The Milk's Killer by A Member - Short, Horror - In the ancient Egypt milk meant to the Egyptians youth and beauty, the cat was a god, but for a criminal mind milk and cats mean vengeance. 5 pages     A October '06 One Week Challenge entry - pdf, format 8)

Here is another entry by one or our foreign authors, I suspect.  But there are so many now, that doesn't really narrow it down much, does it?

While this one does have some nice images -- particularly the final one -- I am afraid this one leaves too many unanswered questions to satisfy the reader.  What happened to the guy...and what does insulin have to do with it...and why does he even feel his actions are justified in the first place?  And that is just a handful of the questions raised.

I also don't like getting my exposition from newpaper clippings that hang on the wall.  I often suspect that is a contrivance invented by scriptwriters that doesn't actually happen in real life.

This would have benefitted from more time and more pages, I suspect.  But I always respect it when one of our foreign friends manage to construct one of these in one weeks' time.  So good job for that.

It's not a bad story -- not at all -- it just isn't a complete story.

I thought this story had a great concept but was executed a bit wrong. The milk man having cats was genius, made sense. Unfortunately the whole beheading bit didnt.

Definately english as a second language, but all power to you, i cant fluently speak a second language.
I liked the idea and the concept of the cat but it was just a bit outrageous at times. And all of the thirsty cats. Painted a good image, like
TheBoyCouldFly suggested.
                                         I enjoyed though, and love far fetched stories.
                                         Make me laugh. Good Job man.

This was good, but I thought it was too much to the point. You might have well of just said, disgruntled milker decapitates people, and I would've had the same feeling that I had after reading the four pages. It was cool, but nothing really special about it.

I did however like the cats playing with the head I must say though.

And what did insulin have to do with anything?

Hey, you have milk and you have horror, so good job there.  I'm going to agree with bert on the fact that you have way too many unanswered questions.  Sometimes, it's easier to get rid of the questions rather than answer them, allowing yourself to have more time to answer the more important relevant questions in good detail.

That having been said, I recxommend you get rid of the insulin part, and offer more information for the deranged milkmans backstory, what the accident was, why he decapitates woman, and so on.  Newspaper articles are somewhat unfulfilling.

-Tyler

****SPOILERS****

This is a little like “Silence of the Lambs” meets “Jack the Ripper.”

Technical:

At first, when I read the costumers (as opposed to customers) on the counter, I thought you were talking about people in costumes because of Halloween.

I know it’s 1945. They’re listening to the radio and there’s a boy crying out, “Extra, Extra…” But the waitress behaves more like a Old English wench or something. I didn’t get a feel for her in that period. Maybe you could have thrown in a few other visual cues such as clothing or setting descriptions of the era. Maybe some pinstriped suits and fedoras or women wearing dresses just below the knees and fitted at the hips. Maybe some swing music comes on the radio after the announcement.

POVs just make me stop and think, “Hey, I’m reading a script.” It’s better to minimize that type of stuff as much as possible because it takes away the reader’s ability to suspend disbelief.

P3 - trough - should be through

Story:

Let me get this straight; the milkman sued the milk company for health damages? Lost? So now he beheads innocent women who had nothing to do with it? I don’t get his motivation at all. His motive never in any way ties in to his actions. How does he connect these women to what happened to him? This is a major character flaw.

There are good things:

The format is pretty good. Just needs some proof readings and minor corrections that might have occurred were it not for the time constraint.

The story is fairly well told. It flows well. The plot problems don’t really support the storytelling but, given a solid plot, this writer is certainly capable of telling a good story.


Brea

Ditto, ditto, ditto to everyone's comments so far.  If he's going to be cutting off women's heads, maybe they should have been people who served on the jury during the court case with the milk company.  Something, anything to tie their murders into the backstory.  Otherwise, if they're going to be random killings, what do we need that particular backstory for?

I think the cats are very visual and provide a lot of atmosphere.  Agreed that the newspaper cloppings (um, clippings) do nothing to stimulate our visceral senses.

I doubt I could write anything coherent in a foreign language, so I admire your efforts here.  However, I experienced a lot of confusion and inappropriate giggling due to incorrect word usage.  One example: "killer of milk" or milk's killer.  He's not killing milk, it's just his signature at the murder site.  

Nice idea, just really needs to be fleshed out and be more cohesive.

What I see is a deformed man, rejected by women, and driven to revenge.

Well there wasn't too much to this one, really, was there?  No motive, no plot, no character development other than the backstory.  Just because it's a short doesn't mean blah blah blah.

This story was written by a foreigner for sure. I hope you take everyone’s advice here, it’ll help you a lot.

I’m not going to point out all the grammar and spelling errors, there are too many and I’m not a grammar queen anyway.  :)

I had to look up salient, haha, I thought it had to do with salt or something. Maybe use a different word, something that won’t stick out as uncommon since the rest of the script doesn’t use words like that.

I have to say that I was a little turned off by the conversation between the “costumers” and Shirley. This is back in -45 and men talk to her like that? Must have been a REALLY seedy place for me to believe that.

You can’t splatter newspapers. Splatter is more like something wet sprayed around.

Why are there so many cats in these scripts? I have a cat, he’s never been given milk. I don’t get why everyone associates milk with kittens.

It was kind of funny with the head rolling out and the cats playing with it, but why does he need insulin. Well, I assume he’s a diabetic, but what I mean is, what does it have to do with the story?

Is Shirley a prostitute? If so, does that have anything to do with why she’s picked by the killer?

I applaud you for participating in this OWE. I’m sure that if you listen to everyone’s advice your next one will be better and then the next one after that better still.

Good effort though.

Pia

Okay, dudes, thanks a lot for taken your precious time readiding my insanities. I'll send the bill!

Helio mon ami.

As usual, you get my vote. Well, your script is not perfect this time (mine's not too) but who cares? I did like it. But I'm afraid you should have concentrate yourself on one script instead throwing 3 of them. I will read the two other later.

Too bad I know you wrote it but I think I'd guessed.

My cats say hello to yours

Michel 8)

Thanks Michel! I know that one bad is better than three worse.

Hm. Ok. This would be another Helio special.

It has a little more depth than the other ones you gave us, but it still feels a little lacking in something. Shirley was apparently going to be next, so she needs quite a bit more development than she has. The killer has some screentime and most of it is for shock...Don, hehe. He has a little backstory which is ok, but he seems to need a lot more.

Mainly, we need to know why he is killing the women and keeping their heads. What is the purpose of that? It may have something to do with the milk deformity scandal, but that needs some more explanation as to how it relates to the women killed.

It's one of you better efforts, but still needs a lot of work. You had 15 pages to play with. You could have used a few more on this one to make it more complete.

As a usual your review is a type of lesson, GW.

Thanks a lot, dude for your reading.

If I say that it was so short was because of time I'm laying to you. It was because I'm not found more things to extend this script. It is like many stories of mine that seems to need to be continue by a partner, like The Wakisashi, for example. I'm not feel to be abble to continue some of my shorts and I don't find a buddy to write it wih me, so the stories finish without appropiated edding.

Quoted from Helio It is like many stories of mine that seems to need to be continue by a partner, like The Wakisashi, for example.

Point taken. I have opened the file recently, if that helps.

Wow!, cool GW. I saved a good money hearing it from you. I won't to go to my psychologist today!

This script is probably the most it's-more-of-a-scene-from-a-bigger-script than any other of it's kind.  You've put a lot in about the killer but, by itself, it goes nowhere.


Phil

You've point out about it very well, Phil.