Cry Wolf by Big Bad

Sometimes a children's tale brings back more than just memories.

Short Psychological Horror based on The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Colour me lost on this one.  That's about all I can say.  Maybe I'm just slow right now.

The first character that you have talking, Little Boy Tom, is never introduced properly... or at all.  I'm guessing there should be an O.S. beside his name just with the way it's written.

Nolan

Opening passage is bad...missing an apostrophe, awkwardly phrased, and ending in an orphan.

You never want to start with dialogue from an unintro'd character, unless it's OS or VO.

Ages are incorrectly written - some capped "s", some not.  Either way, use an exact age, as only you know their age...tell us.

I'm sorry, but this seems to be going nowhere and is dull and so not visual.  Many unnecessary orphans.  I'm skimming now.

You go to a FLASHBACK, but don't set your scene properly with a new Slug, which is a mistake.

Yeah, doesn't work for me at all.  Not sure what exactly happened or why, but again, I completely lost interest.

I'll be kind in grading

Grades

Challenge Parameters - C-

Script/Story/Execution - C-

Writing's really choppy straight from the start, spacing out your sentences would be of benefit. No introduction and tonnes of formatting errors. You'll get a lot of flak for it, so expect it in the coming reviews.

Unfortunately, after reading the whole thing, I'm not sure whether I understood anything. Mainly because of the writing -- choppy, not enough description, not entirely sure what's happening on screen and what we're seeing. Needs some work.

Straight off, who is Little Boy Tom? No mention in description.

A small room with white walls. A small video camera hangs in a corner near the ceiling. The only furniture is a small table and three chairs.

Ahh the little people

The wife talked about her son Daniel and then Officer Daniels picked him up... Not really creative in the names. Already adding to a confusing story

Ok I actually had to go back to the start and read it again... still confused.

Tom set fire to the house? was he imitating his dad?

Sorry a little lost and a lot of on the nose conversation

I don't get it and from the other comments it seems no one does.

I'm sure it makes perfect sence to you but unless your reader can piece it together why would they want to produce it.

You can still have all the twists and turns you want but it's vital to the story, well most stories, that the reader gets it.

It's a pass from me.

I struggled to follow this one and hoped the comments would give me a clue but they don't. I kind of get the Boy Who Cried Wolf connection with the dad saying bad things have happened but they haven't....well not to him anyway but I don't really get the rest. Sorry.

-Mark

Hello writer.

This is my first read. This OWC was a brutal challenge, one I failed to achieve, so I'm not expecting brilliance.

Let's see if you can surprise me.

Title: OK. It's such a famous tale that it's a heavily loaded phrase. You're going to have to have the chops to pull it off.

The opening is not well written. It's impossible to visualise because you've not given us enough information. In particular you've failed to describe the boy. The scene itself is a strong one, though.

"A small room with white walls. A small video camera hangs in
a corner near the ceiling. The only furniture is a small
table and three chairs."

Download a free thesaurus. It's not usually a good idea to repeat words too often, unless there's a specific effect that you're going for.

The conversation in the Police cell is quite interesting.

If you jumped out of a window, you'd get more than a few scratches...you'd be lacerated. People do it in the movies all the time, in reality you are getting sliced by glass.


The story is faintly interesting.

I've seen a lot of people were struggling with it. It seemed fairly straightforward to me. He was traumatised by an event as a youngster, which we see in the first scene, and reading the fairytale has set him off and he's gone and done the same thing to another family.

I did have a slight suspicion that he'd killed his own parents, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I think the Evans road fire needs to be set up earlier, it's coming out of the blue as it is. It makes it feel like an obvious ploy.

Overall: It's OK.

Cry Wolf is a famous phrase. It means that someone who repeatedly lies and is not believed when he tells the truth. It's all about irony.

Your story would be better called the Boy who cried Wolf. Because he is literally crying wolf.

I haven't too many suggestions on ho to improve it.  I think it would be more horrifying if we found out it was him that killed his own parents, and also if he killed his own family. This Evans lot don't make it into the film so they don't really matter.

On a more subjective level, I'd like to see more "Wolf" action. Perhaps the father is dressed as a wolf for Halloween or something.

Rick

That was rough. Read it a third time to see what I missed and caught that Tom was picked up on Evans Road where the house fire and corpse was reported later. Am I close? And I'm assuming the opening sequence was a flashback, right?

Overwritten in all the wrong places and not enough details in other areas. I wanted to like it but it was too much work.

Great attempt but needed a few more rewrites.

It was a chore to read this one but I think I get it that the guy Tom was now the wolf like his Dad was when he was a child? If that is right then yay!

I think it's confusing because of the flashback at the beginning. I think this has the potential to be really good. I know you thought it out and had this intricate twist but it's almost too complicated for a short.

Overall it was ok for me. Don't see how it really is anything like crying wolf except that in his dialogue he was sort of crying wolf.

Writer,  

Good news and bad news here. Bad: wasn't a fan of the dialogue. Some of the lines by the two detectives early on just seemed unbelievable. I don't think, at the end, they'd just let Tom walk away like that after learning about the fire and the woman. One page one you have a paragraph that uses the word "small" three times -- surely there must be another word for small, yes? Just doesn't read well. As a whole, it seems rushed (understandable) and implausible.

However, I personally think you hit all the right beats for a story like this despite how it was told. You tied everything up, answers were given and I didn't leave shaking my head wondering what happened. With a better story to tell, I can see a good writer here.

Steve

It terms of story potential this might be the best. But the executions not there and there's so many moving parts with all these characters and mixing in horror elements, mystery/detective stuff, and flashbacks... I kept having to go back and re-read.

It seems like you have the workings of a feature though. I love the idea of a book that someone reads and it triggers them to do horrible things (and it's all tied in to their past). I know that's not exactly what you have here, but that concept really has legs. I wanna steal it!

I may possibly be a simpleton, but I just couldn't figure this one out. I know it's a psychological horror, and these have the ability to be a bit skewed, but I just couldn't work out what happened.

Anyway, the writing worked for me. It jumped about a fair bit, but I didn't feel the rhythm was screwed up at all, it's just a shame I couldn't work it out.

I had to re-read this a few times to pick up on all the clues that allow it to make sense.

Little Boy Tom=Tom=Wolf

Evans Road is where the same thing happened most likely because Tom killed the woman and set fire to her place.

Perhaps Tom jumped out the window to hide cuts he received when he killed the lady in the house?

There's too much confusion as to what's happening for this to be a smooth read on the first pass.

Jordan

I like the choice of tale.

And for the most I liked this. Different to the others, and dynamic. How's it going to pan out? who's to blame/? will it be the past that comes to get him? I got that and well done.

And then the end, and I have no idea what was meant. I really feel I missed something, which is not a good outcome.

Oh, you were so close. And for that I give you credit.