Why are we Afraid of Bears? by Michael Godby (D.A.Banaszak) writing as Boo Boo - Short, Action - A hiker encounters a hungry bear in the wilderness. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

It took a long time to get to the punchline.

I feel like you might come from a prose background. Biggest tip I can give you is to cut the fat.

Example:

The hiker's initial reaction is to freeze. Perhaps he thinks
that if sits motionless, the bear will ignore him. If those
are his thoughts, his thoughts are wrong.

The Hiker freezes would suffice here. We won't see on screen his inner thoughts so the rest is superfluous, plus shorter more pithy action lines will heighten the suspense and pace.

It was an enjoyable chase, just needs cutting and pacing, as opposed to cutting and pasting.  

The text is pretty dense and feels kinda prosey, you don;t need to describe every minutae of the action for us to get the gist of where the scene and action are going, so i would edit and pare this down.

Been chased by a bear definitely ticks the paramaters here.

So I think this is over-written for what it is and where the payoff goes - but I did like the payoff!

Decent effort.

Oh, I love this, Boo boo!  I have an intrinsic fear of grizzly bears and this fed right into it, but I loved the comic relief at the end.  Thank God for good jerky!  Excellent use of the parameters of the OWC asking for little diaglogue and heavy on the descriptive scenes.  Great job!

I enjoyed this one until the end when I was disappointed. I felt cheated somehow. I always mute the commercials on TV and here I felt like I didn't even watch a commercial, I read the script for one. You had a great chase and minimum dialogue, so that was great. I just felt let down by the ending.

Hey-a, Boo Boo!

"Backpack" can be one word. ...which I see you did the second time.

That ending!

The writing was excellent here. Congrats on entering.

Dear Boo Boo,
the tricks in the tail - well done as you are obviously smarter than the average bear. A great easy read of set up, conflict, quest, danger of death chase and completion.
Do you work in advertising? In the UK a tv advert is 30 seconds. I suggest you send this immediately to Saatchi & Saatchi
All best JtF
This crit was not sponsored though the words "furry terror" did jolt me out of my reverie as I remembered a former girlfriend!

I like this one a lot.

I would love it as a commercial

Ticks the parameter boxes very well too.

Thought it was another Bear on cocaine at first but this bear got another vice going on!

When he spots a hunting cabin about 100 yards below him - I visualised that as a safe distance, like the hiker being quite elevated from the bear.

Good stuff, though!

Hi Writer

Quoted Text He reaches down and unties the shoelace. The hiking boot is pulled off his foot.

Not very snug if he can do that.

OK, it's an advert lol A bloody long one though. I suppose I did not see it coming, but it does feel like a cheap ending.

I enjoyed the chase although I think it can be written much more succinctly.

All the best.

Ahoy Boo Boo-- Ohmygod! Sorry this may not be much of a critique, but Ok, towards the end, this is straight up Bugs Bunny level slapstick. It made me laugh out loud, and I freakin' hate commercials, and this felt like one --yup, paramaters met, but the ending let me down too. Sorry. Brownie points for the punchline though. Best of Irish luck! -A

My first thought is "How many different ways are there to say the word 'Bear'?"

In the end this seems like a Jack Links commercial. If Bigfoot were in here, you'd have nailed it.

Slight nitpicks from me:

It reads plainly when you have 3 paragraphs in a row that start with "He".
Give the hiker a name and you can mix in his name with "he" to break it up.

Similarly down the first page you have 4 adjacent lines that all start with "The".
These aren't so bad because they speed up the read which seems like that's what you're going for.
But it still reads like... "The... The... The... The..."

Now I want some beef jerky.

Thanks for the read.

-Jordan

Man vs. Bear.
Hire Bear Grylls for this interesting romp. The writing and style suggests
this screenwriter has a short fiction/novel background. I was initially
daunted by the formatting, the consecutive blocky action lines, but the
story was told in an easy-to-follow way. Kudos for that.
If this writer is new to screenwriting, he or she can learn a lot of the basics
on SS.
The chase was fun. The scene with the bear inspecting the backpack tipped
me off that it was after food, but not necessarily man. A little foreshadowing
of something interesting.
I'm not necessarily disappointed by the end, but it didn't wow me either.
After the commercial pitch for beef jerky, maybe the grizzly is seen in the
b.g. returning for seconds.
An enjoyable, fun read overall.