Wasteland by Larry Hubbard - Short, Sci Fi  - After a nuclear holocaust, an outbreak of mutation occurs, and the only thing that can stop the change is the world's favorite snack. 11 pages - pdf, format

I think I know who wrote this one judging by how they write their descriptions...

But, I'll first point out the bad stuffs:

- There were some spelling mistakes.

- I felt as if your descriptions were starting to get a little repetetive when it came to who was doing what. You'd name their names several times, such as:

"Darius grabs the shotgun.

Darius walks back and sits down."

The Good:

- At first I thought this was going to end up like The Hills Have Eyes sort of, but I'm glad it wasn't, because I did not like that movie. The mutants sounded sort of like the "zombies" from 28 Days Later, except mutant.

- Bloody! Nice!

- I liked your characters, but sometimes I felt as if some of the dialogue was a little unreal or forced.


But you used popcorn, and this seemed to me like a sci-fi horror, but that is what the Alien series are like. Nice job on this.

Sean

I enjoyed this one. I pretty solid genre piece, albiet unoriginal. It was well written, had a strong gloomy atmosphere, fun action scenes, and relatively decent character. However, I think you could do better than decent. Characters give some backstory but I wanted to know more. Who are they? I know about their families but little about them. How did they meet? There's some development here but I feel flashbacks just don't cut it. Also, there's little to tell Darius from Gerald. You might want to make their personalities a little more distinct.

Also, you say the world's a wasteland. I'd like to know why everything but popcorn seems to have deteriorated. You say they'll never know why it fights off the mutation but there has to be some reason why it's so resillient. I think that will make the popcorn's presence more significant.

Anyway, I dug this one. Good job, Larry.

This one was pretty cool. Really raw and grimey feel to it. It made me wanna vomit, so good job.

SPOILERSTICS.................................................................................................

I think the flashbacks were perfectly used in here, like I said before it just added that raw/gory/horrific element to it that I think worked quite nicely. I like the action scene with the mutant too.

The thing I don't get though, is I thought the ppcorn protected them from turning, so what happened with Gerald?

Here are some typo's a spotted

Page 2 "dumps popcorn int"

     "who would have know"
page 7 "Do you think It know"

page 8 "Blood spills out/"

Overall i thoght the script was fairly good. I liked the idea and originally thought this maybe Zombie Sean with its zombie type reference. The beginning and the end are actually what i liked most strangely. I liked the starting dialogue but there a few instances when certain things were presented that sounded false, like the guy just telling about what happened, rather than it being coaxed or brought out of him. I really liked the last scene when he pumps the shot gun. Some very good stuff in this script.
                                                                 Robert

Hey.

There were lots of spelling mistakes, one that comes to mind is diner instead of dinner.  There were more, if you breeze through it a few times you'll get them.

Other than that though, it was pretty good.  My only comment was maybe find a different way for them to discover that popcorn is what keeps off the disease.  The way you had it was alright, but to me it doesn't really prove anything, you know?  Like, moaybe it was the fact that he bites his nails could be the answer with the same logic, which is not good.  Have him mention a test or something that he did.

-Tyler

First off I'm a sucker for the whole "end of the world" genre.  That being said.....

I noticed serveral typos here and there, at least one or two a page.

I was curious, what's with the red sky?  A result of the changes maybe?

Good gore and cool flashbacks.  

A decent story that got by on great gore and some cool end of the world visuals.  

It was a decent read although I felt a little bit cheated with how you approached the pop corn angle; it seemed a little bit arbitrary since you didn’t give any reasons for its healing properties.

Story wise, I think you could do better. The dilemma, choosing between two wrongs (shooting at a loved one or letting him become a monster) is always a good source of conflict, good job on that. But this dramatic device was repeated too many times; seemed like something new was needed.

Good job, despite the previous comments. Not my favorite, but much better than many others I read.

I don't much see a point in expanding these scripts for this contest as not many people return after a few weeks.

The dialogue in this at times is a little on the nose. Sometimes I just felt like they were telling us everything and even the flashbacks didn't fix that.

The descriptions are very well done and make this an enjoyable short. Since a theme is a discussion according to the dictionary you did try and use it and they did discuss a little so you get some points there.

This short feels a bit like a scene though but a scene in a very unoriginal genre (A zombie like end of the world scenario. They may not be zombies but they might as well be.)

I liked it. It was fun, entertaining and you cannot really ask more of a one week short.

Hey this was a pretty cool apocalyptic-feel story you got here.  Your descriptions were top notch and the atmosphere was clearly set to a dark mood.  I think this works very well as a short, and I think you have a very strong story here and could expand it to a feature if you wished.  With the way things are set up, I think it works as either one.

One thing I felt should have been explained more was the popcorn.  Gerald says that he's eaten popcorn all of his life, so obviously he's immune to this breakout.  But what about the others?  Does just casually eating popcorn every once in a while not keep them immune to this thing?  Just a little food for thought...HA!  get it??

Great piece!

I thought your use of popcorn and interpretation of the genre met the challenge - and you even kept the tone fairly serious.  The dark sort of apocalyptic world you created was well done. Character, story, and backstory were there. I liked it.

Good work!  

This isn't my kind of script, but i could see the time put into this. The formatting and story was good if you like that kind of thing. You get mighty thirsty eatin' popcorn, where's the beverages at?

I liked this one quite a bit. Probably one of my favorites even.

I thought you really told the story well. revealing information slowly in bits and pieces. It kept my interest up and I wanted to know more.

If this is a zombie type script, I can tell you it's the only one I have ever liked! I'm not into zombies at all even though I have written one myself.

Good Job!

Pia  

I'm not sure about this type of story, but let me ask the writer: Every good person when gets transformed into a mutant necessarely the muntant will be a good one?

So as a well written script I have to say I appreciated it so much. It shows that its writer knows write this type of story with nice skill.

good job!

Thanks for the reads everyone. Looks like I got outed pretty quick.....LOL, but someone thought I wrote Pia's script which made me feel good

I wish I had more time on this one though, seems everytime there is a OWE it's when I have only a day to pull one out, when's the next one gonna be, the same week I have my bone marrow transplant...LOL.

I hope for the next one I will have the full week to write one