Things From The Grave by Jordan Wiebe (theboywhocouldfly) - Short, Young Adult, Horror - When a meteor crashes in a small town it causes the dead to rise and only two boys know the truth. - pdf, format 8)

I though that was neat-o.  You met the challenge head on and though the 50s stuff got a bit annoying at times, you handled it well.  I thought your characters and the story were nicely done.  Except for a few typos and the fact that nothing really new happened, I liked it.  So, you get high marks from me.

Good Golly, Goodness me. What a swell story, Mr. Anthony!

Well i did think that fifties style got a tad annoying. But if it was the times, who am i to judge. Characters were good, story was good. Everything was good. But i think that could be interpreted as a problem too. Nothing really stood out to me, personally.

Maybe a small rewrite is needed for formating issues and such, but still. Pretty darn swell i say.

This was OK, but extremely predictable, with really absolutely nothing new to add to a tired genre.

Way too many mistakes also that really dragged the read down.  I think you got the 50's vibe pretty well, but other than that, this was rather so so.

You did meet teh requirements of the OWC, and that's saying alot, cause most aren't even attempting to.  I'll add a star for that.

Kids in the 50's didn't add 'like' to everything they said. eg “We were in the cemetery and like this meteor feel outta the sky and now they’re these things coming out of the ground!” The effects of cigarette smoke on the unborn didn’t become public knowledge until the late 60’s early 70’s. The policeman asking two boys aged fourteen in the fifties if they had been smoking marijuana doesn’t ring true. The story didn’t really work for me.  walford

This had some cute undertones...it is pretty hard to get people to believe they are in danger when it is halloween. :)

There was a lot of spelling issues and I wasn't sure about so much slang...bad grammar.

I can understand why you left town after no one would listen to you...self preservation is key :)

Entertaining, but the script had a ways to go...good effort though and followed the rules for this OWC.

~m~

Sorry, but this one didn't work for me. It felt like you read the OWC criteria, decided on this story that fit all of those criteria (good job there) and decided to set it in the 50s, which I guess you pulled off since I wasn't alive back then to know how teenagers spoke then. The only thing I wasn't sure about was the song mention, but I looked it up and it came out the year before this takes place so good job there.

However, I got the feeling after reading this that you wrote a 20 page script for the challenge, realized you were way over the page limit, and rather than going back and taking some things off, you just got rid of the last 7 pages. You built up the invasion, the doubt and the moment where everyone in town sees that the boys were right, but then it just ends (rather confusingly at that). The boys stumbled on an invasion (rather than causing it as me suggested, which I think would work a little better) told people about it but nobody believed them, so they had no effect. Unless they save the day at the end, or you go with me's suggestion, the two main characters are pointless and don't really add anything to the story. The two teens could have been taken out of the story and the events would have occurred in the exact same way. The only impact they really had was getting the DJ killed, who probably would have locked himself in his office if the fire alarm hadn't gone off.

I'd recommend extending this, nothing up until this point really needs to be changed, it was just unsatisfying to me the way it ended. I'd add to this so the boys save the day (giving them a purpose) or have them watch as the rest of the town perishes despite their warnings (going along with the whole "teenagers are smarter than adults give them credit for" theme that seems prevalent in these types of movies.) Good luck!

This one was amusing in it's own way.  I picyured it in black and white.  The ywi kids were funny and had some nice dialog between them, this did have that 50's feel to it.

I wasn't completley satisfied withe ending, I felt it ended too quick, I think there needed to ba a bit more zombie action because there really isn't a lot.  Still this one had some entertaining moments.

I mostly really (mostly really?) well, almost completely and thoroughly enjoyed this except for a few things.

The writer shows too much talent to leave too obvious typos unattended even if it's an OWC. Not capitalizing the first letter at the beginning of a sentence and glaring typos bother me when I know the person writing it is better than that.

Other than that I really enjoyed the dialogue between the boys and I think the pacing worked well.

Two things that I would adjust:

1. No hurting of little chihuahuas is this script because I think it distorts the fun mood you've got going.

2. End with your last bit of dialogue of "I say we get the heck out of town."

Good job on this one. Easily my favorite so far.

And P.S. ... I love the word "things" in the title. Just give that bit of a jab to all the old English that ever existed in your life who said you should search for better nouns to describe things. :)

Sandra

If you haven't read this one, you should. It's a fun young adult script. It can use some cleaning up and embellishments, but it was a solid OWC entry.

Sandra

technically, this was the cleanest script that i have read so far...it had a little "war of the worlds" feel to it which made it  a little predictable...in its defense, it's really hard to have an original story germinate in 13 pages...it was a clean, easy read, that incorporated the guidelines of the owc...good job..

peace,
db

This one was alright, it stood out due to the time setting and I think you did pretty well with sticking to that dialogue style throughout.

The main problems I have with this one are;

The script is littered with errors. Typos, spelling mistakes, sentences starting in lower case. I mean I know you only had a week to write this but the amount shows that this wasn't even proof read once. I wouldn't normally mention that but it got distracting.

The dialogue felt very contrived. The entire build up to this felt very forced and just the writer talking to the audience to build up to the main scene.

I don't know about the whole premise of this. I mean how could a meteor bring people back from the dead....and thinking about it, why would they be suddenly evil? I couldn't take the idea seriously and for a horror I think you need to base it at least a little in reality.

As far as the challenge went I think you hit the horror part, might have been a little too gorey for a YA but the hoax was pretty well done. I think if you had a bit more time to really flesh this out then it would be a nice little short, but as it is it just felt far too forced.

Yeah, a decent, yet predictable, story. However, it felt unfinished and the kinda slobby way it was thrown together really hurt the script. Another problem for me was the dialogue, even though this story takes place in the 50s the dialogue simply did not seem real. It was very wooden in my book and repetitive (telling what we've already been shown).

Overall a fair piece that pretty much nailed the genre and theme, maybe a bit too gory though.

Rob

Quoted from stebrown The main problems I have with this one are; The script is littered with errors. Typos, spelling mistakes, sentences starting in lower case. I mean I know you only had a week to write this but the amount shows that this wasn't even proof read once. I wouldn't normally mention that but it got distracting. As far as the challenge went I think you hit the horror part, might have been a little too gorey for a YA but the hoax was pretty well done. I think if you had a bit more time to really flesh this out then it would be a nice little short, but as it is it just felt far too forced.

Ste, I think that you might be mixing this up with another script. Perhaps you were distracted and multitasking? I think you're a multi-tasker...

Anyways, this script was very clean. The only other option is that I was entirely burnt out when I read it.

I'll look at it again tomorrow when I'm fresh, but so far: This is one of my favorites for meeting the challenge.

Sandra

Quoted from slap shot technically, this was the cleanest script that i have read so far...it had a little "war of the worlds" feel to it which made it  a little predictable...in its defense, it's really hard to have an original story germinate in 13 pages...it was a clean, easy read, that incorporated the guidelines of the owc...good job.. peace, db

I just wanted to quote you here because I couldn't figure out how I could miss a typo littered script. Ste was probably reading two scripts at once. I get the feeling he was.

Go Ste! :)

Sandra

Quoted from Sandra Elstree. I mostly really (mostly really?) well, almost completely and thoroughly enjoyed this except for a few things. The writer shows too much talent to leave too obvious typos unattended even if it's an OWC. Not capitalizing the first letter at the beginning of a sentence and glaring typos bother me when I know the person writing it is better than that. Other than that I really enjoyed the dialogue between the boys and I think the pacing worked well. Two things that I would adjust: 1. No hurting of little chihuahuas is this script because I think it distorts the fun mood you've got going. 2. End with your last bit of dialogue of "I say we get the heck out of town." Good job on this one. Easily my favorite so far. And P.S. ... I love the word "things" in the title. Just give that bit of a jab to all the old English that ever existed in your life who said you should search for better nouns to describe things. :) Sandra

Ste is right. I didn't miss it either. But I guess I was favoring this script and the typos had disappeared into oblivion in my mind- goes to show you that if you like something- you can be very forgiving. Now who's the multitasker?!

I agree with Ste though on this one- even though I'm bent in favor of this script, I think I have to lean in his direction.

If it came down to it, I'd chose the script that paid attention to detail- even in an OWC. Sorry TFTG. But it doesn't mean I still don't favor you.

Sandra

as a person that struggles with speling and Grammer...i guess i tend to be a little more forgiving when it comes to those types of errors...so many of the submissions are "overwritten" and tend to read like novels, rather than "specs" i guess it was refreshing to be able to read one through without having to re-read scenes to follow the author's storyline...

peace,
db

Hey Jordan, nice to see you take a chance on a true zombie script. Because I know there was a page limit, I'm not gonna bark at you on how fast the zombies were able to come about after the meteor hit. But there were also a lot of spelling errors. Did you even read over this, boy?? I'm gonna smack you real good. Nah, just kidding. 1958...Did they even have headphones back then for radio stations? I don't even know what a radio station looked like on the inside during the 50s. But the way people talked didn't really seem 50-ish to me, which kind of brought me back to the modern day feeling. But it was cute...except for the corpses eating people and ripping Chihuahuas in half and stuff, but other that that, it was cute. ha ha.

Sean