(H)eat of Wartime by Anonymous - Short, Drama - Among the survivals of a war, one man must overcome his food philosophies in order to save a seven year old vegan girl. - pdf, format

This had two major problems with it;

1) There's way too much going on the span of just 10 pages.  I'll commend you on going out on a limb with a wartime disaster zone setting, but after that the story was really rocky and the flashbacks didn't do it any favors.

2) Possibly even more major is that this was hard to read and I'm going to guess English isn't your first language, as the grammar and sentence structure was very challenging.  And for some reason there was a space between the end of the sentence and a question mark ?  <---like that.  

Sorry but I just couldn't get into this at all.

This was a very noble effort at drama, so I'll give you credit for that.  But it just didn't work for me.  I'm sorry, but I really don't have time to get to the what's and why's right now.  
Maybe later.

I'll point out a typo on page 9 just to prove I read it: Some fruits fall to the ground, as the man gets to his destiny.  Shouldn't it be be destination?  Or I dunno, maybe you meant destiny.  It's all subjective.

Again, noble effort.  Keep working on it.  This story may have potential.   For me it kinda had a "Children Of Men" feel to it.

Well, I better apologize right now, cause this is really horrible...horrible in every way.

Now if this is a joke and meant to be horrible, than you have succeeded...it's very, very funny.

If it's meant to be taken seriously, I apologize.  As another post considered, maybe English isn't your first language cause there are so many crazy mistakes in here, I really almost have to believe it's intentional.

OK, so there it is.  Sorry.

Two titles for the price of one. Stones and birds.

NOt entirely sure why you'd leave 'glasses' as 'glassES'. Might be deliberate. The author might tell later. Or perhaps not.

Quite visual. Little or no dialogue throughout. I know where I am while reading it. All that's on the plus side of things.

Some of the writing could be improved. But that's always the case. There is some writing and planning in here methinks.

Interesting idea, premise and use of 'da rools'.

Not sure I got all of the author's intentions.

I'd like to have seen a few more action lines to illustrate some of the dialogue. But I usually say that. Everyone does it different. Twould be dull if we did it the same.

A very grim setting and fairly depressing story. Nevertheless some good stuff within it.

R

Huh? This was really awkward and tough to read I'm afraid. Maybe I missed something but how are the two men able to talk to each other when it appears their shops are not right next to each other. And with a war taking place outside how can they hear over the noise?

Sorry but I think the idea here may have been good, but the execution is really lacking. Needs a good proofread to help make it more comprehensible. Congrats on finishing the challenge though.

Cheers,
Tim.

Too many things happen here. I was lost on my way. Too messy.  (what's the point about the pregnant woman? That's horrible!!!)

I won't comment about grammatical  or akward sentences (English isn't my first language either), but try to follow my advice: be as simple as possible. Do not try to translate from your own language to English literally. Synthetize. That's what I intended to do in my last scripts even if it's not that easy.

A good effort anyway.

Michel

Lots of drama, but not so much a debate about diet as a rant about modern life.  

I had hard time understanding the set up - who were the rebels, were these people not supposed to eat veggies and fruits?
I know Roven's girl had a cancer but they talk about the cancer as if most of them are supposed to get it...

A bit unbelievable for me. Both of them would eat meat if cornered, I think.

I liked how you integrated the argument into the story - that was good - I think that's what the challenge was about. So, good job on this.

With more clarity this could be pretty good. I also think that you need to work on presentation. Maybe you could say that you characters speak with an accent? Because they do, I think.

The parantheses in the title bothers my eyes.

The writer is going  for sme interesting visuals but his word choice and sentence flow could use some work.

Nice attempt to add drama to the OWC. Perhaps, if you had used the additional pages available?

Good work for a week.

I know who wrote this!  

So, I will not go into the typos and grammar.

The story itself is interesting. Two things going on. Due to a war we have people starving. One father and daughter are vegans trapped in a steakhouse with lots of bbq'd chickens, but they prefer not to eat them even though they are starving. Conflict there which is good. Second thing going on is the argument that Roven's daughter got cancer because she ate meat and possibly other cancer causing things vs. Eric's argument that he and his daughter will live to be a 100 by being vegans.

In short, good idea, that needs a big rewrite for ease of reading and following the story.  

It does need a lot of work, but with time, this could be something special.

I assume the writer is new and still working on their own voice, but in this, there is some talent. It just needs to be worked on.

Shawn.....><

The core thing with any script and the only thing that truly matters is: how good is the story. The main thing hampering the script is the odd phrasing and approach to telling the story. At times, it's difficult to make sense of what is to be shown on the screen, and I would assume that's because the writer is thinking too much about the actual words, rather than the overall composition. It's needlessly overwritten. In my view, the story doesn't really cover the ground lost; sure, it's got some kind of parent grief and a world in ruins, but it's doesn't have a sufficiently unique premise.

It's ok, and is passable considering the constraints of the challenge, but it was frustrating to read and I personally saw little to take from it thematically, that I haven't seen many times before.

Andrew

Quoted from Trojan Huh? This was really awkward and tough to read I'm afraid. Maybe I missed something but how are the two men able to talk to each other when it appears their shops are not right next to each other. And with a war taking place outside how can they hear over the noise? Sorry but I think the idea here may have been good, but the execution is really lacking. Needs a good proofread to help make it more comprehensible. Congrats on finishing the challenge though. Cheers, Tim.

I usually don't read other people's crits until I finish my own, but in this case I was just too curious.

The message from Tim is one of the first questions I had and went back to read it again part way because I thought I had missed something. I thought maybe he was telepathic or something. Seriously, I thought it was going to be like that.

I want to say now that I think the writer should keep writing because there's something in this that I really like. Maybe it's the confusion?   Seriously, although I jest with myself, I feel like you are hitting certain notes spot on although it's buried in the confusion, if that makes any sense.

Because I just don't have enough time, my main piece of advice is to keep writing if you're serious. Or even if you're not serious and it's a Whatthehell.

You know what I thought about this dialogue:

ROVEN
Kids are supposed to eat candies
and hamburgers and donuts and all
the shit in the world. You’re not
supposed to lock them in an
intellectual prison they won’t
understand, about how unethical it
is to kill the fucking animals.
(beat)
Submit yourself to that unpleasant
life you don’t believe in, but
leave kids out of this.

I thought that in the right script it would be excellent and in the wrong script it would be for the shredder.

We could start a whole big thread on that in the future and I think it's important to mention.

Do I like that bit of dialogue here? It was both no and yes and I think it's no because the character isn't built enough because we're in a short, but yes if we had a whole movie to learn a character and he said that because why? Because he damn well said it and everyone can fuck off.  

Keep writing because that's all we can do around here anyways!  

Sandra

I’ll make notes as I go..

The title is a neat construction, although I wonder if outside this challenge I’d be scratching my head.

Pg 1 – “Buildings in flames...” - You got a couple of notable typos in this paragraph. This kind of thing always looks bad, but especially when it is close to the beginning.

The set up is interesting, however for me it is overly described. What I mean by that is that the blocks of text feel long and the wording of the descriptions could be shorter and punchier.

Pg 5 – Their debate is interesting, but perhaps the story seems a little one dimensional at this point.

Pg 7 – Given their predicament their debate seems a little odd.

Pg 10 – The ending has a dramatic visual.

Overall I like the premise and you’ve got some solid cinematic visuals, but perhaps the execution of it didn’t engage me.