Doppelgängers by Javier Torregrosa (jayrex) - Short, Young Adult, Horror - Two brothers stumble upon a surprise discovery.  It leads them onto an investigation that can only mean trouble. - pdf, format 8)

I LOVED this one. This was so thoughtfully written and easily my fav out of the bunch so far.

Bravo! I honestly have nothing to say. Except great work.

-Bryan.

This started out good for me but then went down hill fast...it was developed pretty good inthe beginning and then seemed like it went to a hurried, unstructured path to an ending...

I think if this story had more pages to be developed it has some merit as a story line.

Sorry...but it lost me and wasn't complete.

Writing technically was good though...much better than many of the others. :)

~m~

This is a really slow read. I'm around half-way through and I'm wanting to just move onto something else...but I'll persevere.

Okay, finished it. I don't want to be too harsh but this definately needs a rewrite. The dialogue is very on the nose and your descriptions need to be trimmed down. At times your writing is fine, but generally it reads very slow. Try to avoid using words that end with '...ing'. Keeps everything more active and speeds up the read. To be honest, this script really highlights how much that speeds up the read and keeps it interesting. A technique I use is to avoid using 'is' and 'are'.

The POV's weren't really needed and just confused me really. Especially the last one;

'AARON'S POV: Aaron's eyes-'

Don't know what that's about.

Sorry to be so negative but I just really didn't enjoy this one.

Totally confused over this one.  Almost completely clueless as to what in the Hell is going on...or why.

Lots and lots of mistakes everywhere.  I have a feeling English is not your main language, and if that's the case, I apologize for being harsh.

This just didn't work for me on any level.  Sorry.

Way to get something up there in time. Job well done.

Yeah, this had some transpercy problems. The picture couldn't form in my head because the way some of the sentences were written. If that makes sense. But I think i get it, cloning right. He was cloning Officer Buck, Sandra girl, and I'm assuming Ian. Is that why he shot the kids or the kids were clones and he knew it. Again the cuts and what not through my perception.

OK Read.

Hello Sneezy,

I'm thinking that I might know who wrote this, but we'll see.

I think you did a good job with trying to work with the hoax part of the challenge, but I don't see this as really encompassing youth from 7 to 17. To me it was going more towards a teen slasher kind of idea.

Here are some of my notes:

Re: The Super

I thought it should be more specific. October 30th, but when? 3000 CE? It might be set in the future so be precise.

When Aaron was talking about the wallet, I couldn't help thinking the dialogue reminded me of a detective and that this was the beginning of one of those CSI type of shows. I think you might have a bit of a gift for that type of show because I really did feel that coming through there, but of course, not quite right maybe for a 14 year old, but I liked it.

What I was thinking in the beginning is: Who are Aaron and Nick anyways? What makes them special? What do they want? I felt more like they were just props in the stereotypical "somethin's goin' on in them there hills" flick. So maybe if you could try and make them have a reason to NOT want to bring back the dead person they found. Like maybe it was a friend that they had a big fight with earlier and a bunch of people saw it and they became afraid that people would think that they did it or something.

Just try and make it so that it sounds reasonable. Right now however, I'm wondering: Why didn't they tell someone right away that they found a dead body. Actually, when Aaron was talking with his dad, Ian, that's what I was asking myself. Why doesn't he tell him?

The fact that the kitchen has a red and white motif, in this case doesn't add to the story so just leave that out. Only if you feel the details are important write them in or be brief. Any kind "neat little kitchen" or "messy kitchen" should do.

Lose present participles when you can like "are running" unless you really want to show the continuous feeling aspect of the action. Just write: They run. Or: They escape into the forest.
LOL, I was wondering why Ian was holding a bear; then I realized when I read down further it was a beer.

Unfortunately, there was no resolution to this. Sarah stays trapped in the cage to burn from that fire. Aaron is killed. We never really find out what the creepy guy's motives to his experiments were. I think it's important to discover a driving force for characters.

I liked some of your description even if it weighed heavy at times. Keep working with that though and just try and discern when to include something and when not to. I mentioned about losing the kitchen description, but that doesn't mean you wouldn't keep it in a different story where it DID matter.

When Aaron falls and is spitting out dirt, I thought that was very visual. I'm just noticing now, after going back to look at that scene again that:

When the hand is revealed, you might write that portion with a bit more impact and also show a reactionary shot with them freaking out.

Thank you for contributing to Halloween 2008!!!!! Yay!!!!

Sandra

From a story standpoint, I really didn't see too much issue with this one, although I do think just a little bit more could be added to it to make the ending pop just a bit more.  You could even save some space by getting rid of those few instance where you have someone say "Ahh."  A noise of that nature would be better suited in a description as a scream or groan.

The dialogue was probably the biggest issue for me.  Based on what I've read, I definitely feel confident in saying that the writer is from the UK.  Either that or they know some of the different terms thrown around there.  Id go with the former since I don't think somebody could pull the UK dialogue while completely missing the mark on how 14-15 year olds talk.  It just came off as being much older than it should have been.  As far as on the nose, nothing really screamed out at me except for the Google Earth comment in the woods.

Good job for meeting the requirements of the challenge, but I think this is only at about 85% of what it can be.

The dialogue was inconsistent and really lost me. It seemed that there at least five different people talking through the two characters. Things and characters just pop up with no explanation. Where did Sarah come from? How did officer Buck arrive, who is he? I couldn’t see the wood for the trees.  Sorry but too jumbled for me - walford

Thanks for the read everybody.

Busy Little Bee was correct that the Italian Doctor Severino Antinori cloned people.  

This doctor is a real doctor who announce that he was going to conduct human cloning.  He announced this a few years ago and so I thought if we have now reached the age of human cloning, I thought best not to put a year next to the date.  

I didn't want to wait years for the cloning process to complete and used a sarcophagus to speed this up.

The PC part I was a little unsure about, and the bear/beer.  Oh my God, I can't believe I missed that.

As for dialogue.  I feel that as kids growing up in N.Ireland and the violent nature of the place through the 90's.  I kinda had to grow up fast.  Plus, our lingo is a mix between Northern/Southern Irish, Scottish, English and American.  That's what has probably affected my dialogue.  

I probably should have just placed this script in N.Ireland as the paper was my local paper.

I'll fix that 'is' & 'are' issue Ste and the 'ing' words Sandra.  I really appreciate the advice and need to be alot more careful.

Kind regards,


Javier

Something we all need to keep in mind:

Not all "ing" words are bad.

I'll try and write up a post soon regarding this, but the participle can act as a gerund or otherwise transform into something different. We take it for granted when we speak our native tongue, but what I'm referring to is what some people call "passive". In truth,"passive" is a misnomer when it comes to this example: are/is writing.

If you want to have the feeling of continuous action in a scene, then by all means write:

She is reading.

But know that in script form, it's normal to write:

She reads.

What is the difference?

The difference is that with "is reading" it identifies the action to be continuous. It's a very subtle difference and in novels it's ok, but unless you really are working hard as a wordsmith and have a secret plan, you don't want to use axillary being verbs without a purpose in mind.

For instance:

He is writing.

This denotes a continuous action and uses the infinitive "to write" as a present participle; however:

The passive term (which is entirely different and sorry if I'm confusing you) usually denotes this:

When the subject of a sentence does the action as in this:

Joe HIT the ball.

If:

The ball is hit BY JOE, then this is called passive because the subject (Joe) is transposed in the sentence to be at the end of the sentence. Normally, in English, the "thing that is acted upon" (the object) exists in the latter part of a sentence:

IE

Kevin BROKE the glass.

In English, the subject (Kevin) comes first in what we might call (the typical form). I'm tired, but there is a word for this.

And the object (the glass) shows up last.

If we transpose it to:

The glass was broken by Kevin...

Then we are adopting the so called passive form.

It's important to remember that there's nothing wrong with the passive form in sentences; it just depends upon the context that it's written in. Often times, interchanging the subject and object placement are natural and good- it just depends upon the work itself and where the emphasis needs to be placed.

What I've just said does not hold true with intransitive verbs. They don't act upon anything directly.

For example:

He lounges in the corridor of the SS Craven.

He's not doing anything to the ship.

Or:

He sleeps peacefully even though the murders continue at a great pace.

Again: "sleep" is intransitive.

In short,

If you hear the word "passive" as derogatory", think twice and find out what it really means.

Sandra

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Javier, I'm sorry, but this one just didn't work out for me. I'm really confused right now and I haven't even finished it yet. I don't think I'll be able to. The dialogue between everyone doesn't seem to be so realistic, and I don't even know where Officer Buck and that Sarah chick came from. And these young boys find a dead body and don't even react to it? They're just like, "Oh hey! A hand! I think it's dead, though. Come on, let's go home." They should tell the police or something?

I've read better stuff from you, Jay. What happened? :P

Sean