The Wash by Anonymous - Crime: Basketball, Vice Police Officer, Car Wash

Fulfills the criteria in my book.

A heads up about your title page. This happens to me ALL THE BLOODY TIME! Whenever I save the file as a PDF in Final Draft it changes the orientation of the title page and makes it wonky. I have to manually go in and fix it. I even raised a support ticket with their helpdesk and they said they had never come across this issue before and just suggested I reinstall Final Draft or upgrade it, neither worked.

Anyway. I digress - sorry, it just does my head in, but I'm glad to see I'm not the only one it does this too.

The story itself was easy enough to follow, a little lacking in originality but understandable given the constraints, especially time.

I got a little lost towards the end with the flashbacks and I can't really see how the cop figured out they were at the Wash just because two kids talk about going there. It's not a biggy and easily sorted out in the next draft.

Well done for making it through round 2!

-Mark

The voice-over at the start is purely expositional which is often what V.O. is but it sounded odd to my ear. Sorry if I sound harsh but my instant reaction was: 'who is he talking to?

Should maybe have called it Tick-Tock? Nah, The Wash makes sense too.

It was definitely crime and I liked the weaving of the basketball element, and the brothers in arms comradeship. I just wanted more I suppose by way of feeling more suspense and danger.

Lots of white space on the page. Very economically written. I think if you work on this later flesh out the characters more and fill in some of the gaps.

Ticked all the boxes including theme, just a little scant storywise for my taste.

All the criteria met and the theme is front and centre so well done.

The story plays out for or less as you'd expect, though for a moment I thought maybe Sam had killed his brother which would have been an interesting twist.

I think though that there are some logistic issue that are probably due to time constraints but when you add them up they become a little distracting. I.e. shooting two people at a crime scene leaves a mess, and leaves gunshot residue on the shooter, overhearing some kids talk about The Wash and deciding to check it out with no further reason felt forced (imho).

But these can be fixed in an edit and with a couple more pages.

Good effort

My first crime story to read.

The criteria - big check here.

The theme is very well handled in this one.

The officer doesn't know it's Sam, keeps telling it's his brother, and at the end is getting shot by Sam - wicked and a good sentiment.

My first crime story and I like it. Got a noirish feels to it which is a plus in my book.

Hi,

A good story if a little unoriginal, some formatting errors but I don't focus on them, I tend to read scripts as I see them in my imagination.
Sam seemed a good rounded character with multiple layers and a serial killer persona hidden deep down but Rudy for me didn't really work. Not a very good cop if he automatically assumes Richie is guilty.
Concise and complete, overall I enjoyed it.

Well done.

Tight writing that, for the most part, worked. Want an even cleaner page? Turn off the continued's. They really don't add anything, and it's widely accepted to not use them, if you don't want.

I, too, was confused by the officer making the connection to "the wash." I went back to try and find something to connect it, but couldn't.

I liked how you weaved the basketball stuff in, and how you finished. I'm wondering, though, if it would have maybe worked better with the flashback at the end. We think he's covering for his brother, the cop thinks he's covering for his brother... but, he's not. He shot them. I don't know, might work, might not. But, could be fun to experiment with after the challenge is over.

The good kid, the one with the talent, potentially sacrifices his freedom, to help his punk older brother escape the consequences of his stupidity. If the author’s intent was to demonstrate the negative aspect of the proverb “blood is thicker than water”, then this script tried to do just that.

Killing thugs to save your brother may be justifiable in some perverse way, but killing Rudy the cop at the end just shows how defective a person Sam is, totally negating what “credit” he got for offing the two thugs. So in the end, I don’t think this story had anything to do with the theme. However, this story could’ve veered back on course had Richie confessed to the killings. He would truly have been acting in the spirit of the proverb.

Read this a couple of times. It has a sparse feel with only minimal description and stuff.  And as Ant pointed out, a few logistic issues. But it had a rawness to it that made it interesting.

Crime: Basketball, Vice Police Officer, Car Wash

A boy with a good future, protecting a brother with less so - decent dynamics

A cop on the prowl, what will he find. All good stuff.

I think this is an example of more time and space would allow this to breath, get the tension to build and help strengthen the bond and the chase.

Got potential

Meets the challenge, no doubts hitting all the criteria too. The story, as a whole, just fell flat for me. No big surprises or revelations. To me, I think I would've liked it better if it didn't have the flashback to the killings at all. Leave it a mystery: What is he covering up instead of telling us what he did right from the start. Instead of wondering about the crime, I was just looking forward to reading the ending. The V.O. telling us about the kid's scholarship potential would be better revealed in conversation with him instead of OTN V.O.

It has potential. Mystify it a bit. Good work.

The writing could use a little more punch, there is a line between over writing and writing too economically, you just need to find that sweet spot. You'll also find that when there is this much white space on the page, the action can read like a list instead of a story.

The dialogue is on the nose.

It's a very simple story that need something more to make it more well rounded.

Great use of all the elements. You did a nice job weaving all of them in.

My issue was that everything happened pretty abruptly. For me it didn't come across as natural. I feel like you have the bones of a story, you just need to flesh it out.

Best of luck, writer.

So you did manage to hit all your elements and weave in the theme. I think, otherwise, this is a straight by the book story, and once Sam shoots the cop, his sentence goes from parole in 20 to a potential lethal injection, so it makes no sense for him to do that. He's not saving his brother, unless they're going to live life on the lam right after he fires the bullet.

AJR