I'm gobsmacked! It had Tanis and Bert's style all over it.

Quoted from leitskev A Bert imposter. That deserves a story of its own. Maybe not in a moving vehicle, but probably horror.

Sorry, author, for goofing off on your thread.  Done now.  Good job on this script.

Feel free to goof as much as you like, I don't care... this isn't my thread. It's just a thread that has my script posted within.

The first draft of this was 14 pages and in that draft was lots of exposition that explained everything. In the second draft (the only one I had time for), I stripped everything out that wasn't necessary.

The comment about slavers needing to ship hundreds of slaves to make it profitable is just plain wrong. Slaves were very valuable. A healthy male could fetch around $1500 which is around 40k today. Imagine having hundreds... the profits would be astronomical - even after deducting the original sale fee. One hundred healthy males would be worth 4 million in today's money. They were far, far cheaper than that in the African marketplace.

The characters in this story need help to work their land back home. To buy 12 slaves would not have been possible in the US. You'd have to be very, very rich to own 12 slaves. So they decide to travel to the source and buy direct from the Africans themselves. A bit like going to a warehouse rather than buying from the store... only slightly more dangerous and the savings are far better.

Trouble with all of that is that it's too talky for a short... and just not necessary for the viewer to know. All that is necessary is that these guys have slaves on their ship and one of them is a witch. I shouldn't have to educate.


Why did Mchawi attack everybody? Should she only attack the white men? That wouldn't make any sense to me.

As for being left on a boat on her own, well she's a witch, the boat would likely end up on land somewhere and then she'd be free.... fuck knows, that's not part of this story. This story ends with the death of Jeremiah.

Why does Jeremiah smile all the time? I think two readers mentioned this... in the initial description, it states that the smile is permanently scarred into his face. He actually can't help it.

I think this answers all of the sensible questions. If not, and you actually care, feel free to ask again.

I never revisit shorts to improve them. This was written for this OWC.

Thanks for all the reads. Especially from those that didn't have to.

I really struggled with this script. As I said, the problem could be on my end. I tried really hard too. I kept stopping and re-reading. The problem could be with my ability to concentrate, but it resulted in me stopping the read of OWC's for a few days. I forced myself to come back and the ones I read were comparatively easy to read. I love history, too, so I usually like period pieces. The writer could understandably dismiss my reaction to the writing, I seldom read scripts anymore, I stick to prose. But the writer might also consider that part of the problem might be the storytelling techniques employed. Not so he can fix this project, but something to consider in future work. This comment is intended to be constructive.