Roulette by Ieuan Hale - Short, Thriller, Comedy - Two men find themselves beaten to within an inch of their lives at some remote, abandoned warehouse. A simple game of russian roulette awaits them; both to fulfill their captors twisted, voyeuristic need, and to reward one of them with the ultimate prize: freedom. 5 pages - pdf, format

Hey Ieuan.

This was a nice, quick read which I found myself getting into. I have a few things to say about it...

Page 1: Watch out for having "i" instead of "I" in your writing. I noticed you make this mistake a few times.

For me, Tony doesn't have a villain feel to him, at all. The way he talks just doesn't seem nasty at all.

Page 2: "Bobby slides the gun over to Jason, who shows none of the hesitation that he did." By HE I'm assuming you mean BOBBY... I shouldn't have to make any assumptions. I would use characters names, instead, rather than have pronouns in my writing.

"... his steely eyes masking his nervousness." Try to keep away from abstract nouns like "Nervousness." The use of abstract nouns may be a personal thing as I've seen it mentioned on threads before.

Your ending annoyed me so much! I honestly thought you were going somewhere with this one and you kind of threw it in my face. You had the whole 'element of surprise' thing going, but I just don't think it worked in this one.

Nice, easy read, with a few grammar issues. Otherwise, some solid stuff.

Keep up the writing  

Daniel

Heh heh - a nice little read, with an interesting twist...

just a couple of minor things:
p1
-"Whichever one of you lucky bastards avoids the bullet it set free. No catch." (it should be is)
-"Looks like your up first." (you're)

Reads well, but while I can clearly visualise it;  I'm not entirely convinced it would film well.  

The beginning just seems a little forced, or rushed to me; but it is probably adequate.  

Perhaps explore Tony's "twisted, voyeuristic need" a little more (attention to his dialogue and action)?

Hey guys, thanks for commenting. Some of the grammar issues are me being very careless and not reading and checking the script thoroughly before uploading. No excuse for that really. I'm glad that you liked it. As regards to the ending, i'm disappointed that it annoyed you but i suppose  i wanted that reaction where you didn't see it coming. Perhaps it's not for everyone though.

Thanks for the comments again. Appreciated.

This one got me until the end. Sorry i did't like the end in this one. But it was a great read. The dialogues were good.

Starts fast. Not sure if this good or bad. There’s no build.
There’s a good amount of typos and spelling and grammar errors.

I’d make “thick lips” more descriptive. Bleeding/bloodied, busted, scratched, cut, etc.
“Choking on his words” What?
Why does the steel gun vibrate in this guy’s mouth? Is it on batteries?
“Shaking like a leaf” Not the best way to say it.
It’s a nice little twist at the end.
Good job!
It might need a funnier “punch” in the last line of dialogue though.

Not sure what to make of this.  Was trying to second guess the outcome and I have to say I didn't figure on that, so nice twist.  Maybe have a bunch of crew laughter off camera as in a 'blooper' scene.  A total switch out in tone.  Perhaps even cut down on some of the dialogue, we could get what we need here in the tension from the characters actions, the two guys forced to play Russian roulette as this sadist type gloats over them.  I think the more tension you can build in the lead-up will make for a better pay off.  You're probably going to annoy some people with that ending, though I can't say I'm one of them.

Steve.

The end was really, really cheap.

Also, why don't Bobby and Jason just shoot Tony?  They have a loaded gun.

The whole piece didn't seemed to just float along until the shock ending.  I didn't see any "voyeuristic pleasure" in Tony's character.  Good concept, the execution needs work.

There were some grammatical issues, which most have been mentioned here. There were a couple of instances of 'i' instead of 'I'. The sentence "Tony taps him on the shoulder" doesn't have a period to end the action line. Also, not sure about mentioning Tony entering and exiting "frame". I am by no means an expert on writing, but not sure if that should be in anything but a shooting script.

The story you told had some interesting stuff to it, but all was negated by the ending. As someone pointed out earlier, it felt cheap. I like some of the description you had for most of the story, and overall this isn't bad. It really needs another rewrite to fix the grammar issues and some of the descriptions.

Hi Ieuan,

This was a fast read, and for the most part pretty well written. There are numerous typos and grammatical errors, but the main problem I had was with the ending - you'd built up some tension and mystery, and then the ending out of left field seemed like a total cop out.

I'd also have liked a little more character development for Jason and Bobby at the beginning. We're introduced to them and then go straight into the game of Russian roulette. Just having a little conversation between them (Where are they? Why them? Is there any connection between them?) before Tony enters would help make the reader care more about whether they live or die.

Also, as someone else has mentioned - why don't they just shoot Tony? Perhaps having him holding a second gun that he keeps trained on them whenever he's in the scene would eliminate this problem.

As I said, the ending wasn't really to my liking, but if you want to stick with it, it needs a little improvement. As it is, it just happens then ends abruptly. It would at least need extending a little, perhaps adding in a little more humour to make it work.