Limbs by Robert Walton - Short, Horror - A rookie CSI processing her first scene lives the worse day of her life. A brilliant detective is her only hope to survive. - pdf, format 8)

Great opening.

SPOILERS:

The weirdness and the butchery of the scene make it hard to believe that they'd all simply up sticks and leave the scene. Impossible to swallow.

Don't you give the Imposter thing away a little early? I got it even before you mentioned it, but to overtly show it so soon? Why?

Hated the computer, SPOW talk. Not buying it. Cops are too busy.

Page 8...fantastic.

Ending went a bit west for me and it ran way over. I don't have any real suggestions, it just all felt a bit random.

This is the second one that has gone over the limit of 10 pages by 2, strange I don’t think that’s happened in a OWC before.

The story showed potential, the first page felt like exposition but the CSI was a well written character. I lost it with the tech talk and couldn’t work out why a crime scene was left so….abandoned and why the bad guy continued his experiments at a crime scene?

I started to get confused towards the end but that’s because I realised it was going over 10 pages so scanned the rest.

-Mark

The first draft of my entry ran 14 pages. I edited it down. I once had to edit a 7 page script down to 4 to make it for a certain comp (that I won). Not cutting the page count to fit is not playing by the rules. Rules that I adhered to. Right off the bat, I'm not happy about reading 12 pages. This will need to be good.

I did run into a fun fact while researching the pseudonym though, it's the same name as an ex Coventry Rugby player, recently killed when a wave broke his spine while swimming off the southern French coast. WTF? 6'8", 18 stone... a wave broke his back. Just felt that I needed to repeat that.

I liked page 1. This is well written, I'm just not feeling much of it. By page 5 and starting to find this a slog to get through.

Page 7 and 8 are good. A little apprehensive going into page 9.

Why not call Clarke, Clarke from the beginning?

Couple of good pages in there but the rest didn't do it for me.

4 out of 10.

It went over the page limit, but I won't hold that against you. It used to be 12 pages max.

There were a lot of things that were totally unbelievable in this story. However, I enjoyed the twisty turning nature of this. If you re-write this one, I would suggest dropping the Frankenstein thing and just make it about a young new CSI tech on her first job and then do what you did here. Twist and turn it so we never really know who's who. Keep us guessing. You could use someone into the amputee fetish thing.

The writing itself could use some work, but I enjoyed the story.  :)

This was a quick, fun read. And exactly what it was supposed to be: a modern story using a classic movie monster, in this case a Frankenstein-type.

The end twist left me a bit confused at first, then disappointed. But overall a good effort.

The good news...

Peeps are being very nice.

The not so good news...

Although written in a nice "cinematic" way, I see right through it and can tell you it would never work as written.

The bad news...

Logline is atrocious...filled with mistakes.  Red flag waving and Strike 1.

You went over the page count and based on Page 1, you easily could have dialed this in to meet the requirement.  Strike 2.

Way too many mistakes on page 1...in fact..in your opening Slug and  first line, even.  It doesn't get much better, IMO, and I bailed at the end of Page 1.

Dialogue is very unrealistic.

Writing is extremely awkward.

Passages aren't broken up remotely correctly.

Which leads me to a grade of...

D (based on the first page, but there was no way I was going to continue, based on the mistakes on display)

Writer,

I won't bail on any scripts here, no matter how I feel at the outset. I'll always give it a fair shake and read right through till the end. But I just can't read this one as its a full 12 pages and the challenge only went to 10. Everyone else had to stay within those parameters, so I'll move on to the next one. Maybe I'm missing a good tale here, and if you'd like some feedback on it after the challenge, I'd be happy to oblige.

Steve

Sorry this went over the limit

Back to story...

CSI   and the story is a sound basis - overall it felt like a feature crammed in.

The twist with her was too much

There is something in here but not yet

Not a bad start. Some of dialogue felt a little stilted. It also seemed strange he leaves her so soon, considering their talk moments earlier. Nevertheless, I've seen stranger things in movies.

Cerainly creepy enough inside. Might be getting a tad expensive though for a low budget.

The silhouette is a classic that will never grow old.

I was missing the description for the Man/Cop. It would have been nice to know what he looked like, apart from his coat.

I suppose you get away with changing the Cop's name. But it's pushing it in my book. You would have been better leaving it at just Cop.

p5 "will have me fire" Eh? I've never heard it called that before. Oh, should probably be 'fired'. Pardon my rather dirty mind. Dirty...

No idea what SPOW is. But then again, there a whole warehouse of stuff I don't know about, I spaketh too soon, from reading on it seems to some type of game. As you were.

Maybe it's true. But I doubt any video camera doesn't have auto focus. I'm a real picky little fecker, ain't I?

p8 certainly upped the pace. That's my version of a compliment. How do you think my better half feels?

Her - How was dinner?
Me - Yeah, not bad. I've had worse.

I never realised how comfortable the sofa can be to sleep on. Must remember to change the lock on the bedroom door sometime soon. Ahem, back to the plot...

p9 I'm sure there's an 'e' at the end of 'corpse'. Without it it sounds like soldiers. Strangely enough you seemed to agree on the next line. I'd recommend proofreading next time. At the very least it stops smartarses like me pointing out every little slip like some power crazed English teacher with huge eyebrows. And I'd be forced to concentrate on the story.

Hmm, I'm not quite buying the dummy business. Might work better on screen if it was lit and shot well.

Quite liked the line on p10 that starts with 'Detective is not'. Nay bad.

Instead of CLARK’S VOICE, you should have CLARK (O.S.) Here endeth the lesson.

At the end of p10 I'd have liked to seen Clark do a bit of doctor type stuff with painkillers. I also think he probably should have carried her. I would have, and I have trouble carrying all the shopping.

Surely, on p11, it should be Sterbenz's

Eh? page eleven? Shurely shome mishtake. Oh well.

An envelop? Is that some type of stag or deer? Must be small as he hands it to him.

It all got very complicated at the end. Overall there probably is a good story in there, certainly some good ideas. It needs work though.

Please lose The End at the end. As there's a Fade Out and a distinct lack of text after this, it is clear even to those who have drink taken the end is here.

Now, I'm going down the shops to argue with peope in McDonalds.

R

Second one I've read that wilfully ignores the page limit. Still cheating.

The biggest issue here is the dialogue. It all feels a little forced, not quite what real people would say. A good tip is to read it out loud to yourself - as an actor would do - to hear how it sounds coming out of someone's mouth. Your heightened moments, for instance when Marianne is tied to the operating table, are okay, but when you attempt naturalistic conversation between the cops, that doesn't quite fly. It's all a little stiff, none of the flow of human speech. People rarely talk in perfectly constructed grammatical sentences when they're chatting in an informal setting. Moments like Marianne's line 'HE IS AIMING AT YOU!' - wouldn't she just say 'BEHIND YOU!', or something, for speed?

If the name badge says Stanley, why not just use STANLEY? What's SPOW (my ignorance there)?

Didn't quite understand the ending. Who was the woman in the basement? Was it the imposter the whole time? Your main killer also felt curiously absent - but not in an intriguing, 'who is Jigsaw' way, more a 'wait what exactly is going on' way.

Having said all this, your little reveals and mini-twists were neatly handled, and the action is mostly written fine. You just need to work on your dialogue, loosen it up a bit. Take every block you've currently got, and rewrite it saying the same thing but make it more human. Good luck!

Limbs

They come across a bit young to have leading roles in such an investigation – But on the other hand I like that plot diversity.

Don't they have that cream/powder for under the nostrils?

The cop lab scene is a bit complicated. I like it when there is some specificity a movie uses to show authenticity- but it's a bit overdone.

So, there are more and more connections with the diner scenario that we didn't see - and that's a problem I could have mentioned from the start: You interweave two stories one active and one passive. I don't think the audience likes that. You can show them both. It's noticeable you can do it if you want to. And I'd prefer this option by far. It would be even a blast if you could serve that, I'm guessing.

What? The corpse awakes. Clark elevates into the darkness.

Okay, okay... heavy stuff. At some Point those twists are hammering in from all sides.

The problem probably could be that you used so many pages. I see it quite often writer stuff so much content in there aiming to get as much great ideas in there as possible.

The editing process is clearly fallen flat, probably omitted completely. Too packed and unfocused with regards to clarity yet. Cutting, editing and compressing heavily could make this a lot better.  

In the end this is very ambitious. The approach shows a lot of passion. Somehow it even feels it could become one of those few expensive festival short films once. I see that my unorganized comment mirrors the script from my sight, and shows why it couldn't convince me for now.

Another long one.  Why are the guidelines so hard?  I'm feeling grumbly now before I have even started reading.

THE GOOD:  The top of page 8 rules.  Best part of the script by far.  And the rest of what follows in the basement holds some nice surprises as well.    

THE BAD:  The exchange between Josh and Daniel seems important, but it is totally lost on me, particularly the name Sterbenz.  I have no idea WTF these guys are even talking about.  The end of this piece is too clever by half, introducing extraneous threads with the zeal of a magician pulling an endless handkerchief from his pocket.  It's too much.        

bert's grade:  (With appropriate deductions for length) C-

Why does Daniel leave? I thought he was going to show her around.

“MARIANNE: You can do this.”  With that line, I’m putting $50 on her screwing up.

Neat reveal with the bullet holes in the coat, but MAN/COP/COP IMPOSTER/CLARK/(Stanley?) has too many names.

Marianne’s about to draw on him, but I don’t think she’s seen enough to be that suspicious. I’d like to up my bet to $100.

I’m lost. What’s SPOW? Science Parks of Wallonia? The Society of Professional Obituary Writers?

I’m not sure he’d hear a door creek over the sound of the saw.

“IMPOSTER COPS VOICE” I thought we were calling him Clark for reference. Plus those should be written as “CLARKE (O.S.)”

Too many twists revealed through exposition at the last minute renders them meaningless. Plus, I thought Marianne was the protagonist. She had something to prove. I hated that she lost an arm even though she didn't screw up and I was waiting for her to do something awesome to prove herself. Her actions didn’t really seem consistent with being an accomplice, either. And what were all these people trying to do down there when it was already a crime scene?

An interesting premise and some decent suspense set-ups, but the convoluted twists and turns sunk it for me.