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When a terrifying Monster brutally attacks an Ant Hill. Two Ants take it upon themselves to seek help from the elusive gang of Grasshoppers. They must work together to defeat the undefeatable Monster; an eight year old kid.
I remember The Ant and The Grasshopper from when I was a kid. It's about the ants working hard all summer gathering food preparing for winter while the grasshopper is just out having fun all summer. When winter comes, the grasshopper has nothing to eat and wants the ant to help him out. It's supposed to be a lesson in hard work, but also about being kind to others. Not sure you did that here. You did go literal though with using actual ants and grasshoppers.
There were numerous spelling and grammar issues. I'm only going to mention one QUIET!!!! Not quite. Completely different meanings.
Your characters need to be in CAPS when they first appear. Even if it's just a kid. Also, a little overwritten, IMHO.
Story wise, it was okay. I was a little confused about this being animated or not.
Revised comment: Many, many problems, both technical and in the writing, but you do have story-telling flair. If you want to get better, practice, practice, read, read. I'm guessing you knocked this out in one sitting and gave it a cursory once-over before submitting. No crime in that. After some time passes, go back and give it a harder look.
First 2 I read... hopefully not a sign of things to come lol
I feel like every 2nd word is "Ant" lol You don't have to name your Characters "ANT" at the end. We already know they're ANTS! LIKE THIS:
In the room is a group of Ants all looking at one big Ant at the front. The big Ant is MAJOR ANT. Standing by Major Ant is STEVEN ANT. Steven Ant is huge, even bigger than Major Ant.
ok finished. Not a bad little story in the end, but the script itself needs a lot of work
Out of the gate, the logline needs work here. I love that it’s got ants and grasshoppers in it though, Kudos! A horror with insects feels original to me!
Many readers will open up a script and if it doesn’t look like a script(fade in, enough white on the page, etc) it can influence how they like/interpret your script. For me, the chunky writing just slows down the read.
This story is reminding me of the movie “A Bug’s Life” which I really liked. It isn’t really reminding me of the ‘based on’ material though.
I like Andrew as a character. I like that they call the human child the Monster.
Overall, it’s a cute take on a bug story, but I don’t think this feels like horror to me. I think the story is too drawn out and could be trimmed way down.
Grammar is a problem,. Saying ant every few words is a problem.
The biggest issue, as I see it, is there is no horror element in this story at all, not one bit. Yes the kid might be horrific to the ants but what is horrifying to the reader?
The problem with this is it doesn’t seem like a horror, more like Antz meets Bugs Life. It also is written way more like prose, like a short story, than a script and is filled with a lot of beginner type issues.
There are some wonderful visuals in here. For example, once the kid has finished smashing the hill I imagined a fantastic sequence where we transfer from the real world to an animated one and we see the decimation of the ant population from their perspective.
A cute story with lots of animated potential, but for me, it doesn’t seem to fit the parameters of this OWC and there are a lot of issues. Well done for entering and keep on writing.
-Mark
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I liked the creativity and imagination behind this. Unless the writer is good at using CGI (Or knows people who are good at using CGI), this probably won't be filmed, but the author has a lot of potential...
This story is engaging in that I wanted to see how the ants and grasshoppers joined forces to defeat the kid. The ending felt real - because that's exactly what a father would do.
Other than that - this was overwritten with things that just didn't need repeating. As others have said - there are many issues with this that can be ironed out over time. Keep working on it.
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This is a decent story, not really a horror imo, but it was interesting. Seems to be a lot of reading just to get to the end though. The overuse of the word "Ant" that Irish Eyes pointed out is a big part of that. Once we were told they were Ants it isn't necessary to continue telling us so, just makes reading tedious.
I think with a good re-write this could work, maybe not a horror though.
Not a good start. "We open on a backyard" - well...uh...yeah...that's what the Slug says, so i hope we're going to be in a backyard. Never use a semi colon in a script...it serves no purpose. Missing punctuation and too long an opening passage.
2nd passage not good again. Need to CAP all character's first intro.
3rd passage not good. Missing word, ending in an orphan.
Very poor start, sorry to say.
OK, I'm sorry, but I can tell this is going to be littered with mistakes of every kind on every line. No horror here and I highly doubt this will follow the source material and challenge of horror.
No grade, as I didn't continue but if I did, my bet would be 2 F's, sorry to say.
One point upfront: You use every line of given space. For some, this might be a good attitude, to me it's a clear dramaturgic sing, your concept does not fit in the margins properly and that you hang on your words and ideas too much rather than doing the right thing and sacrifice parts of the concept and execution to keep real control over the material as a whole. Just think about if you like to. It has proven too many times to me that I usually confront comrades with my perception on this.
Great title. Your logline got style but it's too long.
Good opening, though, do ants bleed? I'd say, clearly No, they don't.
Capitalize YOUNG KID Masses of ing verbs and forms of to be along the action lines. I cannot say it clearer, you should imo delete almost all of them.
Slugs aren't properly either, you strictly avoid the standard DAY or NIGHT; imo you should invest some time on it soon.
P3 your story is very creative and entertaining so far
Hmm, ironic ending. But, the conflict with the monster gets a raw deal only, imo due to what I said in the beginning. Too many unimportant things were developed and presented, instead to keep control over your premise, to fight the monster.
That said: In parts it's super fanciful, creative, and visually strong.
It's a pity that your execution hurts you as a writer and with that my experience as a reader. You should realize it as soon as possible and grow, more and more. You definitely got the potential to be top.
I won't hammer the point home, as per everyone above there's some serious issues with typos and formatting, and so it's a pass for me. Also not really sure where the horror is.
What I will say though, your work is a bit of relief from gore laden ye olde reboots. I understand that's the challenge so don't anyone go jumping on me, but maybe this just needs some cleaning up and can live out with this challenge. I found myself caring for Andrew and his buddies, and if nothing else, it was an original take on the challenge.
Well done for having the nuts to go left field, but for me it's still a pass.
A large reason the writing doesn't work is because you're trying to put this tinge of emotion in everything you write. This is the actual type of 'unfilmables' that people rail on, because it simply bogs up the read and doesn't do much else. A sizeable amount of the script could be cut if you write only what can be seen on screen, and until you've mastered that, I wouldn't attempt to put in all the fluff.
As for the story, it's a decent effort but we've seen this story before, way too many times to count in fact. Nothing came as a surprise, but in saying that, I guess the bones of the story work well -- yet it's hard to latch onto anything here as the reader.