The Poem Contest- The Capture of Mosier von Kidnapper by Aray Jackson - Short, Comedy - A short comedy about a lighthearted national poetry slam... or so we thought. Feared criminal and villain, Mosier von Kidnapper, is on the loose again, and this time, he's after the poetry slam trophy. Will he succeed? 21 pages - pdf format

New writer interested in feedback on this work, please be nice

I liked this, probably for all the wrong reasons. It is CAMPY to the point where I need to type CAMPY in all caps. It reminded me of a twenty minute movie I produced in high school on super-8 film.

Your characters were caricatures of themselves at times. At other times, they seemed like escapees from videos posted on Twitch produced by OTK.

Betty could be played by Extra Emily. That’s what came to mind whenever I read her part. Precious reminded me of Marisnot12 at times with her eye rolling. I couldn’t quite place the other characters. They were creatively distinct with original names. The smug Professor Papadopoulos was annoying with his mock Shakespearean accent. Mosier von Kidnapper was a running joke as was Western Guy.

You obviously set out to write something ridiculous and CAMPY and you succeeded. There are a couple of things I would have done differently from a story perspective. For one, I would have added a character that acted like Lil Tay. The other thing I would have done differently would be to have Western Guy start every appearance with, “Howdy, I’m Western Guy.” and introduce himself like he had absolutely no short-term recall of the other characters he met. You almost do that which is why I thought of it. These are my dumb suggestions. You have a fun project as it is.

Now for the big problem to fix: This script is oblivious to the standard format for scripts. You need to fix that before anybody will take your work seriously, here or anywhere. It’s like walking into a four-star restaurant looking like you crawled out of a flooded sewer. You will never be given a table and you will be asked to leave. Look at a few of the other scripts posted here. Most of them are done right. Your script absolutely needs to look that. Consider it a jacket and tie for your script.

You can look up the settings for margins, tabs, title page, page numbering, etc., and set your document accordingly, or you can use software specifically for script writing. It will format all these things for you correctly while you focus on your story. There are some low-cost and some free programs available if you are not quite sure if you are committed to writing scripts. They are easy to learn.

This script didn’t exactly make me laugh, but it did make me smile. Thanks to Betty, I have a craving for ice cream. Yay!