Random Pain by Zavier Alvarez - Short, Western - A bad day gets worse as desperation and death take their toll on a marked man. - Entry for the January '06 One Week Writing Exercise Thing - pdf, format 8)

Guess this one's going to be the first to be read.

Great stuff. Right off the bat, you can tell it's going to be dark, down, and dirty. The cockfight was cool. You don't see a lot in movies nowadays. Overall, the story reminded me a lot of one of my favorite western series, El Mariachi. I wonder if the writer's a Robert Rodriguez fan.

Anyway, time to read a few more. Good job, whoever you are ;).

Hey, I'm in this one! Cool. Wait, I die...hm.

And yeah, that's hardly a spoiler once you get into this clever little story. Drake looks to be a well rounded enough character with a big problem. The thread of handling his problem runs through the whole story pushing his actions and the story forward. Got some nice twists and reversals with a killer ending to it as well.

As for the testicles...ouch...

Can I say anything bad about it? Sure. You misspelled buy at the botom of page 10. :P

Best so far, I liked the level of criminality and the characters, but when Drake is that good he shouldn't have needed to worry about the people who chased him.

Good script with no shortage of action.

Everything flowed well, and this story just kept picking up steam until the last line, which I think ended it beautifully.

The cockfight scene, and what surrounded it were well conceived, and I think you nailed it, whoever you are, although the use of "scrotum" in a description may be a tip.

Great Job!

Wow. Amazing read and i know EXACTLY who it is. But good work man i give you props on everything you done here. The plot, characters, everything.

10/10

Unrelenting.  For my personal tastes in reading, this is certainly on my short list of favorites this time around.

(SPOILERS)

*  Oops...Drake never really placed a bet.  He needs to do that.
*  "Wake up and smell the ashes."  One good line out of many.  Some of the best tough-guy dialogue in all of these Western tales is found here.
*  Hey...what the...?  Didn't see that coming.  Who the f*ck is this, anyway?
*  Where did the dynamite come from?  He just whips that out?  You gotta set that up earlier, I think.  What is this...Looney Tunes?

Really, really good.  I like this alot.  Could have used a better title, perhaps.

And thinking on it a little more now -- considering a few dark-horse candidates I hadn't before -- maybe I do know who this is...

"raining shards of glass
down on both Drake, Castillo and the bartender."
get rid of "both"

That was the only grammar thing I found.
SPOILERS SPOILERS
Other than that, I guess it was really good, reading what people wrote above, and it definetly was not boring, but I dont feel that it is quite my place to judge this sort of script.  I'm not a huge pure action fan, which is primarily what this script is: Desperate, or, ahem, "determined" guy runs from mob type, action ensues.

Anyway, as I said before, I'm not exactly one to judge, but it really didn't quite do it for me.

"..shovels shit into my face."  A very nice line that I found myself cracking up at.  Now, this seemed like it was a small piece of a feature length and I think it would probably fit nicely into a feature length if you decide to go along with it.

Page 3: What brings you to my humble establishment.  Need a question mark.

Page 8: It's in safe.  Not its

Only two technical errors beside the buy thing, so you wrote this pretty well.  The visuals I felt were top notch.  Very well detailed and the imagery was fantastic.  I have an idea as to who wrote this.  Obviously they were in Bert and George's story and they probably were embarrassed.  Man, it seemed like you had alot of fun describing George's death in here haha.

I don't think the italics are used in standard format.  At least I read that in I think it was the Screenwriter's Bible.  Underlining is okay once in a while, but bold and italics is a no-no.  But what do I know?

Overall, a very well written piece of work.  

Hmm....

Not many people would use the word 'scrotum'.  I can think of three, all of 'em varmints.

This was my personal favorite of the bunch (though I haven't read my last three yet).  A nice little symphony of violence with some western machismo in the middle.  Perfect!  Except mistakes noted up above, some of which I noticed and most of which I didn't, this was a perfect read for me.  

Oh except..."hundreds" of bottles explode in the gunfire at one point...that's a lot of bottles, you know...

RANDOM PAIN

Hey

I enjoyed reading this screenplay, fantastic story and had a giggle at the two guys who worked in the General Store, amazing how writers eventually get their own back on the authors of ‘Simply Noir’, very funny indeed..

Nice characters and great dialogue.. Good use of western iconography and violence particularly.. And yes, the fact money was a driving force in this narrative only shows that crime doesn’t pay.. I suspect the author really means that they pop their head out for one moment only to get shit shoveled in their face is a sly dig at having the wee wee extracted out of them in another script somewhere on these boards – fell of my chair laughing at that one..

Maybe some of your scene descriptions are a little heavy, literally speaking, and maybe not photographable but the very fact you have a great little story and characters here we’ll forgive these transgressions and just appreciate your achievement..

I really enjoyed the read..

Well done..


Kev

My only problem with this script is that it could've been longer.  Flesh it out a little bit more.  Build a little bit of tension.  I know you weren't given much time to write it, but now is the time for rewrites.

The dialogue and scenes were gritty, like out of the old West.  And there was nothing crazy in it to cause disbelief.

My only question is:  Did they have lighters back then?  I've never seen one in a movie.


Phil

This was excellent. Very entertaining to read and it held my attention throughout. Formatting was great, storyline was strong and the pace was nice and fast.

Enjoyed the quick action scenes you brought to the challenge and your dialogue was really gripping. I can't fault it and to be honest with you, I was so caught up with the story, I stopped looking for anything that might have been wrong.

Fantastic stuff and my favourite short in this challenge so far!

Andy x