Florida Man by Whet Faartz - Short, RomCom - A Florida man surprises his wife with a gift and, after some confusion, it turns out she has an even better one for him. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Nice start for me, could visualise everything very nicely but then the story went a little pear shaped for a RomCom imh.

It started to get a little wonky with this line:

SPOILERS AHEAD

DAVID
I know how devastated you were when
you found out you can’t have
children. I... I wanted to do
something nice to make you happy. I
also wanted to let you know I don’t
feel you’re any less of a woman.

A puppy as a consolation prize?!

Or perhaps it was the sex addict line.

Then it moved quickly into horror and I'm not sure there really was any romance to speak of.

The chocs, roses and red really bordered on props only, dontcha think?

And I think she should have been cooking lobsters. How did he get his face anywhere near the tuna splattered on the floor?

Nice try, Florida Man. It just didn't move me.

Hi,

Holy shirt balls. The ending was a bit mental. This was romantic, I guess. Parts were even pretty funny too. I think I like the ending but it's so out of the left field, it doesn't land properly. With a better build up, this could've been great.

Gonna give this a 3/5

G'luck,
Glenn

Really enjoyed this one.  Great ending for me.  So left-field with that one.  Easy to read and well executed for me.  Got the romance and comedy for me too.  If anything, this is probably the script I'll remember most from this OWC.

I was really enjoying it up until the big reveal of Belle being held victim in the living room. The roses, chocolates etc were effectively just background props, but I didn't really mind that at all.

I was glued to the narrative, curious about who Barbara was, then what Rachel got David for his present, and THEN the final gift... was just too out of nowhere to be believable. I know it's only a sketch, but their axe-murdering tendencies was too much of a storybomb for me. I felt like you had a nice, simple and well executed set-up and didn't know how to end it.

Cinematically, it was really viable - I had no difficulty visualising every action line. And really funny use of an allergic reaction. But I would suggest really carefully and subtly seeding in the info that David and Rachel are killers in the early stages, or re-writing your ending entirely.

Enjoyed it a lot though!

Best of luck!

Freddie

I didn't see that ending happening lol

An intriguing story and one of favs so far.

The innocence of an everyday couple masked as axe murderers was very funny.
Great thinking outside the box.

Good job on entering

I guess all the crazy stuff does happen in Florida.

Writing was relatively solid for the most part especially given the short time frame.

I found some of the dialogue a bit on the nose - exposition laden.

Certainly didn't see the end coming - but really not a fan of it. Some will love it I suppose. For me it's like any horror twist will be a twist there so it's kind of meh.

Nice job on entering.

Okay, my two cents, which in here is worth much less:

WTF?  The ending is just.... wrong.  On so many levels.  At least for a rom-com.  But I couldn't stop laughing.  Doesn't mean it was right to use it, because that was seriously the most out of left field ending I may have ever encountered.

Up until that point I could tell he was getting her a puppy, and apparently she made the tuna casserole because she thought he was seeing someone else, so you could see something bad about to happen, but spoiler alert:
Belle's apparently lost her head.  And probably her arms and legs as well.

Besides the bizarro ending, the writing actually was pretty good, the dialogue just okay.  I'd say well-done for creating one of most memorable endings to a OWC.  Like ever.  I'm betting myself a $100 that I know who wrote this.

Good job overall.

Best,
Gary

This was a roller coaster for me. It started off OK, then it got funnier, and then ended completely off the bat. It was like the ending was thrown in there at the last minute and completely changed the tone of the script. While still playing on the romance part, I do feel that this "twist" is not really that surprising, as I somehow find it rather cliche. I want more of the "middle".

written by Whet Faartz - I don't like this at all.

There we go again...the chocolates and roses checked of in the 1st passage.

Wrylies again...wrylies everywhere, in every script.  WHY???????  ARGH!!!!

Some spelling errors popping up and very weird dialogue on Page 5.

WTF?  Wooo, no...another one nowhere near a ROMCOM and obviously not remotely intended to be.  This kind of pisses me off that so many peeps eiterh don't know what a ROMCOM is or didn't even try.

Not for me.

*

This is pretty well written and reads clear and concise... but the sex addict bit seems utterly throw away, jealousy and affairs happen in normal relationships too.

The dog as a consolation for being childless, this may be the action of a thoughtless man (normal)... but her reaction should be a slap in the face!

Tuna allergy???

The ending, I'm not really sure it's set up sufficiently to work for me.

There's definitely some Com in here but not really a lot of the Rom.

Well-written, but from the bottom of page 2 ("She's fixed"), I knew a dog would figure into this.

Uh, and since this supposedly is a rom-com, the violent ending is simply out of place.

I can believe this story takes place in Florida since I spent three weeks residing there before I hurried back to the relative sanity of Los Angeles.

A very dark and Coen Brothers-ish comedy, I guess. Could see the puppy coming but not the ending.

Might soften the horror ending (and add a laugh*) by having his hands get so puffy that the axe flies from his hands without decapitating anyone

* Tis supposed to be a Rom Com.

Hi writer

What the hell lol I'm getting more annoyed at these as a lot of people haven't even tried to make a Rom-Com

I want to feel the love, feel the romance.

Never mind, not really my type of humour either.

Matt

The couple that slays together, stays together. At least the guy is the sensitive type, and the woman likes to cook. This script is all about the twist at the end, rather than about romance. Plus there's nothing funny about murdering innocent people. Perhaps if they went after people who really deserved to die, this might work. As it is, this script doesn't fit the challenge's parameters.