A Twist in the Tail by G.T - Short, Shark - After four shark killings disturb the locals in Miami, the authority decide to pay out a $15,000 reward to the person who kills the biggest Tiger Shark.  Joel has the upper hand in hunt but does he have more to deal with than a sixteen foot shark?   - pdf, format

I skimmed this at work which admittingly isn't the best way to read a script, however a bunch of problems jumped out at me.

What you have here is very overwritten. Early on there is an action line describing a car pulling into a driveway which is fine as an establishing shot, but you don't need to describe the break lights going on and off which you do. A lot, a lot, of the dialogue explains your story instead of showing it to us. Also most of your story is just Kurt preparing to go shark hunting. We see him buy supplies, get a boat, find a partner. All boring events that don't advance the story much at all. You could just put Kurt out on the water and we'd be fine. I mean do we need to see him wake up and eat his breakfast, tie his shoe, gas up the car, and pull into the parking lot of the harbor? That's kinda what this all seems.

This needs to be way more focused in my opinion. Especially since its a short and you only have limited pages to tell your story, every sentence counts. Even more than usual.

I like a lot of what you were trying to do here, but this story may have been too big for its britches. The writing has numerous issues. These are just a sample of things that tripped me up.

Pg. 3 “Hey Joel, how are you son? “ I’m guessing that should be Josh. And it’s not really his son so you should change that rather than risk confusing people.

Pg. 4 “Joel, this isn't a panther or a wolf, it's a killer shark” What, does this guy kill panthers in his sleep or something?

Is she caressing the hair of her dead husband’s brother, while he drinks cider?

Pg. 8 “Because Gus darted that thing inside it's stomach with an acoustic tag” And has Joel just been sitting on that information while people died?

Pg. 11 “Joel THRUSTS the fishing boat back towards the harbor” Pretty impressive, considering he’s dead.

I get the sense that this is from a newbie, possibly someone young. A lot of things were phrased in ways that led to unintentional humor, like Karen screaming, “Oh god no – no! no! no! (beat)  I’ll have to notify the police.”

I don’t think the tale you set out to tell is a bad one, but everything needs another once over; formatting, grammar, typos, character logic. If those had been dealt with properly, the bare bones story would have allowed this to be one of the stronger entries.

Congrats on entering the OWC

My advice after reading half is read a lot of screenplays. Too many mistakes took the focus away from your story.

Your formatting is almost there but there are some things that are REALLY distracting like the copyright and email address on the footer of every page, underlining your slugs is okay I guess but you need to double space.

Congrats on completing something for this OWC. I bet your next entry is much stronger.

Good story overall, and just as suspenseful as most of the other scripts happening at this OWC. The story itself is not new; low life gambler doing whatever he can to keep the bagmen off his back, but Kurt didn't end up as shark fodder so, that was refreshing. It appears as if you did some serious research as well, so kudos to you for that... unless that's just your lifestyle, LOL.

Couple of major formatting issues and a few typos that threw me for a double read, like pg. 11

"INT. FISHING BOAT - BRIDGE ROOM - LATER
Joel THRUSTS the fishing boat back towards the harbour, then slows to a stop. Ahead police cars are awaiting."

You have Joel coming back from the grave as opposed to Kurt riding this home. Best to proof your scripts tooth and nail to avoid errors like this.

I would definitely read a few more screenplays to get a feel of how the formatting is currently done. I say currently in a liberal way, because I've read so many screenplays over the years that I can honestly say it's all over the place, but there are certain immutable laws that will irritate seasoned writers, having them throw your script to the sh*tpile.

Anyways, best of luck, and congrats on getting a script in for this OWC!

I think that title has been overused. I do remember a story about Jeffrey Archer erm, borrowing a story idea with this. Getting a headache now. I promise I'll never use that name again.

Lot of telling instead of showing going on.

The dialogue sounds a bit on the nose. A bit too wooden too. The spacing looks narrowed. Too many words and just not enough pages.

I don't know if you can tell yet but this isn't one of my favourites.

A Socrates style moment on page five. Excuse me, where do you keep the poisons? And what about the axes? Oh, I could also do with some bin liners. And a couple of knuckledusters, if you have them.

I watched an episode of Skippy the Bush Kangagaroo the other night. It's been a while. I quite enjoyed it. Can't think why I mentioned it...

Couple of different spellings for bait. I think the other one means angry.

Nearly fell asleep there. Now, where was I? Ah, yes...

I got to the end. I wasn't sure what happened but you explained it so that clears that up.

The story's alright. Your title implies a twist so naturally any reader would be expecting one. It's often better not to do this. Convincing and satifying twists are difficult to achieve. If the reader's expecting one then you've doubled your work.

As far as plot goes there are many other stories that have less of one than this.

There's a good few errors, many of which have been pointed out by others. If you fix all those, try and make the dialogue more natural and less expositional, and make the story less predictable it would be a good story.

Hope some of that helps.

R

Why are all the slugs underlined?

After reading the first two pages, I have no clue why you used that logline. A logline should be what your story is about. I felt like I was reading a whole different story about some guy in debt for gambling.

KAREN
Thanks for coming Joel, how are you?
JOEL
Good Karen, it's nice to see you.
*Don’t use names in dialogue so much. It’s not normal. Think about your last conversation with someone. Did you say his name at the beginning and end of each sentence?

By page four you have way exceeded the character count, and at this point in the script, I do not really care about any of them. All of them sound the same in their dialogue.

JOEL, 40's, tall with dark hair, wears a hunters cap. He stands at the doorway as the door opens.
**This type description tells me nothing about Joel. If you aren’t going to give me an idea of what Joel is really like, then you can show it in his actions or dialogue, but you don’t. None of the characters stand apart.

“discreet plaster on his head”  What does that mean?

Now back to Kurt and the shopkeeper. Talking back and forth. I’m sorry but this is as far as I go with this one. Keep working ...good on you for getting an entry in for the one week challenge.

Gamblers are risky peeps to have as protags, especially when you use loan sharks as a the story's backbone. And 99% of the time, it just doesn't work since nobody can connect with the gambler because we just see him as stupid for losing so much. Not liking this so far, too cliche and unimaginative.

Is this copyrighted? I think you might need to put it there another 20 times in case I forget...

And you have more than four characters? If we seriously don't see any real sharks, you've literally broken the two simple rules that were there. You can't be a rogue loanshark, so you've already condemned yourself to a bashing. Moving on...

"KAREN
Do you want anything else Joel?
JOEL
No Karen, that was lovely thank you." This screams amateur for a variety of reasons. I hope you can figure them out yourself.

Gus died? Thanks for telling me. Strange though, I don't seem to care. Too on the nose, gotta avoid stuff like this. If it's important, we'll find it out naturally.

Thanks Joel for explaining how he died. I really needed that.

That next line of action is so very awkward.

Good old Karen, stating the important stuff. Officials are paying for a bounty on a shark? Where's Green Peace? That's just cruel, what's wrong with these people? Why encourage random people to kill sharks? I really hope we see protesters since I don't buy any of this.

Josh is useless and just there for an emotional backbone, but because it's so obvious, I roll my eyes rather than actually care for the family. Manipulative more than anything.

Nobody finds it strange that there are bounties over animals? Christ, even a lowly Shop keeper is into this. Is this the wild west? Or is that an American thing?

You can't have two characters with the same name, change it.

You make it out as if Miami is a small town where everybody knows each other...

Wouldn't the shark just shit out the GPS?

He's a navy seal? And that gives him license to kill without mercy or emotion? If he's so calm and precise, how is he an addict then?

"Karen choking up, bursts out uncontrollably, she slides down the kitchen wall and sits onto the floor holding the phone." Is Karen's middle name Melo, last name Drama?

"Smiling he tucks in, eating the fish -- it tastes good." Does it also smell good?

I have no clue what happened at the end there. Safe to say I wasn't a fan of this. Needs work unfortunately. Good luck!

Code Kurt falls back onto his car bleeding from the head, then feels a DEEP hook penetrate into his stomach. He slides to the ground coughing.

Is he being raped?

This one needs quite a bit of work. As rendevous pointed out though, if you clean up the dialogue, tighten those action lines and figure out the story, you could be onto something here. Nice try.

I don't want to be mean.  It's blatantly obvious that this is a new writer, most likely very young, who erally doesn't know how to do this yet.

In all honesty, I always wonder why someone would attempt an OWC, when they're not comfortable with the craft yet, but it takes some balls, so kudos there.

As other have pointed out, there are mistakes of all kinds, everywhere, but what really stands out is the pisser quality dialogue and inane action.

I hope you do your share of reading and commenting, because you have much to learn, my friend.

Congrats on entering.

I liked the story a lot.

I would suggest removing the scene where Joel buys the puffer fish. Get to the meat of the story sooner and just include a line somewhere in the next scene that he purchased them.

The biggest problem here is the formatting and writing itself. There are a lot of "-ing" words, and some of the slugs are just incorrect. INT. DOCK? Unless the dock is indoors, it should still be EXT.

With a solid, diligent rewrite, this could be very good.

Congrats on successfully completing the challenge!

Chris

Thanks for all of the posts - this is good feedback.  Yes I am a new writer and a storyteller - I have been learning script writing for the last 6 months, so bang on there - I am also from the UK so yank dialogue is not that convincing.

I think I will rewrite this just to get it right and start practising a little.  I do like script writing - but I need peace from the noisy family to make proof reading effective.

I am also quite surprised I managed to get so much bloat into 12 pages - when I should have focused on the actual story - maybe more dialogue between Joel and Kurt or action would be better - another action scene with the shark would be good too.  

I spent 2 days writing this, I read the challenge on this forum on the 1st or 2nd of April, planned the story in 30 minutes and written in 4 hours - edittied A LITTLE the next day and then after spending 2 hours finding out how to actually submit it on the forum (thanks to US EST time being 4-5 hours behind the UK), I mailed it in.  

I have submitted some movies to Amazon Studios over the last 6 months - I always get decent feedback for the premise/plot and emotion, but I think I need to work on dialogue and characters...

I did the OWC just to challenge myself - I wasnt sure how many people would enter.  I don't read a lot - which is a bad thing really - I've only scanned through some of the other scripts for this competition.  I will have a good read when I get a moment - too slapdash as you can see from my writing...

I have brilliant stories to tell though, namely in espionage - government coverups - conspiracies etc.  

If anyone's interested have a read of 'The Redemption of Omega 11001' on Amazon Studios.

My writing ability is there one day and gone another - I think that script is good - hopefully not too many errors in it.  I think I need another person to proof read for me...

I have edited this part to write about the hunting of sharks - this is only fiction so take it easy, I borrowed this (as in 60-70% of all movies ever made) from the famous Jaws - in terms of hunting I am actually a young zoologist, so I love nature and animals.

"I write because I know things that test the imagination - with the brain being 99% flesh and goo housing a dance of electrical firing patterns, this is all fiction"....

Aren't we supposed to stay in the closet lurking until the big fella says otherwise?

R

The real big fella is within rendevous