The Third Bowl (A Cereal Killer Story) by Des Nnochiri - Short, Horror - Over breakfast, two friends discuss the activity of the latest serial killer not to make the headlines - and why he'll never be caught. 5 pages - pdf, format

It's good in some ways but has several problems.

First, to move our read faster, try to say the same thing with less words. You put in quite a few non-visual asides and details that aren't that important to the story. The first two paragraphs are full of those.

I like your originality, killing cereal! That's a first for me and it's quite amusing. I didn't expect Dexter to be dead all along as well, although I should have known that since it was Dexter who did all of the talking.

The ending is a problem. It doesn't resolve anything, or rather, is there really anything to resolve? This is more like a skit than a screenplay.

Anyway, it's quite a concept but needs more punch for us to get involved with the story.

SPOILERS

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Your logline gives away your plot. I wrote that before I even opened your script.

Whoa! way too much description here (Coding got in before me here) – and some of it’s unfilmable. I’m all for some clever and poetic un-filmables but this verges on writing a descriptive para for a novel.

At least try splitting up some of your descriptive paragraphs.

And I read on, and your descriptions really need tightening Des – try to say as little as possible to convey a lot, cause at the moment you're being ‘novelistic’. You should delete things like ‘luxurious drag’ and ‘multi-coloured cereal packet’.

The whole ‘pause’ – then ‘drum roll’ – descriptive line. My first reaction was: ‘not-so-cute party trick and yet, part of me thinks it’s effective, it’s breaking the ‘rules’ per se, but having said that I’ve seen similar devices used before in script writing (I think Terry Rossio gave an example of it) but in that example the character’s inner voice was used in the desc./action line and it worked very effectively.  I’m of two minds of your use of the above, however.

Be interesting to see what others think.

"The KOKO KRUNCHEEZ demon rushes straight at us." – Should be ‘at them’ – ‘meaning your two main characters’ imo.

And now, I sort of have to take away my firm conviction that I knew exactly what was going on with your log-line. Because the pivotal ‘reveal’ was not what I was expecting exactly. However, it is somewhat predictable based on the log-line words: 'and why he'll never be caught'.  That indicates to me that your character/s are 'in the know'.

Some of Dexter’s dialogue could do with some trimming. Can’t spot any obvious typos.

Think you should label this Horror/Comedy btw, cause that ending is kinda funny, with the guys arguing it out and it’s definitely has some 'off the wall' elements.

I could actually see someone filming this – in the right hands, and if they have a good grasp of ‘SFX’. It’s def. not my cup of tea at all. It’s ‘short’ schlock-horror/comedy but aimed at the right ‘juvie’ audience you could get lucky.

LC