Deadly Companions by Pam Seckinpah - Short, Thriller - A deadly game of blackmail is played out in taxi. But who is playing who? - pdf, format

This story doesn't waste any time getting to the drama. I could see every double cross coming, and everything happens so quick it's hard to settle into any of these characters emotionally. This is the type of story that asks the reader to choose sides to be effective as a thriller, but I couldn't get onboard with anyone. I could see this working more as a climax in a feature.

There was a lot of plot, and the plot was pretty good...but unfortunately I just didn't care about anyone, or anything in the script.

You just need to find a way to make us empathise with one or another character in the piece,

Good effort,

Well written and nice twists and turns. Ideally you'd want more development of the characters but with ten pages that's practically impossible when there's that much going on with the script. I liked it, well done

I also just couldn't find any empathy for any of the characters. I also felt that, at times, the dialogue was unnatural and a but arrogant.
The writing is solid. Just nothing here I care about.

I'm with the others, good story here. It's well written and never really dragged.  

With stronger characters this would be much better. This one was held back by the page limit.

Not a bad effort at all.

~Zack~

Nicely paced thriller, twists and turns well too... just needs some extra work on the characters to give them some more depth, they feel a little light imho

Good effort

It's written well enough, but it's just convoluted, corny, overly dramatic, and completely unrealistic.

Dialogue is very, very poor, and makes each character come off as some kind of sock puppet.

Nothing here rings remotely true and everything is so matter of fact.  There's just way too much going on here in 9 pages, but the even sadder part is that it's all dialogue, with little to no action whatsoever.

For some reason, you chose not to give any kind of description to any of your characters, which is one BIG reason they all come off so flat and unrealistic.

Finally, no one is trapped in a cab, so in reality, it misses the mark of the challenge, on top of all the other issues going on.

This is one of those scripts that just completely misses the mark in terms of story/plot/concept.  Writing isn't the issue at all, but the grade has to be a D.  Sorry, but I have to be honest.

Hmm torn on this one. Great setup, and although the zero char descriptions didn't bother me, the dialogue did become very skimmable halfway through.

Someone mentioned a lack of tension and that was certainly true - at times everyone was downright chummy and I was waiting for them to clink champagne glasses in the cab lol.

Jeff pointed out that no one is trapped in the cab, and that is the main criteria of the challenge (so technically any that don't meet this shouldn't rate well) but it would be easy to fix this in a rewrite.

Giving it a pass but rewrite will be a consider

So much for subtext, pretty much the entire plot is talked out.

Yes there were a few twists and turns but they are made so much less effective when they are reviled through expositional dialogue.

I also personal like to know a rough age of the characters at the very least as it helps put things into perspective sometimes.

Pass from me.

Was humming along but then Daddy's company came into it and it all got a bit messy. Adding the 'trapped' in dialogue towards the end was a bit too 'tell' for the sake of the challenge too.

I suggest you rewrite and stick to the three way double cross. It's a good idea but the current version is just way too convoluted and you lost me mid-journey. Good premise just simplify it.

Too many twists for this amount of space, not enough time spent on character. The twists are lots of fun, but we gotta side with one person to really enjoy them.

Kudos for designing a twisty mystery in a week, though!

I agree with everyone else.  Lots of plot, confusing with who's doing what.  We never know why anyone agrees to do this because there is SOOOOO much plot that I don't know anything about anybody.

It's all talk, no show.  

I can safely say the page limit really hurt you.  This should have been a 30 page story, at minimum.  

One of the true tests for me is to reread the script AFTER knowing all the tricks.  The beginning falls apart since she knows who he is already.  So, she'd never say that stuff.

I thought the dialog was at best okay in places.  

Great idea, just too much to pack in such a short space.  I gave you a 5 because she was never really trapped in the taxi.  I don't recall a gun, from anyone.  I have no clue how anyone died, and those sorts of issues.

5/10

Dan

Writer,

Johnny's right -- wasted no time here. I like that. But he's also right about things being so rapid fire there's no way for the reader to have any connection to the characters at all -- especially when one is named just DRIVER -- a mistake in my book. A story like this has no chance to grow on you because it's mostly dialogue and really no emotion, nothing to latch onto. Instead of letting my mind wander a bit, I was too focused on trying to keep up with what all these characters were saying. IMO, this needs to be trimmed -- the dialogue pared to a minimum to allow these characters to breathe a little. Twists and turns are good, but not when they're just told to you through dialogue only.

Steve

Some notes.

I like plot heavy, twisty stories where people turn out to be nothing like they pretend.  In this case, it wasn't quite good enough, and the characters didn't ring true.  I'm reminded of the lesson of Occam's Razor.  Not a bad effort but the dialogue needs some work.

best
Richard