Belgian Spring by Anonymous - Short, Horror - Escaping the invading German army during the Battle of the Bulge, a small infantry company must evacuate civilians to safety in the midst of snipers and V-1 buzz-bombs. 12 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Second read and second WWII story - Yeah, Baby! Let's see how you did...

Um, WTF is 'xxxxxxxxxxcivkxxxxx'? Perhaps you meant to look something up and to fill it in later? Oops!

Interesting that there is no German dialog. Maybe they whisper between each other?

Much of the dialog seemed a bit clunky. Very conversational for being under fire. You might want to scale that back.

Kudos for getting an entry in for the challenge. Good job.

How odd, two WWII scripts, next to each other in the list and bot set in 1944... there was a one entry only rule? ;-)

Anyway, this take on WWII suspense horror with a vehicle...

First scene looks partly set in a vehicle so may worth a new slug, and as above xxxxxxxxxxcivkxxxxx ???

a hardened soldier with a hardened babyface - one too many hardened.

A snow system sounds like a convient inconvenience, and implies winter which I'd not picked up in the script up to now.

Also I'm on page 9 and I've got vehicles and an element of suspense but no Horror whatsoever (apart from the obvious war is horrible).

So decent enough war story, I think the dialogue is a little too formal and stilted and doesn't portray the pressure they are under, so I'd revise that some.

Afraid for me though this is outside of the remit, or my intepretation of it, as it's not in the Horror genre.

Always CAP 1st intros of characters - SOLDIERS, TROOPS, etc.

"xxxxxxxxsxxxcivxxxxx" - WTF?

Why is there no dialogue?  You're saying there's talking going on, but we don't hear any of it?  Not good.

I skimmed.  Absolutely ZERO horror or any attempt at horror.  Sure, those that have fought say war is Hell, horror, but not in a script that's supposed to be horror.

*

This is very prose-heavy. I'm guessing someone new to screenwriting but not new to writing.

Quoted Text The soldier finds the nearest GERMAN CAPTAIN and reports the sighting.

This works in a novel, not on screen. What we see is a soldier talking to a German Captain. How can we possibly know what is being said? If it's meant to be visual, then say the soldier speaks to the Captain and points, or some action to replace the dialogue.

Quoted Text JAKE Yeah, I'm sure. Some officer was grinnin' at me like some goddamn cat eyein' a cage full of canaries. Better tell Cap.

How much cooler would this have been if we saw it instead of Jake telling us about it?

The action isn't frenetic enough. Too many beats, too much dialogue slowing the pace down, not in a suspenseful way. And the one-liners in the middle of the firefight really hurt the tension.

Did you introduce Medic Tim before he's suddenly in the Captain's jeep? If so, I must have missed it. You have an awful lot of people being introduced for a short. And is it Medic Tim or Tim? Be consistent.

Quoted Text Captain is at a crossroads.

Be careful with lines like this. It's a visual medium, I thought he was literally at a crossroads, not just faced with a dilemma.

Man, the Germans really have it out for the civilians...

I'm really lost in where the action is taking place. I have no idea how many jeeps we started off with, it just seems we jump from jeep to jeep to jeep without any sense of where they are or who's in them until they get there.

It ends as if the attack suddenly stopped, like they were safe. That doesn't make sense. There's no hint of the Germans withdrawing or anything.

Good effort. It could use more suspense, and there really isn't any horror. Work out the geography, choreograph it, walk us through it better, and make it much more visual and less talking.

The opening sequence with the Germans spotting the troops and jeeps moving through the nearby farmland is written more like a page from a novel.  You have the German Soldier addressing the German Captain who addresses other German characters without a single word of dialogue or secondary character introductions.  

You can use Google to translate just about anything in any language.  I believe I've seen film scripts write out the foreign dialogue in boldface and/or italics and then follow it up with the English translation in regular font.  

Here is an article I found on the subject:

https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/reader-question-how-do-i-handle-characters-speaking-in-a-foreign-language-bc152b7a3cb5

I loved this passage of dialogue:

CAPTAIN Corporal, we are the fish in this Belgian barrel of farmland.

GABE That we are, sir.
3.
CAPTAIN I'd prefer it was a barrel of beer on a Belgian Spring day.

GABE With a Belgian girl or two for a little bit of company?

CAPTAIN Sure, why not? If we're still around by Spring.

GABE You're pretty invincible, sir.

CAPTAIN It's not me, it's you guys. Cheatin' death like you're cheatin' your old man outta five bucks. Do you boys play poker with Satan himself or something?
  

This is chock full of witty banter.  It rang true to me.  This was the strongest element of your story by far.    

That being said, it's very hard to pull of a prolonged action sequence like this without confusing the hell out of the reader.  

Too many POW POW! and BUZZ BUZZ!  and BOOM! BOOM!   It becomes multiple characters firing multiple weapons and getting all jumbled up and lost in the mix.  But then again, that's war for you.    

Being a short film it's hard to differentiate your characters because we haven't established who is who or created any personalities to identify them as individuals.  

Hmm this reads more like a Shakespeare play - certainly some of the dialogue was rich and poetic.

Yet again another one that needs a SUPER this time with the year and location in Europe. Ok I know when or what the Battle Of the Bulge was but most peeps wouldn't lol.

This was ok but it had too much action going on, no horror and the vehicle aspect was very slight. Also I'm pretty sure that V-1s were only used against England - fired across the Channel - and not like general artillery on the front line? I could be wrong though...

Quoted Text xxxxxxxxsxxxcivxxxxx

Whatever that is.

Anyway, another WW2 themed script. Outstanding!
Not so outstanding is the early bits of dialog. Jake starts off with  looking through his binoculars twice and stopping Hank with more information when the information should come right after he says they been spotted. He also wouldn't say "in fact". Either his report is right or it isn't. He is stating a fact. Anyway, as it happens, we don't need Jake. If you got rid of Jake, Hank could simply jog up to Captain Grady and give the report. He says pretty much the same thing.

Note: Hank is out of breath when he catches up to O'Grady. Then for some reason after repeating what Jake told him, jogs back. Why? That makes no sense.

I'm not sure the American soldiers would be telling jokes at this point. The enemy is close, even if they aren't actively in pursuit. (BTW, why are the characters all given first nmes in Character Slugs but Captain is just CAPTAIN. Something wrong with Tom? O'Grady?

Quoted Text "Captain squints into the trees, concerned.

A bit awkward.

Look, I know the OWC asks to go easy on carnage. Yet, sniper fire, in rapid succession (!) only aims for the tires. Not a juicy target like...say a high ranking officer? Note that soldiers are walking alongside the jeeps (typo p4,BTW) and not one of them gets even a bullet in the leg. It isn't until a page or so later where we see an injury and a casualty. The Hank's shot in the head....but still alive (?) Later, Tim gets shot in the legs (about time)...

Quoted Text Captain gets the attention of Jake, Hank, and PRIVATE BILL QUINCEY (19) who hide behind the rear jeeps.

Remember, Hank was out of breath running what seems to be a three- to four car length.
Come to think of it, how many snipers are there? You imply there's only one, but the sniper fires shots left and right.

Quoted Text No medics are around.

But MEDIC TIM is. You not only confirm this a moment later, but a moment before.
Again, how many snipers are there? Cap kills one. But there's another, firing from the same position.  Soon you make this correction. But it's confusing in the read.

Quoted Text The corpse falls dead.

I'll let you contemplate what';s wrong with this line. You'll see it soon, it explains itself.

Okay, I'm getting annoyed with the sound effects. Just write WHIRR or BUZZ or BOOM. That'll be fine.

I'm hard pressed to find horror in this piece, unless you were thinking 'horrors of war' which isn't exactly what the OWC asked for, but hmmmm... alright. Horrors of war. Yeah, that's scary enough. Interesting, out of the box interpretation. Wish I could dig the story though. Feels lie a swing and a miss. But what a  big swing it was.

Some decent  writing on display here and it had an authentic feel to it but I don’t see even a glimpse of horror. This was a wartime drama. Some nice suspense, which was a little spoiled by the amount of chatter going on during the fighting and the overuse of the classic Batman style POW WIZZ BOOM!

Didn’t meet the criteria for me, sorry.

Hi writer,

Another WWII script. Hope you can surprise me.

Quoted Text As he talks with his superior

There is no way we could really know this. It would probably be fine to say As he talks into the radio.

Quoted Text xxxxxxxxsxxxcivxxxxx

A really bad typo?

Quoted Text The German captain gets his final orders and shares them with the incredulous soldier. The captain explains more and the soldier agrees, returns to his village patrol.

Some of information would be really hard to convey on screen. How do we know they are final orders? How do we know the soldier is incredulous?

Quoted Text POW! POW! POW!

It's a personal thing, but I've never been a fan of comic book sound effects in a script.

So this is just a war script. Whats the horror aspect?

In terms of the OWC this doesn't get there, sorry.

All the best.

BELGIAN SPRING

Pow-pow... haha! Sound effects rarely work. This is a very long 12 pages. Even with skimming it seemed to take forever. 'Where did we go wrong? Where?' A large dollop of melodrama for good measure - might as well end on a high.

I like war stories... but prefer gritty realism over patriotic fantasy.

DQ for me. No attempt at horror and too light on use of vehicle.

I almost didn't get through this. I thought this read more like a short story or novel than a script. I kept seeing things described rather than shown.  A couple of things struck me. For one, it's not a question of whether or not you can write because you can.  It's definitely a little too prose-y here and there for my tastes but that's nether here nor there.  Second, I'm no historian but most of the dialogue seems authentic.  I'd consider trimming some of it.   Overall, I can appreciate the hard work you put into this but personally I did not think you met the parameters.

Going to be a D/Q from my side - No attempt at horror and so would be unfair to judge alongside others who have tried.

The dialogue was a difficult read, felt very forced.

Matt

I'm not a fan of war movies and I started skimming at page 6 because not much was happening, just a lot of talking and war lingo, no suspense and no horror so it doesn't check off the OWC boxes for me, sorry.

Well written though so grats on that.

I love WWII Horror stories so imagine my disappointment when this lacked any bits of horror. I guess you went with the horrors of war? I feel a lot of people will DQ or rate it low due to not meeting the requirements.

Good job on writing something, try to stick to the requirements next time and I think people will go for whatever you offer.

In this day and age, it's difficult to inject suspense, much less horror, in a straight war story.  It's all been done before. Rescuing a pregnant woman from German occupied territory is admirable, but you need a more important objective to warrant interest in a war story.

I'm sure others have pointed out the following technical problems with the script, but since I don't read what others have written until all of my own comments are done, please bear with me:

1. V1 rockets were too valuable to use on an isolated unit of allied soldiers. Besides, you can't aim them like artillery or mortars, which are the weapons you would use in this case.
2. Ranks and names were never used over the radio. Unique call signs were assigned to all units and their leaders.
3. You never use the words "over" and "out" in the same sentence when you're terminating a radio conversation. "Over" means it's the other guy's turn to talk. "Out" means you're done talking and listening.

Others have covered your WW2 story very well. The part I have a comment on is:

PAGE 6:

YOUR ACTION: Three more SNIPER SHOTS are fired at the rear jeeps. Two
civilians are hit. Hank is shot in the head. Jake pulls him
against the jeep. Hank still moves. No medics are around.

I say how is this filmable? In your action paragraph, I see (in my head) a LS of the jeeps then maybe a MS of two civilian wounded then a possible CU of Hank getting a bullet in the head then to a MS of Jake pulls him against the jeep and lastly "no medics are around."

Do you see the difficulty of filming that paragraph. Then seeing no medics around. I didn't see any bartenders around either. See my point.

I see good possibilities here but a lot of polishing is needed.

Visualize the action as if you're the cameraman and write your action shots accordingly.

Hope I was of some help.

Good luck!