Wesley by Anita Bath - Short, Family Horror - An autistic boy breaks his life-long silence with a warning -- something bad is going to happen at the Halloween Festival. - pdf, format

This story is definitely interesting, but I don't think the writer delivered.  Using an autistic boy as the focal character worked, but you didn't explain how he did what he did in the story.  Sometimes an explanation isn't needed in supernatural stories, but this story needed the explanation.

Your ending made no sense to me and was completely out of left field.

My biggest question is why a town Halloween festival would include the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  I can't, for the life of me, figure this out.


Phil

POSSIBLE SPOILERS




Ok, first of all, I liked the concept behind this. Up until the ending, it was well written and there was a real sense of it building up to a good payoff.
But, like Phil ablove, I couldn't see the point of the ending. Did the writer run out of pages or time? Ok, we know there's an unseen presence lurking behind it all but the appearance at the end doesn't tie things up.

The subject matter itself is defintely not family horror. Sure, older kids could read it but there is no comedy at all( people will argue that the theme isn't exactly comedic for this OWC but I'll argue back that family horror should have some fun bits).
So in that regard, you didn't really fulfill the requirements.
But i liked the actual writing and format is good too. this would work a stand alone short, with some revision.
Cheers

PS do we vote on these ones, Don? I can't see the rating stars?

This feels like a mixture of The Grudge and The Ring. The little autistic (creepy) boy and his invisible friend. The invisible friend reminded me of the boy from the grudge.

I didn’t feel as though the backstory w/the boy, his mom, and the cop were developed. The cop should have been the boy’s father, but reluctant to be in the boy’s life because he is autistic.

The kid’s prophecy did not come true and was not explained how it really related to anything.

As it was, if felt like the story was loose and unconnected.

However, it did creep me out a little bit, which is tough to do.
I really think this could be better, much much better. You have some nice creepy undertones, you just need to connect them. Make sense out of the characters’ actions and give this a strong plot and you have an awesome story.

-electricsatori

This is very, very odd.  It's indeed set at a Halloween festival, but I don't know about the family horror...maybe, maybe not.

But, let's get to the Italian themed Halloween festival...WTF?  Why?  Only thing I can think of is that the story already had this element in it and some things were changed to make it fit the challenge.  Like Phil said, there just isn't any other explanation.

A few problems...big blocks of text.  Most of your passages are 4 lines long.  4 lines is fine, but you've gone overboard here, making it a clunky read.  You've also got a number of 5 liners, which are too long, and starting things off this way is a bad way to begin.

Naming the cop Officer Braun is a mistake, as it reads very clunky again.  We know his name is Connor, so you should have used this name instead, as writing "Officer Braun" (and reading it) over and over, didn't work.

Story-wise, it's not bad, but it ends so lamely, that it's a real downer.  By "ends" I mean both the finale at the festival as well as the final shot.

Good effort, but needs some serious work and an explanation about the Italian festival...I'm dying to hear this...

I gulped down your story in five minutes. Needless to say I loved it.
Since I understood it so well I feel like it deserves the explanation... since I know you can't go explaining yourself.

This all does not happen in Italy - they replicated Eithel tower, Tower of Piza.... the way they did in Disneyland/Epcot.

The boy Wesley sees in the end (the same boy the little girl saw on the Tower of Piza) is perhaps DEATH. Which came for officer Braun. Whatever it is, it made me think... Thinking lead to liking, actually loving.

Very creepy! Congrats on that! And scary, very scary...
Reminds Shining, which is a good thing.

The premise is very original, I think.

I haven't even missed the comedy, not that I think it's necessary to have a comedy elements, but when the entry is dry and not gripping as much you want some laughs... to reimburse for the time ... - anyway, didn't even miss the comedy in this one.

I understand that it doesn't actaully take place in Italy, but why in the world would a little local Halloween festival build replicas of The Tower of Pisa and the Eiffel Tower (which is in Paris, France, BTW)? How are those things Halloween themed, and what place do they serve in here?

Why is some ghost boy coming for Officer Braun?  Oficer Braun is only there to save Wesley, right?

Back to the towers...how big were they?  What did they weigh?  The big issue is that even though the leaning tower of Pisa did in fact lean all the way over, it didn't even do any damage, even though it landed on someone.  This equates to anti-climatic, in a big way.

Hi Jeff,

If you're asking me - I don't know the answers, really, I haven't written this one. I promise you that. I just really liked this one.

I would imagine people were not standing close to those if the tower have not smashed a whole lot. Perhaps there were protective signs or something. Wesley got close...

But I see why you have those questions. I don't, though. didn't take me long to visualise, actually.

Sorry, Khamanna, in your post, you said, "since I understood it so well...".  I took this to mean that you either wrote it or had inside info from the actual writer.

I don't mean to tear this down, I was just really curious about the towers.

Take care.

Huh? I don't get the kid with the black eyes at the ending. Is he like a Damien character? Some of the descriptions are way overblown and don't do anything to bring the story forward; such as the munching on halloween candy. We know it's halloween from the festival and the pumpkin carving.  If the LITTLE GIRL on pg 10 is Clover, as hinted in the dialogue, suggest introducing her as such, especially since she has already been mentioned as a playmate for Wesley. Story is OK, but have no idea what made the Tower collapse...Was it mind power? Is that how he got the bowl of candy down from the refridgerator? Was it that boy that Clover saw (in which case he would need to be introduced as a character at that point?) Was he the same boy that was standing next to the hospital bed? A bit confusing, but the core of the story I think is good.

The idea of an autistic kid as some sort of medium or harbinger of doom has been done before, and it does seem like you did some research on the condition (the blocks lining up, etc.)...In the US, this neurological disability affects 1 in 91 children in varying degrees from mild (Aspberger's Syndrome and the like) to the extreme (non-verbal and incapacitated). Suggest looking at http://www.nationalautismassociation.org or pm me if anyone would like more information.

Agree with other reviewers about the towers...Perhaps it was an International Halloween Festival? That's the impression I got.

Quoted from electricsatori The cop should have been the boy’s father, but reluctant to be in the boy’s life because he is autistic.

Sad, but true. A lot of men bolt when their kid's get the diagnosis, as it not only affects the child, but the course of life for the entire family as well. Agree with Electric that having Braun being involved with Wesley would add a deeper dimension to the story and the characters.

I don't really get where the Leaning Tower came from, either.  But overall, I thought it was a good read.  A little comedy may have lightened it up a bit.  It would have read a little smoother if the writer had used the officer's first name.  Good effort.

I liked this one. The bits where Wesley was playing with his invisible friend were good. The tic-tac-toe game was esp. cool. One description was kind of funny Dr. Tanaka.., slight Asian man.., as opposed to a full Asian man?

I suspect that the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Eiffel Tower were supposed to the towers Wesley was building in the beginning of the story? Weird.

Gary

Hey, I really liked this story. It's creepy with things suddenly appearing and disappearing, kinda like The Sixth Sense.

The pacing is good throughout. I can feel the tension about the Pisa Tower going to fall down. The writing is clear as well.

One thing that I am not too crazy about is the ending. I mean, it does provides some closure that there is actually a ghost doing the deed, but then what happens? This feels more like the beginning of something else.

But overall, I really enjoyed it. Thanks.

Autism is one of the least understood maladies there is.  People can hypothesize al lthey want about what goes on in the mind of an autistic person, but no one really knows.  That in itself lays a good foundation for a good creepy Halloween tale, and you take full advantage of it.  Very good story.  Very good.

Sorry, but I couldn't get into this one. One of the main problems I found were your descriptions. You had big blocks of text for nearly every description and I found it hard to read and it clogs up the whole page. I thought the characters you made were decent and that the story was fairly okay; but I just wasn't getting into, and maybe that's not your fault.

I'll join the camp in saying that I really, really don't get the ending. It seemed so random and I don't think it really fitted the story.

There were some promises of something good here, but I think the descriptions definitely need a bit of work. Good luck in your future projects, I'm looking forward to seeing how they turn out.

I was into this story, then you lost me at the end.  You managed to build an ominous undertone quickly and kept building it.  The climax, however, just seemed so bizarre.  I've never heard of a local Halloween festival that had the kind of bucks to construct such massive structures.  That scene between the two construction workers is a dead giveaway of what is going to happen, BTW.  As for the odd things happening around Wesley, I guessed pretty quickly that he had some sort of mischievous ghost following him along, so the boy's appearance at the end didn't come as a surprise.  My only question would be, did only Wesley see him, or could his Mom and the cop also see him at that point?

Despite some large, chunky paragraphs, I think your sentences were clean and concise.  The story moved right along.  This was a solid effort.

I liked this one a lot - well written, creepy, unusual characters, nicely structured.

The ending was a bit anti-climatic - the tower really needed to kill a few people after this build up! And I am not sure why Wesley went to the Festival if he was so afraid of going, but these are minor quibbles that could be ironed out in a longer rewrite.

Best one I've read yet.

Autistic boy - building blocks - portents. Hmm can't quite remember the TV series this was on, but in it the boy builds a replica of something, so I suppose this is a little different in that he speaks.

Nicely written and I wasn't too worried about the  around the world theme at the festival.

Sorry. I can't get over the fact that I've seen something very close to this before. When I pin it down, I'll edit this and stick any links I find to it. Hopefully you'll be able to see what I mean.

Someone pointed out that another entry was very similar to a tv show episode - in this age of media saturation it is not surprising that we absorb ideas and images from other tv shows and films, whether consciously or not.

When most of the ideas out there have already been saturated, you're left putting your own spin on an old idea. =)

Yeah. Absolutely agree with the last two comments. Everythings been done to some extent. My biggest problem with the scene I mentioned, was that it was a little too close for comfort for me and distracted from my reading of what was otherwise a fine script.

I was in no way implying it was a deliberate rip-off

There's an old saying about writers -

All you need to be a good writer is an original idea.

But it does not have to be your original idea!

This one had a really good story, but like some people said, the writer did not execute some of it well. Especially the ending. That was really out of the blue. The part where the tower falls was suspenseful as well, but it just happened so quickly and ended so quickly (with the quick cut to the hospital) just made all that suspense go to waste. I think that the officer should have died (since he said that someone is going to die), and that Wesley should have seen the boy standing there. It probably would have made it look like Wesley was following the boys orders or something, being the trap set for the officer, so that when he pushed Wesley out of the way, the officer gets crushed and killed. But that's a bit violent for a family horror (well, someone can die, I guess. But not that violently).

Other than that, writing was good, dialogue was good (some times), but overall, not executed as well as it should have been. Good story, though!

Sean

I was drawn into this story.  I enjoyed reading it at first but was left with nothing when it was over.  

Does this qualify for a family horror...my gut feeling is, just because there is a young boy in the story is not enough to justify it being a kid/family show.  

I personally hate it when a child is portrayed as having an evil or dark side because it is so creepy and unnatural.  I do understand that Wesley is not evil or dark...but the boy that follows him, plays games and eats candy his mother doesn't want him to eat before dinner, is.

Someone did die at the festival...it was the boy that Wesley saw in the hospital room...but there's no resolution here for me...no lesson learned.

Morgan  

I want to thank everyone who took the time to read and review Wesley.  I drew my inspiration from my 9-year-old autistic nephew.  He was non-verbal until he was nearly 4 and in that time, I often wondered what was going on inside his head.  Could he understand what was going on around him?  Was there a verbal child trapped inside,  screaming to get out?  Of course, I didn't have the page count to expand that deeply into it, but I hope to somehow work this into a feature length script in the future.  

I apologize about the confusion with the Leaning Tower.  Whoever made mention of Disneyworld and the different country themes, that's kind of what I was going for.  However, when I read it back it sounded really lame so I removed all references to the Leaning Tower and replaced it with just a big creepy haunted house type building.  Then I stupidly submitted the wrong draft.  It wasn't until I was reading the feedback and noticed the reference to the Leaning Tower that I realized I had screwed up.

Again, thank you all for the feedback

Interesting.  I think this would have been much better without the Pisa and Eiffel towers.  That's what a time rush will do you to you...make you screw up!

Good effort in this tough OWC!

I have a suggestion for you:

don't go back to a haunted house, that will suck originality out of it. Wesley is creeped out when he sees a haunted house - that's no news, every kid is... well, almost every...

I'd keep the leaning tower of Pisa but instead of Eithel Tower would have let's say Stonehenge - blocks of stone almost hanging in the air - any creepy construction will do. Empasize that it's not different country theme but a weird building theme, "inclined to fall" buildings theme...

building/construction/man made or not...

This was a curious story. It did capture my interest, but I found it rather odd that you used "The Leaning Tower of Pisa" in it for a Halloween deal. What did it mean? I'd almost think that something there is real or you wouldn't have written it.

Anyways, that part didn't jive for me. If you had all sorts of oddities, it would work, but that alone I think makes it miss the mark.

The ending seemed forced to me with the strange boy/evil twin ghost showing up all of a sudden. I know what you were going for, but you should have probably shown him in the boy's pov earlier on.

This is definitely a memorable one. One of the most unique entries I'd say.

Sandra

About The Leaning Tower - seems like I'm outnumbered.

Yet it's the creepiest tower ever... I think

I appreciate your enthusiasm, khamanna  

Sandra, I honestly don't know what possessed me to use it to begin with.  Like I said, I took it out but then submitted the wrong draft.  I didn't realize it would distract so many from liking the story.  I would have liked to have seen how the script would have been received had I not screwed up.

Repost it, dream!  I'll give it a look for sure...

Quoted from screen_dreamer I appreciate your enthusiasm, khamanna   Sandra, I honestly don't know what possessed me to use it to begin with.  Like I said, I took it out but then submitted the wrong draft.  I didn't realize it would distract so many from liking the story.  I would have liked to have seen how the script would have been received had I not screwed up.

I think that maybe you should keep it and "make" it work. If I was you, I'd go and figure out in your own mind, what it means "to you".

Everything happens for a reason, I say. So why?

I enjoyed this though. And also the title. The name just really works I think. Just that little bit of "unusual" that would make for an unusual child.

Sandra