Winter's Bite by The Frozen Canadian - Short, Drama, Thriller - Four friends try to survive freezing temperatures in the refuge of their car. 8 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Third read in.

Four total characters - 4 characters and a voice over, I think that's perfectly fine.

Page length divisible by four: 4, 8, 12, etc - 8 pages, perfect. (8 seems to be the lucky number)

They must be confined to an automobile (no part of the script takes place outside of an automobile) - No issues here either. This is the most confined story so far.

Can only be of the Horror, Thriller, Drama or Mystery genres - It's definitely a drama. Not sure if it would classify as a thriller though.

Story Notes:    SPOILERS, MAYBE!!

FADE IN is generally on the left, no big deal.

Quoted Text PHONE We are unable to connect your call. Please try --

This should be written as a voice over.

Up to page five and it's a lot of "we're gonna die", "we're not gonna die", "we're gonna die", etc. Lots of back and forth on the same issue with not a whole lot of action.

Quoted Text PHONE Skshh -- county Sheriff’s office. What’s your skshhh -- gency?

If the phone message is characterised as PHONE, I think this should be RECEPTIONIST, or CLERK or someone that works at the Sheriff's office if you know what I mean. Again this should be written as a voice over.

Quoted Text MIKE Sh-she’s g-gonna have a boy.

This bit of drama feels very tacked on. We're all going to die... oh and I forgot to mention...

The writing is very good, no worries there except for the missed voice overs. The story is a little bland. I do realise that having a confined space like a car makes things extremely difficult but I really needed something more from that.

It would be relatively easy to film and may translate better on screen.

It's not a bad effort.

Code The sound of the car motor PUTTERING wakes RONNIE (20’s), nerdy, who sits on the passenger side. His head rests on a window that’s frosted through. Every exhale is visible in the frigid temperature.

Passive and therefore a drag to read.

Dialogue is off in places.

I was really expecting to read some quality pieces this time around. The first one didn't disappoint, but this one is shockingly amateur. So much so, I'm not even going to finish it.

Decently written. Trouble with an idea like this is that the writer didn't choose disparate characters. Four friends tends to be to homogenous, so in the end we don't really care who's speaking or what is happening to whom.  Stories like these need more pages so that the characters' personalities can come to life.

I loved the last scene here, their talk on p7. That's when we learn a bit more about them. I wish it came earlier and you had a little more for us about them.
Otherwise, their talk up to this point is not very memorable and thus the characters don't work as well. I guess I want more.
But it's a good effort all the same. Written well and the last scene is kind of a redeemer for me.

I’ve read the script. Will provide my comments after voting has closed.

I struggled with this one and found myself skimming near the end. There were only two outcomes at this point for either rescue or four frozen guys in a car. I was hoping that there might have been some ingenious idea or McGuyver plan to survive but all I got was dialog.

Good effort for the time constraints. All requirements met.

Pretty much agree with the others.  The characters all seem the same.

Fits the criteria to a t.  

Spoilers

So they're in an avalanche, but no one knows about it??  Not sure I buy it, but it kept me going to the end.

Assuming the voting is out of 5 again, it's between a 3 and a 4.

Dan

Quoted from JEStaats There were only two outcomes at this point for either rescue or four frozen guys in a car.

Or the rescuers find three guys and a set of leftovers. However, it would have taken considerably longer than 8 pages to make us care about that outcome.

Quoted from JEStaats I was hoping that there might have been some ingenious idea or McGuyver plan to survive but all I got was dialog.

They did try to rig one phone's battery into another. If only one of them had remembered to bring a charging cord.

Code Ronnie concedes, takes his gloves off and begins to warm his fingers on the vent.

That's another sentence that put me off the read.

Ronnie concedes, takes his gloves off and warms his fingers on the vent.

For me, it's a read-killer. It kills the flow. Always be careful when using 'starts' or 'begins' in a script.

Code Ronnie begins to dial...

Ronnie dials.

Story got way too melodramatic at the end. There's some good writing in here that is spoiled by just a few parts. Dialogue is good - melodrama aside. The story is a little too simple, hence the need for melodrama, I imagine.

It's easy enough and written well enough to be filmed, I suppose. Be a nice, easy project for a student.

I don't get the thriller vibe.  It's more of a drama for me.

That said, I wasn't fond of this story.  It felt like nothing really much happened.

I also feel having a phone character breaks the rules.

This is a reasonable story, but it's too familiar and it needs some sort of twist to make it effective, and as someone noted, the characters do seem very similar.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, characterization was an issue for me. Think about how you can differentiate these people, give them different voices, values. One could be in complete despair, another hopeful to the point of being almost delusional. You've got the married soon-to-be father. Maybe another is more of a loner, the fringe friend.

I realize it's hard to do much in such a short space when they're all freezing to death and can barely talk. Just have to be very efficient/strategic about it. The dialogue overall is quite good and you built some good emotion into it.

Writer,

Wish I could say I liked this more, but I didn't. Of course, I get what you're going for here, but there's no action, not much tension. Now, I know they're stuck in a car in the middle of the snow, and you need to stay in the car, but there must've been something you could've thrown at us to keep your reader more invested in the story.

Decent effort, but just didn't work for me.

Steve

A good idea that doesn't quite go far enough with the drama or thrills.

A couple of technical things you can take or leave:

Chris' phone - while actually not technically incorrect it really bugged me.
Also, write out numbers in dialogue as a general rule - 20 should be twenty.

The story itself was just lacking a bit. You introduced a little bit of drama between characters when Chris confessed to not even liking fishing, and there was another bit where Mike talked about his girlfriend,/wife being pregnant. Both times I became interested but then both ideas went nowhere.

In a story like this the actual setting acted as the backdrop for the drama when it should be the characters added to the predicament i.e., if someone were to blame for getting them in the spot they're in, if one person didn't even want to be there, if another character got his mate's wife pregnant (near death confession,) and/or a ticking clock device - they're going to be buried alive; things are closing in on them etc.

This story imh suffers from a lack of escalating tension and conflict between the main players... and then they get rescued. The characters need to have different rather than generic names, identifying traits, perhaps some psychological or medical problem claustrophobia maybe... They all sounded a bit alike.

I've done this myself plenty of times, written a story that just kind of peter's out.

Check out The Ritual (Netflix) - a group of friends who take a short cut and end up lost in the Scandinavian wilderness.. The book it's based on is a terrific read but the movie had an additional storyline where the guys are pitted against each other and one character in particular is singled out as to blame. On top of that they're dealing with an unseen monster - (Norse legend) pursuing them.

Anyway, rambled on long enough. A germ of a good idea here which could benefit from a bit more development.

Another title for this could be Frozen Clones. That's flippant, I know, but it's my lame way of expressing what I see as the main problem here -- dull characters.

The extent of the descriptions: one "nerdy," one "husky," one "athletic," one "sleeping." Ages? "20s."

We know Chris didn't want to come at all. Mike apologizes a lot. Kyle thinks he's going to die. Ronnie at least does something -- makes a "warm-water" bottle and thinks up a way to get more battery juice.

But none of this is compelling enough to carry the script. This is one of those stories where nothing much happens, so the characters have to be strong.

My 2.1 cents (as adjusted for inflation):

1. Writing is good.  Technically sound, dialogue is believable, maybe on the nose a couple of times, but we�re all guilty of that. Action lines are sparse but that�s okay. Would rather have a lot of white space to make for an easier read.

2. Storyline is a bit weak, but I think that�s a function of where you have placed the situation. There�s not much for them to do but sit around and argue and talk about how they�re going to die. Just me, but I would have preferred a story more geared around them figuring out a way to get saved. As it is, it seems totally random when the helicopter shows up. Maybe the sheriff figured out where they were from the very brief call, but it just seems like a reach. Plus: everyone�s phones dying?  No one brought a charger?  Gas tank empty?  I could live with them all having power in their phones but no reception. That seems more logical.

3. Characters- I really didn�t learn anything about them or have any feelings for them. To me me, they were all interchangeable. If you do a rewrite, I would hope for a little bit of character building.  

Overall, nice job here.

Best of luck,
Gary

Read several times. First time, I didn’t even realize that Kyle had died. Completely missed it. If you rewrite this, maybe consider Kyle dying early. It would ramp up the tension considerably, and we’d have more time to spend with the other 3 characters.

I see the same problem in your script that I see in my entry. We just don’t know the characters well enough to truly feel their urgency. And, like mine, they don’t seem active enough in trying to escape their situation.

All in all, it’s well written. Fix the characters and I think this script will jump to life. Overall, a strong entry in a very difficult round.

My thoughts:

Quoted Text You need to wake him. His core temperature has dropped.

Last line of dialogue didn’t ring true here/was unnatural.  Just wake him is enough.

Quoted Text Ronnie ends the call quickly to conserve every pixel of battery life.

Why wouldn’t they have been powering off their phones to save battery life?

Warm piss as a heating device – thought that was real clever.

A little explanation of why they couldn’t have walked away would have been helpful.

Missing the VO on the phone call.

Solid writing for the time limit.  I would have liked a little more on their relationships, who they were etc. Like the she’s pregnant stuff at the end was good – wanted more of that upfront. I think it would also benefit from more of a staggered pace. Something like:

-First Act – they’re just kind of fucked – maybe a few hours in – do you got the normal bravado and banter among men.

-Second Act – hmm – okay, this may be serious – their tone is changing now.

- Third Act – they are fucked. Panic now – urgency.

Long winded way of saying that it would be better if it opened just before their troubles started  troubles rather than after they're screwed. Now that you are free of the parameters you can consider that.

Nice job.

Yep, see them at their best and get to know their happy lives before the shit hits the fan. Or, have the shit hit the fan first and then use cheapo flashbacks to fill in the backstory, or any mix of the two. It could be a low budget feature.

Been done a thousand times before, but they sell. Big prod cos like small budget scripts too, they just use the majority of the budget on a named face for the lead(s).

Quoted from DustinBowcot Yep, see them at their best and get to know their happy lives before the shit hits the fan. Or, have the shit hit the fan first and then use cheapo flashbacks to fill in the backstory, or any mix of the two. It could be a low budget feature. Been done a thousand times before, but they sell. Big prod cos like small budget scripts too, they just use the majority of the budget on a named face for the lead(s).

Funny that you should say that - when I read this my first reaction was that it had the bones for a feature.