One Last Ride by 0 - Short, Sci Fi, Thriller - A business man, stuck in a time traveling cab, is hunted by an anarchist from the future. - pdf, format 8)

There's a nice story in there, but it was kind of hard to find under all the exposition.

With some streamlining, I think this could be a lot better.

Typo out of the gate:

Quoted Text ELMAR (into his phone) Wait a second. I'm confused. Did your screen ID'ed me as your Orthopedist when I called?

ID'ed? - think it should be ID

Quoted Text A WOMAN holding a BABY knocks on his window. DISPARATE WOMAN

I would keep the character name consistent. If you are going to use DISPARATE WOMAN as character - then use  DISPARATE WOMAN when she is first inrto'd.

Quoted Text Elmar gives the woman the finger, then waves a "Hello" with his fingers to the baby while smiling, without interrupting his call. The Woman smacks the window, which makes the Driver snaps awake.

Should be "snap"

Quoted Text ELMAR Sure as hell the lights said "Free" when I got in, so I'm not going anywhere buddy.

Need comma before buddy. Okay - going to stop quoting - the point is that there are a lot of typos in this one.

This one did not engage me like some of the others. The long blocks of dialogue became too much.

Congrats on the effort and for entering.

Lots of grammar issues. It's very over written with a few unfilmables.

I think you can loss the bad sound affects.

Not sure this fits the challenge as far as low budget goes but I'm not a producer. Seems like some of the effects would be expensive.

The huge chunks of dialogue are not great.

No need to say who VOICE after the character, we know it's his voice, never seen that one before.

Reads quite awkwardly for the most part.

As far as the story goes the underlying reason he goes back it quite touching. Everything else just seemed like filler.

Not for me.

Comic book feel to this, not that there's anything wrong with that, just didn't hold my interest, sorry. Met the challenge of 'trapped' though with a pretty big budget of SFX.

A lot of grammar and spelling mistakes, could do well with a read over. It's a decent effort, a bit out there -- hard to understand a lot of the sci-fi jargon. Needs more showing than telling, granted, that was very hard to do with this challenge so I don't blame you. Elmar could use a little more work, his state of mind jumps around too much -- instantly sad at times, angry at others, needs some flow. Could use a rewrite.

Over long and dialogue heavy in parts with a fair number of typos and grammar issues...

Having said that, I quite liked it.

Title on title page is different than the title given.  That's not a good start.

Lots of mistakes everywhere, misspellings, poor grammar, incorrect word usage, awkwardly phrased.  Just all around poorly written, which lead me to bow out on Page 2.

Grade - D-

Writer,

You've got a great story here! Good work. However, as other postings noted, tons of mistake
-- misspellings, asides, grammar. All that needs to be cleaned up big time. That story Elmar told can be chopped in half and we'll still get the gist of it. Boy, if you work on this you've got a good one here.

I don't think you were pressed for time because you managed to get ten pages, but you sure dropped the ball in the editing department. As is, it's not gonna make much of an impact. There are peeps who are gonna see all these mistakes and bail, or skim. I stuck with it and got treated to a pretty cool story. Clean this fucker up! Good work!

Steve

Bit of a rough start on this one.  Is she disparate or desperate?  Unconscious or asleep?  I’m not a fan of trying to cram this ‘world’ into such a short space.  Couple that with Elmar’s sudden guilt-trip and I’m at a loss as to what this is all about -- no apparent motive, it just happens.  That said I thought you brought it back around when he makes the decision to sacrifice himself -- unfortunately the rest is just too OTT for me.  Hard to pull an idea like this off in ten pages.

There are quite a few grammar errors, such as on page 3 (worst mornings should be worse mornings, then later protect should be protected). Also, pages aren't numbered.

I would use a word other than jump to describe how Elmar entered the cab, as to me that sounds like high energy, excited, which is not what seems to be the case. And, you started with putting V.O. next to Adele's name, and then stopped.

On page 4, Elmar says he will get out of the cab himself, but then we completely skip over him trying to when he has given up. We should at least see a little bit of him attempting to get out. At the very least, show him beginning to attempt, and then put something like "ten minutes later" on the screen and show him having given up.

Finally on page 5 we get to something of interest, and I really do like this story that Elmar has, the regret he is dealing with. I wish the story had gotten here faster. Also, if you could find a way to break up his story so that it doesn't look monsterously long, that would keep from possibly scaring people off or causing them to zone. And, one more thing about it, is that I feel like Elmar would sound less like an author and be more direct when telling his story.

I don't see what the reason is for the part where the voice comes through his phone. Maybe I just got a little bit lost there, but it didn't seem to be important. If you cut this down to what's actually necessary, bringing more focus to the story of regret that this is, then it could be good.

Well that was a big effort.

We have to rely on a lot of back story and there are some long dialogues.

The idea of being trapped in a time car and then releasing that it could go back and resolve his greatest mistake has  some legs.

As written it needs some work and does go about too far with the sci FI wording which we don't know.

Pass/consider (in essence the concept has potential)

Some notes

I like this one.  It takes a while to establish the time car,  and I'm not sure you need to explain everything.  In a way, holding back info would fit with the current issue in time.  the ending works for me.  Our protag uses the last bit of his life to rectify a mistake.  I'm with you.

Best
Richard

The good news: Decent story arc. Bad news: A lot of painful issues and dialogue to get to the ending. A valiant effort but a proofreader would do wonders.

A great logline which made me actually interested in reading this; which believe me is rare!

As most have said, there are a lot of typos and mistakes which can be off-putting but I'm sure you'll get those fixed.

A very good and interesting setup which worked very well until the huge amount of exposition made me roll my eyes. Then there's several moments the audience is required to suspension their disbelief which don't work because you write yourself into a few corners and then come up with resolutions I just couldn't buy into.

Maybe it was rushed and you ran out of time? One example, the entire ending requires the AI Adele (which made me think of the singer of the same name, which was a bit off-putting, maybe come up with a more AI sounding name?) to counter the directive to stay hidden. This is a pretty serious directive by the sounds of it, one which requires a self-destruct if all else fails. How does he bypass this? He just asks and says please! It was way too convenient and unbelievable, plus the outcome was telegraphed from the long confession he had earlier.

Still, this does show a lot of imagination and plenty of potential. I would encourage a revisit outside of this OWC.

-Mark

It's an interesting one this. I liked the story, buy not enough to forgive the multitude of typos and grammatical issues.

It's also another one where the budget would be beyond the challenge, but at least the trapped in a taxi theme is there.

This takes a bit of a tonal shift once Elmar starts talking about his regrets. It's not bad, but the thriller aspect from earlier (when the driver is shot dead) starts to feel inappropriate.

I really don't understand Elmar’s logic. He didn't give Diane a break and she died, now he gives no one a break… but he never did anyway. So this haunting moment seems to have not affected him at all.

I can see what this story wanted to do, and the general gist is good, but it needs some rethinking and some restructuring. Definitely worth rewriting outside the challenge with the restrictions lifted. It could really turn into something great then.

I WOULD have liked it if:

SPOILERS
1.  It fit the OWC (no way is this cheap to shoot)
2.  Fixed all the typos.
3.  Fixed all the other issues.

Overwriting, and OTN dialog can be fixed.  

You have a good story.  

6.0/10 (didn't fit the cheap aspect of the OWC).

Dan

I do like the idea. Just don't care for Elmar's monologue.
Nice work but it does need proof reading.

I'm a sucker for time travel themes and I really enjoyed this.

A shitload of typos but they were skipped over easily. i have to admit I skimmed the long dialogue bits and at the end i had to go back and read them to work out what the punchline was, sorry lol

I'm giving this a Recommend for the sake of the story.

Terrible dialogue.

A pass.

The dialogue's bad, yeah. The story's really quite good, but there's a lot in the way of it right now. Too much exposition. Too much unbelievable dialogue. Too many thriller elements at the start.

To be honest, there's probably a way to make this work as a Phonebooth-style feature. That would allow you to incorporate both the thriller and the drama elements.

There's a ton in this for a short though, and too much. First priority is to figure out what its soul is as a short -- I think the climax can tell you what does and doesn't belong earlier in the script. Second priority is a massive rewrite for dialogue.

The script's not particularly good as a whole right now, but the story is excellent.

Well, can't say this one really did anything for me, seems way to over written for the sake of putting ink on the page but, y'know what? I won't shoot you a 0/5 or a 0/10 because that would put the script on par with every single member who DIDN'T submit a script... and that's not fair.

So, I'll say it appears that you invested some time in this and, although I had to plow through that big wad of exposition, I can see you tried to build a back-story necessary to propel this into the final page where some unselfish behaviour transpired making this somewhat palatable. Thanks for coming out and... I just might throw a recommend at you for trying so damn hard.

Trapped yes, low budget not really.  Many mistakes, typos, etc. but expected in a OWC but need to be fixed.  Nothing really kept me in the story.  Not sure if I just wasn't in the mood for the sci-fi or it was the walls of dialogue.  I just couldn't get into it.  Sorry, not for me.

I read about 90 percent of this story and thought "Dog."
Then I finished it and rethought the story, and now, I'm thinking, "hmm, I see promise."

It's like being at a dance and this story is the ugliest girl on the floor. I mean, from 5 feet away,  it is just chock full of flaws. But then, the more time I spend reading and thinking, and looking past the pit marks, I'm almost smiling. Now I see there is something worth discussing.

It feels like a small story trapped inside of a bigger story. The small story is about Elmar using the car to correct an aberration that he realizes has been haunting him. While I like the ending, getting there is clumsy. Way too much dialogue to set up the story.

The bigger story is that Elmar is in control of a time machine. I think that part is worth exploring and expanding. I think this time car was meant for somebody else, but being the jerk that Elmar is/was, he changed the course of what should have been.
What if the woman with baby, who wanted to share the cab, plays a bigger role in the story.  maybe she was supposed to be in this time machine. Hmm, I don't know.
Or what if she slips Elmar something that alters his destiny. Another element that could be valuable moving forward.
Well, there is hope if you expand this into a feature, so I think.
Clean up the messy writing and stay positive. Good luck.

One more thing. The time machine vehicle has a personality and that could work in your favor. I can see Adele and somebody (Elmar?) forming a team or partnership.

General thoughts before I move onto notes.  I like the premise (big budget though it is), and from what I've seen of the writing, it's a solid writer that did this one - though in a hurried manner.  I think certain plot points, subtleties could use a rewrite.  But there's time, and it's worth it.  :)

***


Stream of Consciousness Review here:

Disparate Woman – Hmmmm – I believe you mean “desperate woman”?

BTW – though acceptable, I’m generally in favor of turning off Continued’s – IMO, they invade on precious white space

Not badly written so far – rather solid, in fact.  But I’d cut back on the passive verbs (like “is”) And streamline the action.  For instance,  walks towards the cab with confidence and purpose.  Vs. something like walks towards the cab calmly.  Same concept, and you save a line.

The kicks are no joke, nor is the window though.  There’s a terrific line!

Waitaminute – the cab is bulletproof, and the cabby (who knew what was coming) got iced?  Hmmmm….

p. 4: has to be protect or self-destructed.  Probably a typo…

Once my energy levels ARE too low

Love the over-share line…  ☺

Her SON’S appointment.  BTW – this bit of exposition is a bit horned in.  You’re telling me Elmar finds himself in a time-traveling cab, and he actually even thinks a moment about an employee he screwed over?  I’d think he’d need a bit of prompting from Adele (or the paperwork in his briefcase) to have THAT cross his mind.

Except (extra space) there was an intersection

Plus, how does Elmar have ALL these details on the employee’s accident.  Sure, the cops probably told him a bit… but he still wasn’t there…

His VICTIM’S funeral

I can walk you THROUGH the process

ONE LAST RIDE or THE LAST RIDE? Oh, the time pressures of an OWC. You know, minus the grammar errors and dense dialogue, there's a decent story here in our time traveling cab.

Elmar doesn't need to monologue for almost a page to tell us his regret. And it is important that at the end we hear a car screech to a halt. I couldn't figure out why Elmar flipped off the woman who tried to share the cab with him. Maybe the writer can explain that later. Please sharpen this up.

This started off really good then the long winded dialogue appeared and oh boy it became a chore to read.

Elmer went from hard ass to a complete crying baby in one passage, which I thought was quite a Character arc... not a very good one.

A lot typos to get past, but all in all a pretty decent story.
Can be trimmed down quite a lot.

Overall pretty good

Good job on entering

You have a great idea here. The execution is lacking though. As others have mentioned, the dialogue needs work. Not gonna harp on that any further. The tone is out of wack too. I thought it was serious sci-fi action at first, then it was straight comedy, then I ran into an epic block of text drama. I'm not sure a smart, competent, asshole businessman dealing with guilt issues is the right character to be stuck in a high-tech super taxi.

If this is supposed to be action sci-fi with a little humor mixed in, makes more sense for him to be an "average joe" caught in some sort of mistaken identity assassination attempt.

If this is a serious thriller, I'd like there to be some connection between his career/past and the car... for example maybe he actually runs the company that designed this vehicle and it's a race against time to find what rival company is trying to assassinate him and why.

Nice intro for Elmar.

Numbers are supposed to be spelled out, unless they're large (999,999, e.g.). Plus, we already know he's talking to the driver. If you needed a parenthetical, it would be to indicate that he's talking to himself.

"(into phone)" This is when you need a parenthetical. Good job.

Quoted Text ELMAR (into his phone) Wait a second. I'm confused. Did your screen I[-]D'ed me as your Orthopedist when I called?

Grammar. Not sure "orthopedist" needs to be capitalized.

disparate * adj. * dissimilar; things so unlike that there is no basis for comparison.

desperate * adj. * feeling, showing, or involving a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with.

Which one is it?

Quoted Text ELMAR (CONT'D)

Code Then why the hell are you telling me about your Lumbar verteb-fuck problems?

Huh???  ??)

Quoted Text ELMAR (CONT'D) I don't care, Tony, if [you] break your whole spine and spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair[] --

Chuckle-worthy line, though. Work on your grammar.

"Sir[--]"

"Goodbye[!]" Impact. But don't overdo it.

Code DRIVER Sir, you need to leave.

Code BATMAN I'm considering it.

I Don't care if you wrote this in five seconds, this many errors (and within the first [Gasp!] two pages) is inexcusable. Not a good start.

Code ELMAR Fuck[,] no.

Code ELMAR Sure as hell the lights said "Free" when I got in, so I'm not going anywhere[,] buddy.

I am. Next time, proofread.

Pass. 1/10