Imposter by Henri Sanson - Short - A couples camping trip takes a frightening turn when a manic stranger turns up with a tall tale of murder and a killer who he believes was him.

A February 2011 One Week Challenge script. - pdf, format

Hi, Henri

Don't underline your title.
Gotta loose the scene numbers for spec scripts.
Begin with a superfluous FADE IN:.

               ANGIE
     We could take some leaves and twigs
     with us, sprinkle them around the
     room.  I'll even take a shit in the
     corner to give it that authentic
     woodland musk if you like!
LMAO! I like Angie already.
I think I've dated her a few times in a previous life.
Girl camping. Boy camping. Ain't even the same thing. On with the story...

Pg 2 - Er, no babe!
This, "tyre" and a couple arguing make me think of Ren.

Pg 9 - Creepiness at the top of the page!

Bangs at the door.
Angie opens it immediately.
LOL! Yep! I've dated Angie before. Always a stickler for security measures.  

Alrighty, now!
That was pretty good.
A few little typos to clean up and yerr good to go!

The mythology in effect here is a little shaky on me, but... who cares? It was great.
Scary stuff, ferr shur.

Pros

First Doppleganger script I've seen and it was a good one.

Creepy, lots of potential.

Cons

Slightly talky....replace most of the opening chatter with more suspense building stuff, use the doplleganger theme a bit more (reflections etc) and maybe try and get a few more little twists and turns in the space.  

Overall an enjoyable little script, you did a good job.

This was pretty cool.  The only part that really made me scratch my head was their reaction when Olly said all of his friends were dead.  I don't know.  I think people would be a bit more freaked out about that.  Entertaining though.  And good writing, I breezed right through it.

I think it might benefit from a little more action and less dialog.  Pg. 1 and 2 there is a lot of cute banter but after a while it doesn't do anything to push your story forward.  Just a suggestion.

First off I liked the dialogue. Some of it had such a real feel to it like this:

ANGIE
What's the damage, jungle man?

DES
Flat on the rear drivers side. How
long did you say your dad's had this abomination?

ANGIE
Little over a year is what he told
me. Only ever taken it out once though, far as I'm aware.

DES
Once?! What was the point buying
it?

ANGIE
I think he just got excited about
retiring and thought he'd do all this travelling and that, but then realised he couldn't be arsed with all the fuss!

Poor Des, felt sorry he was pretty whipped.  

I think you did a lovely job with this. It was a neat little Imposter story and the title fits.

Sandra

This story starts off with a drama like domestic row which takes some time to play out. The horror sequence that follows works fairly well, although I wonder if you could get more tension and horror out of it by letting situations develop a bit and letting the audience stew in them for a little longer.

These are notes I made as I read:

Pg 1 – Without reading a word I notice you don’t have a “FADE IN:” and you do have scene numbers, both of which are probably not good in spec scripts.

Pg 2 – You got your characters straight into an energetic row, so it’s got conflict.

Pg 3 – “Someone hidden” – If we are going to see this character on screen then it seems like they should have a capitalized intro.

Pg 5 – The action is moving along now. As things stand this feels like a drama for me, rather than a horror.

Pg 6 – Olly’s story is a bit chilling, however I wonder if it would be something that we could see on screen instead of being told about it?

Pg 9 – Solid twist.

Pg 10 – “Des drops to his knees.” – Seems like an odd thing to do when you know you are in danger.


Philip

Impostor * you spell it impostor, I spell it imposter * I liked it * even though I knew the guy was an imposter I fell for the oldest trick in horror writing * good twist nicely done * the voice thing was cool and easy to understand * I could hear the stones singing angie in the background * damn good doppleganger * done as a continuous story rather than jumping locations

Very well written. Nice concept with the Doppleganger that adopts others' forms, though been done before by aliens and demons in the cinema.

Story started to lose me when they did not call the police, agreed to tie him up based on his story. I just couldn't buy that. Anyone would call the cops, unless you add another element. For example, the married couple are outlaws, don't want the police involved. Would that work for you?

Then a couple other things need to be clearer.Who opened the door at the end? How many dopplegangers are there? I know one is tied up; then there is Angie in the room. But she is dead on the bed; so who opened the door? I reread the page several times, and I am not sure if someone else popped in or what.

I don't personally have a problem with the drama vs horror thing. What is horror? Was the Sixth Sense? It seems to me there is a pretty wide range for what can be seen as horror. You have supernatural beings, killings, scary stuff. I call it horror. I have read about 30 scripts so far, I think all of them. None hit it out of the park, including this one. I don't know how the challenge works, when rewrites are allowed, but this has potential to be reworked by the author into something pretty good. This is my opinion, and if you don't like it, blame my doppleganger, he wrote it!

Good concept here. I thinkk the dialogue ran on a bit in  the beginning. I think you could've used something else to add more tension in this story. Something that foresadows things to come like the radio saying they're looking for missing campers in their area. Several deaths reported. Then they realize theyre disabled and in some bad area.

Good luck writing this one in a week.

James

Good story.  For a short script, I think you give us too much dialogue, although clever dialogue, and not enough plot development.  We could have seen things happen that were only talked about and still have the mystery.

Well done with this - a good twist, and great dialogue for the most part.

It did get a little talky at times, however.  Pages 2 & 6 consist almost entirely of dialogue - try to intersperse some action lines amongst the chatter and the whole thing will read smoother.

This aside, you did a great job in just a week. Well done!

Finally, a doppelganger script in the OWC. Cheapest critter to film.
I'm more than a little surprised more scripts haven't gone this route.
So far this OWC we've had more Asian under aged porn than doppelgangers!
I saw it coming, I wasn't fooled, but you write a pretty good page.
Don't often read wives willing to defecate in hotel rooms for their husbands. Kooky.
The second half loses me, why close the door to repair the tire?
Oh, cuz if he doesn't, the coolest character can't have an off screen death. Got it.
This one wouldn't take too much to develop into a corker.

E.D.

It's well written.

For me it's another slasher story albeit interesting. But basic, too straight forward and easy.

There's no cause and effect, they were having a regular day and then bam. The twist - she's an impostor - she never was actually it's the spirit that killed her became her. That part is interesting but is not actually a twist. It's okay not to have one though.

All I'm saying that although very interesing with fun visuals and all it's what it is - something comeing onto someone out of nowhere and it's horrific.

Nice story.  The opening dialog was good, but it could have been trimmed a bit (took up 20% of the script).  

A few typos, format issues (as noted in others' comments), but nothing that distracted me too much.  Good suspense.  Nice writing - very easy to read.

I enjoyed it.  Good job.

The good old stranded because they ran out of fuel, tyre went flat, engine packed up type of thing. Okay, let's see where this goes . . .

So, why didn't they change the flat tyre??

The dialouge seems to be crass just for the sake of and not in line with these characters. Would Angie really say that? I doubt it.

Too many exclaimation marks, okay!

By page 3 the dialouge is OTT and just doesn't make this believable or natural sounding in the slightest.

6 pages of dialouge. You should be into your story alot sooner. The whole exchange between Olly, Des and Angie feels incredibly forced and unnatural. If someone tackled Des out of the blue like that, he'd have a fight, flight or freeze response, not start shouting to Angie the police.

Most people undo the nuts, then jack up the tyre.

I think you had a good idea, which you could have executed in a tighter fashion. I was dissapointed you didn't have a twist. Ii think if you reworked this it make a much better story.

- Lose those numbers

- I might guess this was written by some one from across the pond by the excessive use of the passive voice.

- "Des grabs the knife and takes kicks the phones away from Olly." huh?

- Don't buy Olly's speech and I doubt they would let him talk so much.

- I can tell a SS person's script now, it has a 'The End'.

I like the concept, but not the execution. I actually got told that once from an agent. Which means you have a good idea, you just need to find a good way to show it. Keep at it.

*Spoilers*

Negatives: The story itself was...plain.  The dialog was somewhat stilted (and the exclamation marks were way too common!!!!!!!!!!).

But there *are* some positives to this script.  It's the only one (that I read, anyway) that covers the doppleganger concept.  And that's refreshingly different.  

The details at the end were also good - the need for the doppleganger to readjust his/her vocal cords was a nice touch, as was the way the body shifted while transforming into Angie's double.

So cheers on the OWC...with one day left to the anonymous reviews...

The banter ran a little long in the beginning, but overall this was pretty good.  

I really have nothing else to add.  I'm tired and exhausted, so good job with this.

Greg

Sorry, but I'm not going to finish this one.  Awful start with the passive first and 2nd sentence.  3rd is no gem either.

More passive verbiage, more inane banter, and then the dreaded use of the word "arse""  An Aussie, I'd say, aye?

Anyway, you totally lost me on Page 2 with Angie saying she'd "take a shit in the corner of a hotel room".  That's not funny.  It doesn't make Angie a character I want anything to do with...at all.

Sorry, but congrats on completing this OWC.

Hi, Yohn

Don't believe we've conversed much, but IMPOSTER received my third vote.

Your dialog between characters was excellent.
I completely enjoyed it and hope to see more of your work in the future.

Congratulations.


Ray

Hi all,

Thank you all for your comments and feedback.  I'll try to address all the points you raised.

Just a little on my thought process when writing this - I wanted to create a normal situation and basically have it all go horrible within the space of the script.  My theory on this was that true horror happens out of the blue, without warning, catches you off guard and confuses you.  This is what i was trying to convey.

Many of you felt the dialogue ran on too long.  I wanted the playful banter between the couple to lower your guard and give you a sense of the characters.  My thought process being that if I jumped into the horror element too soon, it wouldn't have as powerful of an effect because you hadn't spent enough time with the couple to care about them and ultimately fear for them.

Apologies about the scene numbers and lack of a FADE IN.

I agree that I have a bad habit of writing in a passive way.  This is something I need to and will knock on the head.

Quoted from Dreamscale Sorry, but I'm not going to finish this one.  Awful start with the passive first and 2nd sentence.  3rd is no gem either.

Agreed on the passive tone, but a weak excuse for not finishing the read through IMO.

Quoted from Dreamscale and then the dreaded use of the word "arse""  An Aussie, I'd say, aye?

I'm a Brit, and many of us do say 'arsed' quite a lot so I don't see what's 'dreaded' about it.

Quoted from Dreamscale Anyway, you totally lost me on Page 2 with Angie saying she'd "take a shit in the corner of a hotel room".  That's not funny.  It doesn't make Angie a character I want anything to do with...at all.

Each to their own.

Quoted from RayW Hi, Yohn Don't believe we've conversed much, but IMPOSTER received my third vote. Your dialog between characters was excellent. I completely enjoyed it and hope to see more of your work in the future. Congratulations. Ray

Cheers Ray, and congrats on your script.  Real good job mate.

I'll certainly be rewriting and resubmitting this taking onboard all the constructive feedback, and if there's any queries I missed then hopefully those will also be addressed in the rewrite.

Thanks again all.

A little random, which is not always bad.  I like the banter between the couple though I don't know that you made it very clear whether they were really full on fighting or if they were being playful.  With all the exclamations I took it as the former, though some of the lines made it feel like the latter.  Kind of confusing.

The overly repetitive, "call the cops" "no wait" scene got very redundant and really messed up the pace.  That scene needed to be way shorter and more emotional.  It was written very wooden and trite.  Why didn't she just call the first time her husband suggested it?  Because the badguy asked her not to?  It's not a very compelling reason.

I agree with the reader that said "your most interesting character's death happens off screen."  I think you also missed a good bit of gender reversing potential with that...  Angie seems like she'd be the strong woman with the "fuck this I'll do it myself" attitude.  I would have liked to see her leave her husband to stand guard over the prisoner while she went and fixed the tire, and subsequently stumbled upon the real Olly.

Hey Yohn, sorry, I didn't notice that you had responded to my feedback.

Listen, man, I'm sorry, cause I didn't mean to be a prick, but I'm sure I do come off that way quite a bit.

Everything I said is how I felt about what I read.  That line about a chick taking a shit on the floor just totally destroyed any chance this had with me.  Maybe it is just me, or maybe it's a cultural difference...I don't know.

Hope there aren't any bad feelings because of what I said and how I said it.  Sorry again.