Stuck Here With You by Spirit Shot - Short - When Owen lands himself in detention, the last thing he expects to find there is romance. 7 pages - pdf, format

This wasn't too bad, although it seemed a bit cliched in my opinion. I caught a few spelling errors and some problems with the writing:

-Your openning two paragraphs weren't good. You should start with Owen geting hit in the head with the piece of paper, but instead, you told about his reaction to getting hit first, and then you explained what had happened. Write everything as it happens.

-Overal, the action paragraphs were over-detailed, and you used some unfilmables. How do we know Emma is notorious?

-OWEN
Yea, it does.

It's spelled "Yeah," but you used it again on page 6, so I'm not sure if you meant to spell it that way or not.

-EMMA
You know this one time-

Use”--“ instead of “-” to indicate that she was cut off.

-Most of the dialogue wasn't great. It wasn't very realistic at most parts, so work on that. Write how people really talk. And use better punctuation in dialogue.

-There was no "FADE OUT." at the end.

I like this. I think this would have been great with VO's or have the character break the fourth wall and talk to the audience. Also, the last VO makes this story seem as a flashback sequence. Why not add a scene at the beginning where Owen tells the story to his kid establishing this tale has already happened in the past?

Gabe

OWC rules respected:

You sure did. It was kept in the classroom only. Working with child actors could be costy, but if you'd do this as complete amateurs, you could ask the neighbour's kids to play it.

Originality:

It's a cute little story in a familiar setting, but not too creative. I think I've seen scenes like that on "Boy meets world"...

Structure:

You forgot the FADE OUT in the end and the descriptions were occasionally too detailed and could've been shortened easily. The dialogue wasn't to realistic, I'm sorry.

Overall impression:

Nice approach, that could have done with one or two proofreadings. But certainly not horrible!

Another total "meh", I'm afraid.  Very dull, uneventful, cliche filled dull, unrealistic romp.

Writing is not good.  Grammar and punctuation is not good. Sentence structure is not good.

You continually use descriptors in front of your characters - "Studious sixteen year old Owen", "the notorious sixteen year old Emma", "A nervous Owen", "a panicked Owen".  You don't want to write this way.  Reads poorly.

Gabe makes a good point about the final V.O. - as is, it makes zero sense, but if you changed this around and had Owen as a man, telling this tale to one of his kids, and then had Em,ma walk in as his wife, it would be so much more original and entertaining.  As it is now, it's completely forgettable, sorry to say.

Congrats on completing an OWC entry.

The setup for this was a sort of Breakfast Club situation, smart guy in detention with risk taking girl.

Average. The writing had lots of run on sentences. Dialog was okay. Story had a cute vibe to it. The last line VO has certainly been mentioned. It seems like a scene to a larger script.

This had some good moments, but as others have pointed out, it had a very familiar feel to it.  I think you could have taken the whole bad girl meets nice guy theme a lot further.  

Could have done a lot more with this but I liked it for what it was.  It was good spirited and while the scenario has been done before I do like it.  I think you could have added a little more since you had some extra pages to work with, but as it is it's not bad.  Not terrific but I enjoyed it as a nice read.

Good job.

Greg

This feels like a Matt Dressel, who always does a good job capturing one of those little Americana moments. It's good work, different from the suspense and horror most of us create for these challenges. I do think it's lacking something, and I'm not sure if it's a missing element, so much as the sharpening of the edges of what's here. For this to work, we need conflict and tension to build it up. We have that, but it's not sharp enough. Maybe you should start with he stealing his comic book and not giving it back. I know, it seems a little like a Lucy trick from Charlie Brown, but I don't think originality was the goal here. It needs some way to build up the tension which is ultimately broken by the kiss. Good effort, will stand up nicely if improved on rewrite.

I liked this one although it could be taken up a notch with regard to what's happening visually around them a bit. Also, I think the idea of him getting his bike stolen and that lands him in detention in the first place, might be a good way to begin. Of course, that wouldn't fit with the one location deal, but in a rewrite it might work very well. Maybe re-work the end so that this is completely present day and the beginnings of an interesting relationship between the two.

Sandra

The opener hits me wrong. A reaction to a latter described action.
Did we see the paper ball hit the kid or not?
Wish you’d specified they were the only two kids in the room.
If you did, I missed it somehow.
The script does follow the OWC guidelines.
Ack! One line on the last page? Kill some orphans, save a page.
The script has its charms, it’s a pretty good geek male fantasy.

Regards,
E.D.

This is the first time I've ever felt I had to bring up  that there was no FADE OUT or THE END.  It definitely let me confused - you need to add one.

Otherwise the script was cute.  It didn't really go anywhere particularly interesting, but it was romantic and written well enough that I'm sure it will appeal to some people.

Good work for a week.

Kind of a short take on the Breakfast Club.

You met the challenge, but I wish you had upped the stakes for the story itself.

Congrats on finishing the OWC

Cindy

Read it.

The grammar was covered earlier. No FADE OUT: The End.

Not bad. This could be the start of a movie perhapes? Easy read and the point was made.

Good job on getting it done.

Thanks for that. My thoughts;

# it kept to the rules and was different to most
# like others the others I found it cute but I didn't find much to interest me
# I thought it had potential to add dimension in a rewrite

All the best and well done for entering

Hmmmmmm........ I glanced over the other comments after I read this and I was actually surprised that so many seemed to like this.

It's definitely low budget and it definitely takes place in one location and other than the teacher at the end it only has two characters. Would be super easy to shoot, but boy would it be a dull piece of film. IMHO of course. There is absolutely nothing visual going on here. Just two people talking and talking and talking. We don't even get any descriptions of the characters...

You need to learn to think more visually. This is written for film not radio. Take your first sentence for example.

"Studious sixteen year old OWEN, raises his head from his
pile of work after being hit in the head with a paper ball."

IMO, it would read better if it was written more like this:

A paper ball flies through the air. It smacks OWEN, a studious sixteen year old in the head. He raises his head from his pile of work.

Hope this helps.

Cute. I liked the characters and had no problem with the way they spoke. The paper ball problem and lack of a fade out have already been discussed. Now, my spelling isn't perfect and apostrophe use is the worse thing about the English language but I would add two spelling mistakes that are both real pet peeves of mine: "Your" instead of "You're" and "Their"instead of "They're". You see these two dragged up on the internet all the time and they really grind my gears so that hindered my enjoyment of the story for all the wrong reasons.
The VO at the end would have been better replaced by breaking the fourth wall with Owen or having a voice over throughout Wonder Years style.
Other than that, it was nice.

As I go:

Page 1:  You're/your.
Dialogue's a little stiff starting off.  I like the concept of each line, but the execution is flavourless, if that makes sense.

Page 3:  Pretty classic joke with the failing grade/didn't show my parents bit.  The thing about this one is that the script feels pretty realistic, and that's kinda an unrealistic gag.  Even full-on nerds -- or at least, the ones I went to school with -- knew not to say things quite like that.

Page 4:  "Ticking me off"  Ticking?  At age 16?  From the lady with the attitude?

Thoughts:

Another straightforward charmer, this one less successful than the last (Where There's Smoke, is the one I read right before this) in my opinion.  The reason is that we don't really get into the characters all that much.  Nerd guy and outsider girl with an attitude, we've seen this one before, so we're really looking to you for some original defining characteristics here and I don't particularly feel like we get them. For age 16, they also seem a little tame.

Than, their's the matter of you're grammar typos.  You're killin' me!  Pet peeve.  

Anyway, the story on film would be, I'm sure, sufficiently charming with the right actors.  I think I saw the word "stakes" mentioned above -- I think that's what's missing -- and I wouldn't have minded a complication or two, some impediments for our young couple as they come together.  Sour makes the sweet sweeter, right?

Thanks for the fun read!

Cute story, but the ending makes it 'blah', I think.  Maybe a little too 'Breakfast Club' meets 'How I Met Your Mother'.

What I didn't like was I'm not exactly too sure of the students' ages.  These could easily be eight year-olds or seventeen year-olds.  Sometimes I got a grade school feeling, sometimes I got a high school feeling.

Lol.  I think Kevin mentioned this sounds like a Matt Dressel story, and that popped into my head while I was reading.  But, I just might have been concentrating too much on the boy's bike being stolen, and that's why I thought that.

Also, Khamana popped into my head for some reason while I was reading, but I don't know if she's been around or not.

Not bad, but not exactly great, either.  Average, I'd say.

- Mark

"And that's why I spent half of my junior year in detention." So what happened afterward? Where's the closure? What happened to Owen and Emma after their scandalous detention time? I smell a sequel in the works. Maybe. Good try at the OWC.

Sean

This was a cute read.  Clear and concise descriptions.  Strong characterizations.  The ending was realistic without being dramatic.  The joke was a good ender.

While I can’t say if this is my favorite, it is up on the list.  Good job.


Phil

This could be a cute story, it has potential, but I didn't find the characters to be engaging.  
Congratulations on a good effort.

I thought this was cute, but yeah, there's not enough going on. I think Emma could bring a lot more to the story than a kiss. Overall, nice work, but it could use some tweaking.

It seems that I, like many others, found this cute. Cute was certainly the first word that popped into my head while reading it. I liked both the characters which is obviously a good thing, though it did seem like they may be younger than stated.

Had the same problem with the opening paragraph as everyone else. Also for the end he could have said 'I need to get myself more detentions' instead of the voice over. Or something similar as that may be a little clearer.

A nice little read all in all.

Arty.