dialogue had been more gripping or revealing, giving us backstory and building character, then it would have been excusable, but the lines were way too on the nose.  If you were going to include this much dialogue, there needed to be more to the words than just what was on the page.  There was no subtext to any of Daniel or Frank's lines.  The little girl's dialogue was better, effectively creepy at times, but way too excessive for the type of scene you wrote.  She and the guys had way so much free time to converse during the horror scene that it was distracting and took away from any suspense that you had started to build upon her entrance.

Your fight scene is anti-climactic.  Horror needs to have a sense of urgency to create tension and hold the reader.  If your characters don't seem to care that they're in danger, then why should your audience?  If it is the character's will to survive, he needs to act accordingly, and his actions must be believable given the situation.  The con-man staying in the wheel chair, that he obviously did not need to be in, demonstrates a lack of urgency.  When Daniel is stabbed, Frank has his "moment," a chance to make a life changing decision... He's given the chance to either be the coward and run away or be the hero and come to Daniel's aid.  Either one shows character, either one is interesting, either one adds to scene... yet he just sits in the chair and does nothing.  This was a wasted opportunity for something to happen.

Your characters' motivations generally do not make much sense.  The fact that guys stayed in town after their con, merely for Daniel to scare little kids on Halloween, is not believable.  You started off okay with a decent conflict; two con men, one wants to leave, one wants to stay, there is a friction that threatens their partnership.  But you didn't follow through on it.  The conflict kind of just went away, then two minutes later, Daniel decides, "hey, maybe we should leave" and Frank, who was still hell bent on leaving on the previous page, changes gears completely to a "well, we're already here now, might as well stay" attitude.  It didn't fit the character's motivation.  There is no longer anything holding them in the house, yet they stay and await their fate.  Now you need a new reason for them to be there.  Perhaps they're just about to leave when the girl shows up.  To make the sequence play out more realistic, you could do something like this...

Frank: If your dumb ass keeps going out there, messing with them kids, someone's gonna see you and you're gonna get us caught.  You want that?  Huh?

Daniel (pouts): Maybe you're right.  Maybe we should go.

Frank: Damn right, I'm right.  Grab your shit and let's...

There is a loud KNOCK at the door.

Now they no longer want to be inside, they're motivation is to leave, but they can't because someone's at the door blocking their exit.  You've created another conflict and added more tension.

Another thing that bothered me...  If the chair is part of the con, and Frank and Daniel are alone together in an empty house, Frank doesn't need to be in the chair because there's no one around to con.

You could also amp up the tension and horror of the conflict by making the guys more menacing.  As it is, they sound like a couple of bumbling idiots, incapable of successfully pulling off their own con.  You can't root for them to survive because they're not likeable characters.  So, you may as well give us more reason to hate them, this way you get us to root for the villain when she arrives to inflict some pain on a couple of more than deserving creeps.  This does something else for your story too...  The more vicious you make these guys, the scarier the little girl becomes when she overpowers them.  You can look to Predator for a terrific example of that type of story telling.

It's not easy to flesh out a story in ten pages, but you need to use your screen time wisely.  Crisper pace, tighter dialogue, keep your characters' motivation in mind at all times and create a sense of urgency to build suspense.

You put forth a good effort, I wouldn't mind seeing this again after some rewrites.

-Brian K. Millard

Thanks for the in depth response Red, will definitely incorporate those ideas into a re-write.

You came up with a decent story inside the (admittedly constricting) guidelines.  However, you obviously needed to run a few more drafts.  The description was clumsy and littered with grammatical errors.  Furthermore, I think you need to work on your dialogue more.  It was highly inconsistent in style, sometimes dramatized and sometimes pseudo-gritty.  All in all, you need to listen more to how people actually speak.  Think about what an actor would sound like saying these lines.  Make them natural.  Say them yourself.  Do they sound natural?

I'm no stranger to having crap dialogue in an early draft, and it can easily be remedied later on.  You obviously just needed to run through this a few more times.