The Wandering Bus by Robert Quarles - Short - A young girl learns about the wandering bus from a stranger after she runs away from home. - pdf, format

Wandering bus

like the idea already. the longline works for me as well.

SPOILERS

Five characters in the first half page - bit too many for my taste

always like sounds like SCREECH - on a very wet road! - in reality they probably would use this sound effect

Now that they die, i think you could avoid the number of characters and their intro's

EXT. COBBLED STREET - how many of those are there? brit writer?

wow - now 1969 - this is a time traveller -not that thats bad, just saying

There is something predictable in the concept, but i liked it. I like the party bus for the lost soul, the person running away. A kind of false dawn for those seeking to escape from a real hell. But, can you get away in time? Can you call it a day when you need to?

Liked it.

As I go...

Opening Slug is poor - LARGE HOUSE?  Really?  So many better ways to start...

Opening passage is cliche and using "house" in your opening line is another poor choice.

No ages whatsoever for these 5 Revellers?  Absolutely no reason not to give some indication as to how old these folks are.

Last passage, starting with Claude is not correctly broken up...not even close.  Probably should be 3 separate passages, in reality.

"Claude, brushes..." - why is there a comma here?  Really?

Page 2 - Hmmm, you use "LARGE HOUSE" again as your Slug, and your action line is, "The bus roars down the road." - How is this even remotely set within that Slug?

Comma use throughout is very, very poor.  Another writer who needs to read up on punctuation.  No excuse for some of these mistakes...

Page 3 - "MODERN HOUSE" - Really?

"It's now present day." - And I'm now gone.  C'mon...seriously?  You used a SUPER correctly in your intro, why now would you write this and not use another SUPER?

Seriously...unreal.

Sorry, I'm out and irritated.

A lot of characters introduced at once, separate them into their own paragraphs starting with their names, a lot better than what you have right now.

Not entirely sure if I can back Jen on the ending. In what way does it sound like a fairy tale? Sounds like a nightmare really. There was this script on the last Black List where a woman finds she can go to this sitcom-like world at will, where everything's right and it pales in comparison to her real shitty life. I think you were trying to do something similar here but it just didn't work. There's a good idea here, but the audience needs be behind the character decisions and understand their reasoning. Not bad, could be better.

Oooo.  I rather like this one.  

IMHO, it does need a bit of tightening.  At first, the date of the original bus threw me for a loop: were there buses and cars back then?  (Answer per Wikipedia - yes, there were.)  But that's my own historical ignorance, and not a negative against the script.

The number of characters and vantage point switches threw me as well.  IE: from the bus, to Olivia to Jenna.  But as everything merged, the story made sense and it wasn't as much as issue.

Since it's an OWC, the writing could do with a bit of a polish to bring it to full potential.  Get rid of passive sentences, etc.  But definitely nice job. Haunting.

This is a nice story. It's easy to folow, to understand. It's got a great ending.

I iked the way you moved from Olivia to Jenna and then back to Jenna again.

Maybe you could tell us more about Jenna and her probem. A bit more to make us root for her.

You kept me glued to the screen. The only thing is - you introduced far too many characters at the beginning at once. Actually the only ones you need are Hilda, Claude and Olivia at the beginning. There are more than that. Marcella and Dean... - do you need these two.

You can say there are five but introduce only the ones that we see at the end as well - Hilda and Claude. And Olivia of course.

They say the same thing for the first 3 pages - "what a night" "shame it's over" "we should continue" "night last forever" - maybe they could say something concrete instead. Like they still have several bottles to keep them going or something
Jenna on p4 could say something concrete about her parents perhaps to make the read more interesting.

It's a really good choice and I'm glad you kept this simple. A really good read!

This is a very nice concept you've got here.  Not one I have heard before, but ripe with potential.

Once I got to the end, however, I decided that Olivia's story was way more interesting than Jenna's.

For me, I would streamline this, and just tell Olivia's story without shoe-horning in a bunch of flashbacks for Jenna's sake.  My opinion, anyway.  But I also like what you've got.  Has a nice vibe to it.

The argument between Mother and Father was pretty lame, though.  If you keep that, it really needs more meat to it.

Dug this one. Ok it needs a really good rewrite to fix the grammar and formatting probs but the cool concept - very Stephen Kingish - shines through.

I didn't Google to see what the urban legend is/was as I can't be bothered. But this stands alone anyway as a neat story.

Fix it up, tighten a few nuts and bolts and its a gem

Not to be repetitive, there is potential here. Kind of reminds me of some of the old pulp fiction shorts from Weird Tales. The hardest part would be filming the old bus... not many around now that run and are in decent shape. Finding one overgrown and in the middle of the woods would be fairly easy... and probably inhabited by somebody that's homeless.

I liked this one a lot, if only because it feels very complete. There may be room for a little more tension. Olivia discovering what’s going on by reaching into her pocket isn’t the most imaginative choice, but overall this works well. I like the emotionally ambiguous ending (I also think it ends at the exact right moment). Should we feel happy or sad for Jenna? Should we want her to go or stay? To that end you could probably make the parents more unpleasant. Not insane, just mean enough that we wouldn’t want her to be around them any more than she would.

Lastly, I think this could work better without the first two pages. Everyone always says show don’t tell, but I think this section would work better as a story told to Olivia. The day the bus “almost” crashed. Then the end would reveal what really happened. It could come as a surprise rather than something shown way before the fact. Three time jumps can also be disorienting.

Other than that, nice job.

The first two pages are pointless. Most of the time, films that do that (place a high action moment at the beginning) do so because the first act is going to be boring as hell. Yours isn't, so you don't need it. This is also just a short.

The rest of the story is pretty good though.

This one works for me, but it could be tighter.  And it might need a reason why the magic bus becomes the magic bus.  Did these folks do something that condemns them to an eternity of mindless partying.  Is Claude some demon they make a pact with?  But I accept it for what it is. And why would Olivia give Jenna the ticket when Olivia knows what it will do?  Lost decades?  

Best
Richard

One of the better titles. Makes me want to read.

I like the idea, too, although it's been around a long time, usually involving other modes of transportation.

This version? A little too wandering/meandering to be effective. A sharper focus, zeroing in on Olivia or Jenna (not both) would help.

I like the image of a busload of skeletons sitting for decades, undiscovered, in the brush.

In like this one, needs a polish and tightening but I think tit builds well and has a good tone to it.

Can see this being filmed

Good effort

Anthony

(and I think that's my last OWC review done!)

The Wandering Bus

You could have made it a bit shorter imo.

The ending was a nice, moody picture with the bus waiting for its next victim but I wished there would have been another punch before.

The band playing was a subtle, entertaining point, interesting to characterize those 1920 youth.

Decent effort, but a bit too long, partly too repetitive for my taste.

Nice story here, it circles back to itself rather nicely.  Some of the dialogue between Olivia and Jenna  didn't quite ring true for me, but that could be fixed in a rewrite.

A couple of places as well where the action seemed a little clunk: e.g., "A car battles towards them." Not sure how a car battles.

Those are minor things, and easily fixed.  This was a breeze of a read and kept me engaged the entire time, so great job here.

Gary

Needs a little work, as mentioned by most, but I actually really liked the story.

The image of the rusted bus was very eerie, even to read.

I don't know why but I can't visualise 1920's youth's as 'revellers'.  I see revellers as 1990's kids in tracksuits and bad hair lol.  Probably my own memory tainting my imagination.

Anyway, I enjoyed this greatly.

Nice bit of nostalgia. A bus that picks people up at their lowest...
I like the mental image of all the folks on the bus at the beginning. Kind of reminded me of Owen Wilson stepping back in time in "Midnight in Paris."
Betcha it'd look great onscreen.

Once again, we have a story that fails to mine the potential of its great concept.  A party bus that picks up despondent, down on their luck people, only to be revealed as a hellbound greyhound.

There's too much time travelling going on for such a short tale.  IMO, there was no need for the Olivia character.  All of those flashbacks she recollects are events that should actually be happening to Jenna.  Olivia's an "explainer" character who exists only to deliver expositional dialogue about the bus' backstory.  As a result, Jenna just sort of hangs around with not much to do but listen.  Jenna's troubles at home could've used more detail, also.

I didn't like that Olivia escapes this bus just by walking off.  Felt like this story needed a darker, more sinister ending.  Like once you step on the bus, you've sealed your fate.

Interesting story, nice execution, and in the short span I made the connections. Many tech issues with the writing (too wordy - and how does one gulp down a bottle of wine and there is more) but the story is still there so I read it. Not sure how the first bunch relates to the happy bus, so maybe it's the beginning of the wandering ghost bus?

A lot of flashbacks in such a short time made it a challenging read.

I liked the concept of the party bus and your descriptions were great particularly :

A skeleton sits in his place. She stares into his black,
hollow eyes and screams.
She jumps to her feet, scared. The bus is covered in rust
and weeds and everyone else has turned to bone.

Olivia passing over the ticket to Jenna at the end was a nice touch.
Could do with a rewrite but not much.

Good job

I do like the idea here. The execution...not so much. I like how you opened but I think you named too many characters. You can have a full bus, but only focus on two people. That would make it way less confusing. And IMO that scene went on a little long.

Pg. 3 - "present day" should not be in the narrative. It should be on it's own as a SUPER or maybe even at the end of a slug.

Telling us what Jenna is wearing doesn't help us picture her at all. Why is her outfit important to the story? Is she a 500 lb red head dressed casually? A petite Asian girl? Unless it's somehow important to the story, we don't need to know what people are wearing. it doesn't help us conjure up a mental image of the character.

"Yelling can be heard" -- not necessary. And how does Jenna feel about this yelling? She seems completely indifferent. So far, you're doing nothing to create any depth in this character. She's cardboard.

So the idea was interesting, but it needs some work in several areas.

I'm not a big fan of ghost stories but this had a nice creepy feel to it.

The writing itself could use a little work but the story worked well for me. I could picture everything clearly and the scene in the ditch really stood out. Out of the twenty odd scripts I've read, this easily makes the top five.    

Fair little story.
Little blabby whinded, but serviceable.

Writing style:
Nothing to complain about.

Dialogue:
Felt real. It was ok.

Character:
We didn't get much of a chance to know what the characters are like. None of them.

Story:
I didn't appreciate the jumping back and forth in the timeline, but it didn't confuse me at all. There was an opportunity for drama or suspense here and it was missed. Either she should have struggled to find out who she is, or she could have struggled to get out of the car. You can't build a story simply on reveals. You need conflicts. You need the characters to want different things and you need to make them struggle for it.

Overall:
Your writing is good, you just need to make your stories provoke more emotions. Fright, desperation, sadness. You have to make us feel something. No conflict, no drama. No drama, no story.