Jaws: Pe'ahi by Kamakawiwoʻole - Short, Shark - A surfer travels to Hawaii to ride the one of the most dangerous waves in the world.  - pdf, format

While researching my script, I didn't realise there had been so many shark attacks in Hawaii over the last 100 years.

I think this one is by a newbie, as it has some formatting issues. But the dialogue is not bad.

Nice visuals out in the waves and stuff. There's no story here more a vignette of a shark attack.

But it was ok. I give it a 6.5

Could have done with a proofread. If it's error free, or almost, reviews have to concentrate on the story. There's nowhere else to go.

I know nothing about surfing so most of this went over my head.

Another straight lift of the bigger boat line. I think you could have done better.

I'm losing interest by page six. Not much has happened, apart from some surfing and a slightly cut finger.

Quoted from Jaws: Pe'ahi EXT. UNDERWATER. DAY Surrounded by dark blue water, Zach swims under the water waiting for the turbulent wave above him to pass.

Are they in the water? Ah, yes. They must be. As you mention it three times in two sentences. I probably sound harsher than intended but -

EXT. UNDERWATER - DAY

Ten feet below the surface Zach watches the waves above before he makes his move.

- might be a bit better to read.

There's some nice writing, now and again.

I didn't quite work out what happened at the end. Maybe I zoned out but I read it twice and feel like I'm missing something. Or something's missing.

Wasn't there supposed to be just four characters? The waitress and the two at the end make it five. Or maybe I'm in the wrong mood and being over critical.

R

*Spoilers*

Despite the typos - and the occasionally dense descriptives - one can tell that a competant writer did this script.  Solid sentence construction, some nice beats (like the shark mounted behind the waitress and the false alarm when Justin disappears the first time) and a decent premise.  Kudos on all of those points. (And the 'bigger boat' Easter egg.)  

Some nitpicks...  The story does get to a slow start.  Then, once the shark attack does happen and Zach finds the bloody jetski, he doesn't even *try* to find Justin again?  This is his bro, dude!  He doesn't even scream out one last time to see if he's still alive?  

The rest of it is pretty straightforward 'shark survival' territory.  Loved the couple's banter near the ending, though the last minute attack on Steven left alot of story threads hanging...

Oh - and this one's relatively high on the budget scale.  But I don't think budget will be a consideration with many of these OWCS!  

Man, your descriptions are stellar! I think, at one point, I actually smelled Sea Salt... and blood!

OK, I don't surf, never have, and probably never will. So as one who cannot give you definitive feedback on the whole culture; I believe it all came from someone who knows what it means to be out on the big waves.

The chunks of action need to be broken up a bit, they're a little too clunky to get through, and I found myself re-reading them to get an idea what was happening, but I'm going to chalk that up to the 12pg limit and you trying to cram it all in.

Excellent submission!

A bot too wordy in description, not sure I can "see" the waitress' digits on the napkin, but overall, this isn't bad at all. It's actually good...to a point. I look at iy this way. The writer may be into the surf culture. It shows some of that or feels like it. Cool. Play-by-play of how they surf and jetski? Gets a bit repetitive and thin after awhile. As a result, the script takes it's dandy time and requires an audience to be patient.

Quoted from me, myself & I" Four characters maximum, either gender. This does not necessarily include a dead character previously killed by the shark offscreen

Why not the WAITRESS be SUSAN? Saves you the trouble. Or have SUSAN and STEVEN meet ZAX and JUSTIN at the Crab Cooker. Give WAITRESS zero lines/stocjk character and that'll work too.

A decent entry in any case. Watch out for the Slug Police. You might get busted.

DjS

Your sentences drag on for too long and I can't really take in all the description you stuff into them. Split them up and avoid having too many big blocks of text.

Wait, we were allowed to use crowds? Doesn't that count as like a dozen characters? Not including the Waitress who plays a part in the character count.

Ended on an underwhelming note, it didn't really have the effect since you introduce this characters after the script's climax, where really, it should've ended. Another one where I didn't see anything special, just the same old shark story. I liked the location and the surfing angle was nice but, like I assume with 90% of the entries, there's not much here since it's been done before.

I have to admit, I googled Pe’ahi to see what it meant and then I was like whoa dude, very cool, because I thought you were referring to ‘Jaws the shark’ at first! So, hats off for the good title.

I feel like this one didn’t get going fast enough for me. In fact, I may drop that whole first scene in the crab restaurant altogether if I were this writer. It really doesn’t serve much purpose, especially when in the ‘Beat Up Truck’ one scene later they tell us the same thing that the waitress told us. Too much back story. Make sure every scene in your script counts. With scenes, I’ve read ‘get in late, get out early’.

The dialogue did sound ‘surfer’ so that was good, but when two people talk to each other, they don’t use names usually like this. Think about it...when you talk to your best friend, how many times during a conversation do you actually say his/her name?

Ok, by page 6, no shark and I’m getting a bit tired of the two guys talking back and forth about how scary or how epic this place is. We don’t have any conflict. There is a bit of tension, but not close to enough in my opinion.

And then it’s just too convenient: the blood on the jet ski, then it won’t start, and then the cell phone cuts off, then it mysteriously will start.

I’m not sure the scene with Susan and Steven does much for the story.

Some good visuals in this. My guess is that the writer has done some surfing. Decent for a week’s work, but this one needs a bit more of a story for me.

I really liked this until about page 6. After that the action got very confusing. I liked it but it definitely needs a rewrite for clarity. The thick action blocks took away from the tension a bit. Writing needs to be leaner for sure.

As far as meeting the parameters of the challenge...you had 5 characters. :/

This was a good effort though. Congrats on completing a script for this difficult OWC.

Pg. 1: "The website of a surf forecast website on his screen." HUH?

Pg. 3: So far I'm loving your descriptions. Although the action blocks could be split up and trimmed in some areas, they are so visual and create a realistic atmosphere.

Pg. 4: "Zach and Justin take turns towing and riding colossal wave after colossal wave." -- Problem here is this is probably about 2 hours. Probably best shown in a montage.

Pg. 6: "Zach swims under the water" - this is repetitive. You tell us he's under water in the slug.

My first of the batch...and I'm more than a bit schlammied...sorry, writer...

OK, your opening Slug isn't formatted correctly, but maybe this is some new thang with a period instead of a dash?  Just not the way to start, my friend.

Andyou begin with a 3 line passage, endiing in an orphan?  Really?  Again, just not the way to start your script.

Next passage is awful, filled with a crazy amount of errors.  5 lines, 3 sentences.  Last 1 shouldn't be included in this passage.

Already way over the # of characters alotted.

OK, sorry, but the writing is not great and I won't bring anything else up.  I'm going to read through and  make a few comments at the end.

Sorry, but why are they yelling at each other on the bottom of page 2?  Trust me, exclamation points in dialogue can be so WAY OVER USED.

You need to look into how to use commas...the abuse going on is making me want to go eat more ribs.

Can't help but say, the writing needs lots of work, and the dialogue is approaching pisser realm.  But...in terms of lots of stuff we'll come across this OWC, it's not half bad, bro.  Look back at it closely and you'll see where it just doen't work, as intended.

No reason, IMO, to ever go over 4 lines in a passage.  Your pasages are far from correctly broken up and you're way overwriting.

Ok...skimmed to the end.  Redonkulous, cliche, poorly written, and kind of what I expected from the lot.

I know this sounds very mean and harsh, but, in reality, if you take what I've said to heart, I hope you'll see and I hope it will help you going forward.

Good job entering this OWC

First one I've read so my enthusiasm is high right now.

A handful of errors that should have been caught and sort of leads me to think this might have been a last minute submission. If it was turned in mid-week, it probably would have been better to have given it a few days.

There wasn't much to work with in terms of story here, but I'll agree with everybody else - good show of skill painting a word-picture in this.

Some thoughts as I went - you've got a character eating at the start and I found that ironic. And aren't you supposed to wait 30 minutes?

Anytime someone says: "one more time" regarding anything remotely dangerous (or if it's an eating challenge) it's always going to end badly. Would be fun to see this shot just for the scenery and surfing alone.

The final visual was good, but needs to be tweaked.

There was a lot going on, much to digest here. And I'm not talking about the extended passages, even though you should watch that. And the commas like Jeff pointed out.

As straightforward as this story is, it can be easily rendered for an easier read. I recommend shedding a lot of the adverbs. Even "quickly clamors", (which I think you meant "clambers") can be just "clambers" because its connotation doesn't promote "quickly". And even if it did, it creates more for a reader to compare. When a reader has to weigh two words intertwined, it can slow down the read, because it affects the predicate.

You are a good writer, but I suggest you sharpen your tools and go over this. It has some nice visuals and tension.

Good effort,

Johnny

I like the story and you definitely have skills.

As previous comments stated, more practice is needed to better understand what to include and what isn't really needed.

Although I enjoyed the script, I do think your ending was, well, poor. What was the point of the story? Did anyone learn anything? Was there a character arc?

I think you have real promise as a writer... just keep practicing/writing/reading.

As I read on, I thought your writing in the descriptions was actually pretty clear. I’d break up some of the longer paragraph blocks, though. It makes things feel dense and can really kill you when you’re trying to build suspense. But-

Opening lines like, “The website of a surf forecast website on his screen”, suggests this is either a newbie, or a last minute entrant.

Pg. 2 Two spoken lines and I can already picture Justin being eaten by a shark, yelling, “Save me, bro!”. Please don’t let me down.

Pg. 7 I don’t think people normally react to their cell phone dying by chucking it in the ocean.

Pg. 9 Just once, I’d like someone pale and unattractive to strip pointlessly for the camera.

Well, this story just kind of ended, and there isn’t much story to speak of. It felt like it could be a random scene from almost any shark attack movie out there. To be fair, you’ll probably be in good company with that.

What would I add going forward? Finish Zach off. And have Justin scream, “Save me, bro!”

Congrats on entering the OWC.

One thing really bugging me is your serious lack of commas. I can get over small errors, I really can. But the severe lack of commas really disrupts the read for me. The reason for that is that I find myself mentally putting them in for you, which actually makes me lose track, so I then have to reread to get into some sort of flow.

Introducing two more characters so late is a bad move I feel. I feel that the surfing went on too long. On a positive note, there are some moments of tension.