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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    Unproduced Screenplay Discussion    Short Scripts  ›  Rotten Grim Moderators: bert
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  Author    Rotten Grim  (currently 2096 views)
Don
Posted: August 11th, 2008, 12:35pm Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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Rotten Grim by Steve Fletcherson - Short, Horror - An old women living out in the woods. She notices a falling star and makes a wish. By the end of the night she'll be wishing something different. 6 pages - pdf, format


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Zombie Sean
Posted: August 11th, 2008, 12:56pm Report to Moderator
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I remember reading these books, but I don't remember this story.

You have a lot of lines spoken by the same character but separated into different dialogues (If that makes sense). You have Hubbard say:

GRANNY HUBBARD If i could wish a wish..
GRANNY HUBBARD Please a visitor just this once

And then there's more when Grim speaks.

You also have a continuity of no ending punctuation, double spaces, and some times no spaces in between words.

Some times I'm fans of book adaptations, but this one didn't work for me because we don't know who the Grim is (besides knowing he's a demon) and the lady disappears just as fast as she was introduced to us. You need to go deeper in with the story and pretty much bring us a newer story. That's what they did with the movie "21" and other books (I don't read any of the books that are made into movies, but I hear people say they completely change the book when it comes to making the movie).

Sean
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GoreGore84
Posted: August 11th, 2008, 10:10pm Report to Moderator
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I don't understand what you mean by  "lot of lines spoken by the same character but separated into different dialogues".I used celtx when it came to formatting. SPOILER: I felt at the end when one the campers finds the skull of the demon that if i wanted i could write a full feature from that. Show the origins of the creature. This was meant to be short as was the story it was loosely based from. You understand she's a lonely woman whom just wants someone to visit,but gets something far more then she would expect.I could have really shown how lonely she was. But i figured she's living in the woods by herself. Simply put the story is that of an old woman who lives in a cabin in the woods. She notices a shooting star one night and wishes for a visitor. She goes to bed and is awaken by noise from her chimney. She finds out that it's a creature and ends up dead. The original story ending with a jump scare. I opt for more of gruesome ending.

Thanks for the input,but I feel that besides really showing how lonely the old woman is there's not much i could work with. As for where the rotten grim came from. Well i was hoping that when you read of the shooting star to realize it was no shooting star. The creature is not of this world ,get it?
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Zombie Sean
Posted: August 11th, 2008, 10:37pm Report to Moderator
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Quoted from GoreGore84
I don't understand what you mean by  "lot of lines spoken by the same character but separated into different dialogues".I used celtx when it came to formatting.


Like, you'd have one line of dialogue spoken by a character, then immediately after that line is spoken, another line is spoken by the same character, when both the lines can be merged into one. Though, that may be a celtx problem, but I've never used it before.


Quoted Text
SPOILER: I felt at the end when one the campers finds the skull of the demon that if i wanted i could write a full feature from that. Show the origins of the creature. This was meant to be short as was the story it was loosely based from. You understand she's a lonely woman whom just wants someone to visit,but gets something far more then she would expect.I could have really shown how lonely she was. But i figured she's living in the woods by herself. Simply put the story is that of an old woman who lives in a cabin in the woods. She notices a shooting star one night and wishes for a visitor. She goes to bed and is awaken by noise from her chimney. She finds out that it's a creature and ends up dead. The original story ending with a jump scare. I opt for more of gruesome ending.


I understand what the story is. It's just that whenever you write a screenplay that's an adaptation of a book or short story, you usually flesh it out a lot more, and focus on each character, develop the plot some more, add in more problems, or change the entire story up but still have similarities from the book. "Wristcutters: A Love Story" was an adaptation of a short story, and they were able to flesh it out into an hour and a half long movie. Same with "The Signal," an adaptation of a short story.

I don't think ending it with a gruesome ending and adding campers at the end finding some skull that appears out of nowhere that isn't human really adds on to the story but actually ends it with more questions.

What you need to do is show more of the woman living alone than you already have. Maybe, say, she has to walk five or so miles to get to the nearest town or store to get food, or that she's a hardcore old woman and hunts for her own food and makes her own fire and makes her own clothes, etc. Just because we see a cabin in the middle of the woods doesn't mean she's alone and cut off from civilization. You could even have a scene where she goes to the store, and talks to a cashier, probably about how she's thinking about moving closer to the town so she can feel more accepted into the community or something, I don't know, I'm just pulling something out of my head.


Quoted Text
Thanks for the input,but I feel that besides really showing how lonely the old woman is there's not much i could work with. As for where the rotten grim came from. Well i was hoping that when you read of the shooting star to realize it was no shooting star. The creature is not of this world ,get it?


Well, see, that just adds so much more to the story. Without that information you just gave me about the Rotten Grim and where it came from, I figured that her wish came true, but it wasn't something she expected. But now that you say that it's an alien asteroid holding an alien creature, we now know what it is, instead of having you make us believe it's a demon, as the Grim informed us in the script.

But if you do plan on writing this as a feature script using what you have now as the beginning, it will become much better.

You need to flesh out the woman more, show us that she's so lonely that she's just begging for at least on visitor, that she's on her own and practically cut off from civilization. Then she dies by a mysterious creature that's running amok in the woods, and the town citizens, about five or ten miles away from where the old woman lives, have to find the creature and kill it before it takes over the world or whatever. Or the campers we see after the woman is killed meet up with their fellow campers who are lost with them, and they begin to get picked off one by one and must fight the creature before they die.

These are just ideas/suggestions that might help you flesh out this story and make it a feature. I'm sorry if you find any of my comments harsh in any way, but I hope this has helped you in any way, also.

Sean

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Zombie Sean  -  August 13th, 2008, 12:17pm
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GoreGore84
Posted: August 12th, 2008, 12:10am Report to Moderator
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No,the comments aren't harsh. As a writer you gotta deal with that sort of thing. Well some don't want to, but it should be expected.Thanks for the ideas. You got the wheel a turnin for sure. I'm working on adapting another story,"Brown suit". It's going be a  full feature and you can check out it the "work in progress " section. Run Red is the working title.Again thanks for the comments.
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jayrex
Posted: August 14th, 2008, 3:10pm Report to Moderator
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I agree with Sean.  I know I need to do work on my dialogue in my stuff.  But I was confused when I read lines like "Empty da me".  I take it this is ghetto slang?

And confused with the following:

CAMPER#2
Yeah,i think we should get outta
these woods
The campers walks off back into the cover of the woods.

Why would someone propose getting out of the woods and then go into the woods for safety?

I get that this old lady was alone and that these campers wanted shelter.  But nothing really happens.

I've never heard about these stories that Sean mentions from where you've got the idea from, but this looks like a non-starter.

If you rework this, I'll read it again.  But looks like it should be longer with more depth.

All the best with your writing

Javier


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bobtheballa
Posted: August 14th, 2008, 9:18pm Report to Moderator
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I think Sean hit the nail on the head as far as how to flesh out this story.

Right now it's a decent introduction to a horror story, but as it stands right now it's pretty flat. Let's see more of the Rotten Grim terrorizing people, learn a little more about he and his past, and definitely do a little more to emphasize how lonely and isolated Granny Hubbard is. If done effectively, it should set an equally desolate mood when the campers are being hunted by Grim that will build suspense.

Keep at it!
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Dreamscale
Posted: August 14th, 2008, 9:41pm Report to Moderator
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Hey Steve, just got to this.  Sean is exactly right in what he said.

Your dialogue lines don't make sense the way they are, first of all.  If theame person is speaking, and you don't add any narrative between, there's absolutely no reason to have the character's name again.  It's incorrect.

Also, for a 6 page script, there's way too many mistakes in here.  There are multiple mistakes, typos, incorrect verbage, and grammar mistakes on every single page, and that's not acceptable.  You use "an" when you should be using "a" over and over.  Also, for some reason, many of your sentences are missing spaces at the end...they seem to run into each other although there is a period used.  Also, some lines end with no period.

Not to be harsh or mean, but the whole thing really doesn't go anywhere at all, and I definitely don't get it.  Why not name your "campers"?  The campers dialogue is very poor also.  Doesn't ring true at all.

Sorry for the bad news but this thing realy needs some work and editing.

Hope you take this as contructive criticism, cause that's what I'm trying to do...just help and point some obvious msitakes out.
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GoreGore84
Posted: August 15th, 2008, 4:51am Report to Moderator
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Ok,first off i don't take anything said to be harsh. "The campers dialogue is very poor also.  Doesn't ring true at all". how so? the line:empty da mean,well that meant empty to me. it's not ghetto slang.Why did they walk back into the woods? Their surrounded by woods,so they have to go back in to get out. I should have mentioned, they walked pass the cabin and into the woods(finding a way out). I understand the grammar mistakes,the an when it should be a.

I at the time,didn't feel to name the campers. I normally don't title characters, so generic . Now that i think back to it remember rushing a bit. I agree the script needs to be fleshed out. I have a question. What would be a page length for a short? I still want to write this out as such. I've read no more then 25 pgs? Then I've read if it's over 60 pgs it's more of the full feature. So,for anyone who knows.Big thanks
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Dreamscale
Posted: August 15th, 2008, 11:32am Report to Moderator
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As for the campers dialogue, just read it out loud and see for yourself how it sounds.  You've obviously tried to "write slang". but you've done it in an odd way, with strange spellings of simple words.  It just dosn't sound right the way it's written, IMO.  Also, the things they say don't sound beleiveable or real.

Steve, is this supposed to be something from the Brothers Grim fairy tales?  I just don't understand the story at all or what you're going for here.  Maybe because it's only 6 pages and the last 2 have to do with these campers.  I don't know what else to say, but I would like to hear what it is that is supposedly going on here.

  
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GoreGore84
Posted: August 15th, 2008, 5:47pm Report to Moderator
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I've never read or seen brothers grim. Yeah dialogue has always been a issue.I didn't say i wasn't trying to use slang,it just wasn't ghetto. The campers dialogue could be tweaked,but i don't think it's all that bad. I understand that this short is too short. I've started writing an outline and looking to write it out to about 35-50 pages. Am guessing when you say i spelled simple works out in slang like cha instead of you? I don't know maybe I'll just still to proper speaking,that way all will get it. When the actor or actress reads their lines they can just put there touch to them.
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Dreamscale
Posted: August 15th, 2008, 5:57pm Report to Moderator
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Yeah, you could use "proper English" but that would sound too formal, most likely.  There ways to use slang, but I just don't think the spellings you chose were appropriate.  Obviously, everyone says things differently,a dn there aren't really any rights or worns, interms of actual dialogue.  I mean people salughter the English language all the time.  I think it's like everything else, in that you just need to write in a way that the reader understands what it is you're going for.  ANd in this case, many of the words didn't "read" right to me.

So Steve, can you fill me in on what is supposedly going on in this story?  I just don't get it.  I don't know what happened to the old lady or to Grim.  And I don't understand that relevance of the campers either.  Fill me in, bud.
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GoreGore84
Posted: August 16th, 2008, 7:08am Report to Moderator
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the old lady was given more then she expected. She died a horrible death at the end by the hands of the grim. The campers were more of a break,like we heard the old lady scream but didn't see what happened to her(till the end). At first i was going to have her be on the verge of death,but the campers happen to find her. While taking her to safety they come apond the rotten grim(The name came to me sometime ago). They have to find away to make it out of the woods,but it's easy said then done. Plain and simple i rushed the script. Mistakes were made and am gonna try and learn from those mistakes.
The rotten grim origins ,well there not known. All that is know is that he falls down in pieces from the chimney and regenerates to form the massive creature.  This is why simply scripts is such a good site. You have those who will tell you the faults of your script. When you work on a script for days or months ,just need a pair of fresh eyes.
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Dreamscale
Posted: August 16th, 2008, 12:06pm Report to Moderator
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Sounds good bud.

What was the skull all about that the campers found?  I thought it was possibly Grim's, but I guess I was wrong.

I would definitely flesh it out a bit so the audience knows what's going on.
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GoreGore84
Posted: August 16th, 2008, 1:57pm Report to Moderator
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it was the rotten grim's. I didn't write that it was, so i can see the confusion.
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