Can You Dig It? by blank - Short, Thriller - The death of his old friend sends Troy on an impromptu treasure hunt into the desert, but what he finds is more than he bargained for. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Writer,

Criteria met. It seemed like you went a little out of your way to make this edgy, especially with your character descriptions. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Honestly, I wouldn't have minded meeting that bartender -- my kind of gal. Story was just ok for me, don't know if we ever knew exactly what they were looking for and that helps when setting up stakes. Dialogue, again, seemed to be trying too hard to be edgy, but worked for most part. Writing, good, but too much underlining and smash to, cut to, etc. Overall, not bad by any means. Decent job here, but nothing we hven't seen before.

Steve

Great writing! Sharp & funny. Seamless dialogue. Didn't feel like 10 pages.

My one gripe: I wish it didn't end with Troy being murdered. It would have been equally effective if it ended with the knockout, in my opinion. Other than that, I had a great time with this one .

Nailed it.

Nice job!

This was lean, clean, and tight... a decent read, I think your character descriptions are nice.  BUT, you capitalize the shit out of almost everything. To a point where I found it distracting.  All those cut to's/Smash cuts didn't help, either.  It almost appears like you are trying to show what a good writer you are versus what a good screenwriter you can be?  There is a difference.  

As far as the story, nothing new here, but it did what it needed to.

Ghost

Catchy title and logline. Suggests something of a wildcard read and the opening lines don’t disappoint with the tone continuing throughout.  Enjoyed the dialogue exchanges - each character feels distinct despite the limited space.

‘If she has a nursing degree, she got it online’ - nice.

There it is, shovel to the head.

Very tightly written - didn’t feel like ten pages at all which is a shame as the ending felt a little abrupt as a result.  So we can presume young Roland buried the loot (but still lived in a shitty trailer…) which informs the stakes.  I could see how Alex would kill to keep the secret.

One issue for me, Troy suspects the connection having seen the newspaper clippings but it’s not a given (or otherwise hinted) that Alex does.

Reads fast.  Ticks all the boxes on mystery, character and all round entertainment.  Good work for a week.  Fun little thriller/mystery and one that I really hope you come back to.  Though I would consider tying up that loose end for Alex.

Good luck.

--
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Why?

Do you need every transition to be a SMASH CUT?

Other than that great, loved it!

Can you dig It? - SUCKAAAAAA (90's wrestling fans will get me   )

Quoted Text JUNE I’ve got a fat ass and you brought me donuts.

LOL

SMASH TO, SMASH TO, SMASH TO - it's like the Incredible Hulk wrote this.

Well, bravo. Very enjoyable, you can obviously write - and have been doing so for a while, you've got your own style and I doubt anything I say will change it (even if I'm not a fan of it lol)

Honestly, the reveal caught me off-guard. But if she was clever, she would have waited until he finished digging before revealing her name

Well done

As I go:

- A pet peeve, because this is generally very well written -- what's the deal with the movie line, "You're not gonna let this go, huh?" Of all the ways a scene can turn, someone relenting on the basis of being badgered always seems like one of the least interesting. Tenacity can be interesting, but not as a quick answer to a one-off scene. What tactic can Troy use instead? It's a chance to learn more about him.

Thoughts:

- Okay, a grungy little black comedy noir that doesn't really cohere around a central point, for me. The old guy's dead, then the young guy's dead. Everyone's entertaining, but I don't know what everyone has to do with the story. What does all the June stuff have to do with anything except to add extra steps?
- The twist is fun (I did have it dialed immediately -- too much dialogue with the bartender for it to work out any other way -- but it's a fun one nonetheless), but again, I'm not sure I see the point. The whole thing leads up to a gotcha that doesn't really reveal much about Troy OR about Alex -- one of them just gets the one up on the other from the start, and keeps it until the reveal and the end.
- Tight, funny, good sense of tone.

Chris

The story, dialogue, characterization, pacing, character descriptions are fantastic. Can't fault it

I hate the writing style, it's so clunky so much -- and ... and transitions and bold and underlining. Just looks terrible on the page in my opinion.

But you clearly have a thing going and I'd be pretty surprised if this wasn't top 3 material.

Great story telling.

Hi writer,

Okay, I didn’t see that coming. Pretty good weave.

That being said, I do have a few afterthoughts. Of course, all what I’m about to reveal happens after your script has ended; see, that means you got me thinking about shit you didn’t even write… yet, or never, all good.

First and foremost, might Alex have some comeuppance for whacking some innocent dude she just met? I mean, she even kissed him…  unless that was a kiss of death, ooooh!

I mean, yeah, he was gonna go for a loot that rightfully didn’t belong to him, but he was the one who seemed to be a better friend to Roland all those days/months/years when he was sick than Alex, I mean; she didn’t even know the old man had Emphysema, let alone died a few days ago.

None the less. If the robbery (the loot begot by Roland and Co.) had a murder attached to it when it was stolen, then the money has no statute of limitations in the states, and if some serial numbers show up at the local bank when the cash is pulled from circulation (being Alex spends it locally), she’ll have visitors soon enough. No murder attached, she’ll probably be OK to spend her little black heart out. Just thinking out loud.

Anyway, pretty good tale for a week’s notice, a gnarly black licorice twizzler to gnaw on, if you will.

This one ticks all the boxes for the criteria. I found it easy to read and follow. I was actually enjoying the tale of Roland on his deathbed going out on his own terms and dreaming of one last road trip as he passed but then it cut to a completely different scene. The intro, therefore, isn’t required as it has no relevance to the story, although it is a pity as I enjoyed Roland and his ‘nurse’ more than Troy, the Bartender and the hunt for the buried treasure. I sussed the bartender was Alex as soon as they started talking in the bar and it was quite predictable what was going to happen, although the murder aspect seemed a bit extreme. Maybe knocking him out would have been more in line with her character up to that point.

A very decent entry though, well done.

-Mark

This is very well written and a very nice entry only it doesn’t work for me as written.

And when I started to think of why - I’m siding with Troy from the beginning and he’s a bad guy at the end. That’s one.
Also you introduced your winner at the end.
You didn’t talk where the special bond between Alex and Roland comes from - being grandpa is not enough.
And why Troy was attached to Rolland - I might have missed that though.
It’s still a very good entry as it made me engaged throughout.

I thought I read somewhere that there were no multiple entries from any one writer, but I swear so many of these look exactly alike, with the same issues.  Maybe there's a new class of writers that ascended on SS and all entered a script here.  Interesting...

This is going to be a tough one for me to get through - asides, unnecessary CAPPING, SMASH CUTs galore, no FADE IN, --, ;, "we hear", lines without subjects, smartarsey writing.  We'll see.

We have unlabeled Flashbacks for some reason, then you follow it with a Subject Slug?  Oh man.  I'm already thinking about jumping off this ship.

The writing here is just so damn irritating, sorry to say.  It is really difficult for me to go on, but I'm trying.

So, this Bartender has a name.  Why oh why would you call her Bartender all this time?  And, then, at the end, you call her Alex, so she shows up as 2 different characters.

I really don't get anything from this.  It starts off all about Roland, then we go to Troy, and then Troy gets killed by some random Bartender, who wants whatever is buried in this random desert.  That does not make a story, and the writing is just terrible.

**

Good characters, nice action, well written, but your standard greed and betrayal story. But it does pack a lot into 10 pages.

No, I can't.

My main issues, of course is all the SMASH CUTS and other transitionals, some underscoring in slugs and in narrative, $ signs, (why do folks still insist on putting $ in scripts is beyond me) and camera directions.

Quoted Text In his prime,Roland was a badass

  

He's 80 something now, bed ridden,on oxygen. Most people would look a bit better in their younger days. Also, you're telling me that.

Quoted Text She’s done a dozen so far

Has she? I didn't see it, you never showed it.

"we hear" =  if Veronica exits, I can hear the door close anyway.

Script gets better as it goes, but so much highlighted, capped...I feel that a good tale is getting (excuse me) "buried" here and that's unfortunate. The "If you drink here you betterhave a fenoly" line is gold. It's a keeper. But it's not enough for me to recommend this.

Very well written but ultimately I was disappointed in the direction you took it. I also knew the Bartender was Alex from her first introduction. But I dunno, maybe consider a different ending, different characters and you could be onto something that would make for a nice revenge tale and also a nice produced short.

Minor niggle, I find FLASH TOs work better than SMASH TOs because SMASH doesn't invoke a flashback. FLASH TO/BACK TO works better IMO.

In his prime, Roland was a badass. - How is this visually represented? I'd prefer to use your version in my mind's eye as this is your story.

Story-wise, this is the best I've read yet out of five. The others simply didn't have a story but were more scenes from movies. This one tells an actual story and it does so fairly well. I'm glad that you calmed down with being too clever. Nicely done. I get the feeling this will score highly.


Criteria Met (Y/N) – I don't care.
Story (1-5) –  4
Characters (1-5) – 3.5
Dialogue (1-5) – 3.5
Writing (1-5) – 4
Overall (1-10) – 7.5

One of the better ones, for sure. Writing is great for the most part. Very good work here.

I really enjoyed the characters and the dialogue here - they all sound distinct, and, thanks to your descriptions, it was quite easy to picture them.

The writing is tight, although I'm a bit mixed on the style. I understand that the edginess and the swearing are supposed to help set the tone and draw us in, but I feel as if it threw me out of the story and got distracting at times.

Also, some of the descriptions look great on the page, but I would have liked them to be a a bit more clear or detailed. For example:

"If you drink here, you better have a felony conviction."
- I can't be sure whether you're talking about the sketchy characters inside the bar, the actual look of the bar, or just the atmosphere - I guess it's all three, but I couldn't really imagine it from that one sentence. Might be me, though.

There's a lot going on with the underlined slugs, underlined action and the smash cuts, and I think it would have been an easier read, if these things hadn't been so dominant on every page.

Overall: intriguing logline, enjoyable story, interesting characters and very entertaining dialogue