Lake Search by Greg Lake - Two men search for their colleagues who went missing. Location: Body of water. Object: Item of advanced or electronic technology. Short, Thriller

Good job for choosing thriller over sci fi, as I've got a feeling most others are choosing the latter.

Wasn't that keen on this one though I'm afraid. The dialogue quickly felt repetitive as well as very on the nose, but perhaps worst of all narratively it just left me feeling meh unfortunately.

Good luck

Hi writer,

I always think character ages help with context, sure you could say they could be whatever age, and yes the directer could chose to cast them as whatever age, but if you give them an age straight off the bat then you give us a visual we don't have to think about and the story flows better, IMO.

The dialogue is full of exposition and quite OTN.

Quoted Text A man brings down a pair of binoculars from his eyes. A primitive cylindrical submarine is on the ground next to him. This is ADAM.

I see a few writers doing this now... "this is Adam", it's so clunky, why not just introduce him as Adam straight up?

Not sure how low budget a submarine is.

I'm left scratching my head a bit at the end of this, not quite sure I got it.

The writing needs some work as well.

All the best.

Too much exposition in the dialogue... the characters speaking would know all this information. So them saying it out loud at this point doesn't make sense. The writing was fine, but the story fell flat for me. No emotional or visceral impact. It was a good effort, though.

I'm not sure what the point was. What were the samples? Why only shoot one guy in the boat? It was so full of exposition but it didn't tell me the right information for this to make sense to me.

Sorry - Please explain after the writer reveal.

      Rod
To what end?

Exactly.

The way I read your description I thought the submarine was named Adam

Was left pretty confused at the end

Say goodbye to your successful
life, Pete

Then he shoots George ???

Overall I don't know what they were after or did I even care for any character .

Good job on entering

Not low budget and the dialogue read quite unnatural. Wasn't really sure what was going on, maybe this was rushed? Good job on getting an entry in, I hope the feedback helps with the next draft.

I didn't get it. The ending left me confused. Dialogs were OTN of course. Many things were unanswered. Seems like written in a rush.

Submarine is a pretty expensive prop.

I think there's an interesting story here but just too big to let it unfold naturally. 4 pages are just not enough. There's obviously some back story we need for it to feel complete.

Dialog needs work. Just didn't sound natural at all and parts were very expositional.

If you like the story, expand on it.

Nicely written in that I could picture everything on a first read, but it seems like a scene rather than a story. The dialog gets a bit on-the-nose, which is something that I struggle with a lot as well in early drafts, almost veering into As-You-Know-Bob territory.

I've heard the rule of thumb is that shooting on the water triples your costs which works against the preference for a low budget, but "body of water" is right in the parameters so it's not inappropriate for this particular challenge.

Good effort!

So format-wise - very nice and the descriptions are clean and efficient.

The dialogue is way too OTN - and clearly used for exposition.

I didn;t get the purpose of the story - sorry.

Pete and George are searching for their buddies in a lake. But their buddies double-cross them "for the greater good." This might be a good scene if it existed in a larger script, but alone, it just reads like an excuse to show action.

I liked the feel of this, but I can't even place who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. I don't know why any of this is happening.

Just a sentence or two that isn't alluding to something, but stating real facts about their motivations would give the reader some sense of what they should be feeling.

George gets all the way to the lake before he asks what the thing they have been hauling in the back of the van does? You need a better way of conveying info to the reader/viewer.
But then again George could be 5 years old for all I know.

Dialogue is very wooden and OTN in this. Writing needs tightening as well

But there is no context to this story at all, they are looking for some people who went missing in a submarine, but they aren't missing, they are on the side of a lake (and have been for a whole week by the sounds of it)
But, after waiting a week, they shoot one of them on the lake... I don't understand anyones motivation in this. or what the samples are, or what the funding is for or from.

Best of luck

I'm not sure I fully understand this. This feels like a rushed entry to be honest.
But kudos for entering.
Well done.