Better Late than Never by Double-O Uh-Oh - Dodgeball,  Air Marshal, Daycare Center - Short, Thriller

Good idea for the theme, but the way you reveal there are 2 brothers comes across very forced. Like what would make Yuusuf suddenly reveal this private family story to the receptionist? Pretty odd.

Great use of dodgeball.

#2 simultaneous dialog on page 2 is a bit confusing.

Chunky action blocks and a lot of misspellings.

I do like how you worked the theme in there.

Best of luck, writer.

I struggled with this one. There are some rushed writing and clunky action blocks which makes the reading harder and with so much going on, this adds to the confusion. I thought this was sci-fi at first and this was some dystopian future or something. It is odd but I think it ticks all the boxes.

Great use of the dodge ball and a tough combination of elements!

-Mark

Interesting setup and nice use of dodgeball.

Feels a little rushed though as there's a fair few typos and the like - nothing that an additional pass won't fix.

Yuusuf explaining his back-story feels odd, especially as it seems implied he already knows the Receptionist... who I'd consider naming.

Completely thrown by the revelation on page 3 that there are high profile terrorists upstairs... I thought we were in a daycare centre? Oh, the daycare centre is in an FBI building... hmmm, that might work if it didn't seem to be the least well protected Federal building in the world..

You then have Daahir looking like Mike... I assume you mean Mark but had a name change at some point?

The ending feels rushed and unlikely, but it's difficult with only 5 pages.

good use of the theme. And Dodgeball. You really had a use for all the critera. Nice.

The terrorists attack happening in the middle of the script was kind of sudden.

I also read the feedback here. I think Yuusuf sharing with the Receptionist wasn't our of the ordinary. You mary rewrite that bit, let her ask related questions or something. I understand we have a page limit and that's the reason you had to cram that bit just for us to see some of the backstory.

I think the sudden attack is strange. I liked the boys nick-names for each other at the end. The ending was touching. A bit Bollywoodish though but I still liked it.

Maybe you could let Mark talk to his father a bit more before the attack. Maybe they could talk about his brother.
I think you could have let us a bit in for it to read more intimate and make us care more.

It's a complete story with beginning, middle and end. And you used the criteria well. So, good work.

Note from Don:

I had an issue with the upload, so, if you've read this prior to 11:30 am edt on 7/20, this version is slightly different.  Error entirely mine (and the server).

Don

Fixed broken link.

- Don

Fun use of the parameters. I laughed when I first saw them, but you made it work. The dodgeball bit was great.

There were several lines that I just didn't understand at all. "Most civilians get the numbers wrong." and "How do you even know that? No wonder his friends know." I didn't get what you were going for there.

The ending was fun. The beginning was pretty good. But, I wasn't a fan of most of the action bits.

Overall, I was glad to have read it. Thanks for sharing!

My inner monologue went 'uh-oh' when I saw what you had to work with. Congrats on even figuring something out for this week.

Like some others mentioned, I didn't understand some dialogue blocks with the receptionist (who shall be nameless for some reason). And why is a 15 year old in day care?

You hit all the requisite items. The theme was fairly light though. And where was mom?

Good work, writer.

Good ideas here in a valiant attempt to handle really shitty variables!

Where is  this set?

Look, it became garbled somewhat and I couldn't get into it even after 2 reads. But i'll cut you some slack as your variables were damn horrendous.  And I think your trying to match up the theme with them was too much, especially with the dialogue.

Hope your next 2 rounds give you some 'shit variable' relief!

That dual/duelling dialogue saved you some space, I'm guessing?  

Echo two-fife. Gonna take a minute
to check on everyone here.
She's more than a receptionist, right?

RECEPTIONIST
A delayed dead-man’s switch? That’s
just mean.
Not really buying this dialogue.

(loud)
The dialogue could have done with an exclamation point instead of the wasted line wrylie. I always say don't overdo them but this is a high tension moment.

Why does Yuusuf then put a finger to his lips after he just effectively yelled? I blame it on time constraints, right?

Elements all there.
Theme: tick.

Lovely ending with the touches of humour and dodgeball use.

ok, some good aspects, others need work


I suppose my main observations would be;

clarity - in this dynamic situation make sure you don't lose the reader, I did struggle with some detail

tone - some comments felt out of context consider the building was being assaulted by terrorists whilst young kids were hiding

focus - there are some good aspects in here, like the building being assaulted, and the tension of kids being around - what would you do? but for five pages sometimes you need to choose whats stays, what goes

worth a revision as this could be a tense short

Good script. Nice use of the elements, except for the Air Marshall part. The only reason we know Yuusuf is an air marshall is because he identifies himself as such to the Receptionist. Though Mark was raised by Yuusuf, and Daahir by his wife, the boys look exactly alike except for their hair styles. Mark turned out to be a good kid, and Daahir turned out to be a terrorist. So this is a good example of nurture determining their characters. But this is only one side of the theme: the nature side of the theme is not explored in this story.

Good one. Pretty well told a whole story within the five page limit. Could visualize the action. Same odditirs noticed as already mentioned above. Well done with this.

Hi,

A family caught in the middle of a terrorist attack in a daycare centre, on a dodgeball court, in a federal building, with an Air Marshal.
There is a lot to digest along with this week's challenge and the theme you chose. But I liked the story although as others have pointed out it could do with some clarification of some points, a tidy up of the dialogue and the grammatical errors but overall I think you managed very well.

Well done.

Some awkward writing right off the bat.

Skids to  halt works for the car, for Yuusuf if conjures up an almost cartoonish image It would also be good to change things up a bit so as to avoid the repetition.

The writing seems rushed and unedited, lots of mistakes that would have been easy to spot on a read through.

A few characters along the way that require all caps on introduction.

There is no way for us to know the girl is a teachers aid. The writing needs to be visual.

I would have given the receptionist a name, I think it would have made for a better read.

A fair portion of the dialogue is on the nose.

I think knowing the theme telegraphed the ending, I supposed that might be the case for a lot of the scripts.

The final exchange between the brothers is really out of place for me.

Pretty straight forward story with some hard criteria to use, I think you handled it relatively well, but the writing as a whole needs a fair bit of work.

I liked this. Theme is present, and the elements are used well (thank you for that, writer!). In fact, the dodge ball as a weapon is brilliant.

What would take me from very good to great on this is a little more understanding - did his wife stay in Somalia and if so why? Couldn't he have taken both kids with him?

And if someone besides the writer can weigh in on this - would we keep captured foreign terrorists in a building that also houses a day care center?  I don't want to penalize for that and listen, I know we need to accept that for you to get all your elements in place here, but it was ringing in my head throughout the read.

Also, the receptionist - she's kind of a bad ass, no? Her actions belie her title. And I love that you made her 59. That was awesome - like, she's one away from the big 6-0 and she's pissed off about it.

A little confusing at times on who was speaking on the phone and what they knew and who they were to the story, but that's to be expected in 5 pages.

Loved the ending. 15 year olds would absolutely say that to each other, without missing a beat and picking up where they left off.

AJR

Thank you everyone for the feedback.

My first thriller, so I was expecting to get dinged for not being "thrilling." But no, that was too obvious for SS... you had to go find lots of other holes in my entry

Granted, the level of OpSec failure at this federal building is comical and there's no indication that Al-Shabaab could mount such an operation in the US. So, no, this was not meant to be realistic. Only picked Al-Shabaab (and by extension Somalia) because they had a civil war at a time convenient for my story.

Yuusuf's air-marshal-ness is used to make him an armed agent who's not part of the organized response, so he gets to be a lone-wolf cowboy. His kids are in a federal building's daycare because he's got bizarre hours, and they have to be somewhere after school. Presumably, Yuusuf's new wife in America (Bilan didn't come from a stork) has her own career.

Yuusuf isn't supposed to be that familiar with the Receptionist (who does deserve a name). That was just my awkward attempt to get his name in dialog.

The dual-dialog was meant to convey Bilan pestering her dad while he was talking. It also saved some space

I have no problem believing that some typos made it into the script. Calling Mark "Mike" is one of them, but "fife" is not. In military and paramilitary protocol, where they can't assume great radio clarity, the digits are:

Zee-roe, Wun, Too, Tree, Foe-wer, Fife, Six, Seh-ven, Ate, Nine-er

Yuusuf hears the Receptionist pronounce her callsign correctly and leaps to the conclusion that she's a veteran or something, only then he hands her a weapon. Actually, she's just someone who's been through emergency drills since Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in 1995. Without a tight space constraint, I can make that clear in dialog. She is, however, admirably cool under fire. Probably married to Kaleb in From the Light to the Sheyd

Another thing that I would have like to make clear is that she's the only one in the daycare with a radio, so they have to go check on everyone else before she can give a final check-in for Section E25. This gives her a reason to prod Yuusuf onward when his own kids are safe(ish). It's not unusual to have only one radio-toting office manager per floor in a normal office building; here I'm making up whole-cloth that a federal building has one per "section."

A little more back-and-forth between them can have her assume he knows how to clear room-by-room, and he can remark "They didn't really cover that in air marshal school."

She drops her radio near the end because (1) I want to show that she's not combat-trained, and (2) I needed an excuse to shut up that damned radio. Speaking of the radio, the dispatcher should have warned them of two hostiles before the door was opened.

I'm not entirely happy with the very end. The Somali proverb isn't some kind of punchline, so I don't like it being the last thing said. Maybe just put subtitles as Yuusuf says it?

I'm glad most of you appreciated how these two boys, seeing each other for the first time in ten years, greet each other with their childish epithets for one another.