The Quest for the Red Boat by Willard - Two children go into a sewer to find a lost toy boat. - Short, Comedy

Hi writer,

Quoted Text Kim blows the whistle hard: TWEEEEEEEET!

I've never been a fan of comic book sounds in a script, personal preference I know.

I don’t know, I kind of liked it, but it felt really anticlimactic, and I'm not sure the ending really fits.

The writing is good, nothing pulled me out other than what I mentioned, but it works quite well here with what you have.

It meets the criteria so no issues there.

I think I'll come back and read this one again once I've read them all.

All the best.

I liked how simple the set up was. The brother and sister going off for an adventure is a simple trope that just works.

It's actually a set up that could go anywhere...real horror, coming of age drama, thriller etc

Here the ending felt a bit off. The reason is a simple one. The turn around is that the scaredy cat isn't scared of the actually scary thing and the other one who isn't scared all the way through is suddenly scared. He needs to be more over confident for that to work...I'm scared of nothing, kind of thing, and he needs to get more angry at her for being scared.

All the stuff outside the sewer was extraneous as well.

a 6 year age difference is quite alot...unless they are siblings.

The way the opening line is written, it sounds like they're both wearing Pikachu backpacks.

OK, cool.  You let us know through dialogue that they are siblings.  Good job.

Page 1 - Writing is fine, but absolutely no sense of comedy here.  Almost feels like a horror setup.

OK, so the comedy element is going to be the constant use of the whistle?  Not funny to me, more irritating, but I get what you're going for here.

Page 3 - You attempted to inject some humor by going above ground and showing the results of the whistling, but it's not very funny, and if you think about it, you have to wonder just where everyone is here - we started out near a highway and now we have a grandfather and granddaughter walking along a sidewalk.  Doesn't make alot of sense, and all these things have absolutely nothing to do with the "story".

Another giant rat?  As big as a wolf?  Uh...OK, so the tone just completely flipped here, huh?

The ending is just weird to me.

Story - Not much at all.

Characters - They're fine, although very inconsistent.

Dialogue - Nothing great, nothing terrible.

Prose - Good.  I see very few issues.

Criteria - Check.  You got it.

I like this one. It’s cute, light hearted humour.  I’d raise Kim’s age by few years.  A good use of the whistle objective.

The story was good.  It’s not war and peace.  Just a simple story.

Easily meets the criteria.

A light little tale.

Kind of middle of the road for me. Mainly because the ending just happens.

It's the story of finding a boat that turns into the story of finding a rat who happens to have the boat. That subtle shift breaks the story.

Writing is fine. Nothing ground-breaking. Nothing bad. Just, there.

There's the possibility for layering... and certainly you have the beginnings of it with the brother leading the way, then bolting at the end.

As I say... simple enough. But, it leaves me wanting more.

Nice tale for kiddies. Written ok.

Written well but didn't do anything to crack me up unfortunately.

You know what mom will do if she
catches us?
Where you can replace 'mom' with a proper name e.g. Karen, 'mom' needs to be capped.

FYI, I wasn't drawn to the title.

I get it. She's afraid of snakes and he's afraid of rats. We're all scared of something. The rat is how big?!
I don't think the sound of the whistle: TWEEEEEEEET! works at all well.  Sources tell me FWEET!  is often used in comics - onomatopoeia. I don't really think that's much better.

Characters were cute, just didn't make me giggle.

Hello writer

A lot of writers in this round use TWEEEET for the sound of a whistle..... is there some secret onomatopoeia club that I'm not privy to?

Funny, I like this. Good characters, good dialogue, nice relationship between the two.

detritus... jeez, you writers love making me feel dumb. OK, googled it, moving on....

A wolf-sized rat? There's a tone shift... I feel jolted now... Haha! never mind, you pulled it back. Love that role reversal.

OK, nicely done! I'm throwing points at you

Yet another light-hearted one. I think you did a good job with this.

Both the kids felt real, no easy feat. The dialog flowed naturally.

Simple story, but humorous and effective. A fast, easy read.

Great work here. :)

Nice tale and well written, hard to find too much to criticise.

I think tonally iot shifts around a little and borders on PG horror more than once.

The comedy is limited, especially in the beginning, but it increases towards the end and I really like the end as it is well setup.

Good effort.

Hi Writer,

I enjoyed this one. Another nice light-hearted tale.

The quest story is okay, simple but entertaining.

I also liked the atmosphere you created when the kids enter the sewer network. Well done.

The comedy is light, but it has its moments.

Nice touch with Kim and the huge rat at the end.

Good job,
David

The Quest for the Red Boat

It's very good. Very good. The decisions you made, the role of the whistle, the relaxed and relaxing humor with its innocent characteristics, which is so rare to be found these days- wow. It could have been quicker in act 2 but damn I won't hold that against you-
And also how the both main characters changed their roles completely so that the little girl in a sense wins the script… or that the rat becomes a friend which felt super consistent with your narrative style. Chapeau. Just let me give you high fives.

I was left feeling so so about this one. It shows obvious writing talent in the prose, and there’s a lot of white space on the page, which I like. But the story itself felt uneven — so much time is spent on describing the TWEEETS and building up the story, that when we get to the end it seems anti-climatic. A rat as big as a wolf? That’s a big damn rat.

I would lose a page of them on the search and get them meeting the rat much sooner. I also wouldn’t lose the brother at the end. Make him stick around, showing him to be scared while the sister is the brave one. Just my thoughts. Otherwise good writing on display here and all the boxes of the criteria are checked.

Good story. Likable characters. Not sure Kim is sane, but her antics with the whistle sure were annoying! To make her “adopting” the rat easier to believe, perhaps Billy warns her at the start  that there’s no way she’s going to find any cute animals in the sewer to make friends with.

Greetings,

Well rounded story for the page limit. Clear goal . Whistles always make good prop comedy like how you used it.  I can’t think of the movie ,but when Billy took off tweeting , it made me laugh because I related him to that one scene I watched. Whistle isn’t worth anything if no one around to hear it lol.

Not really to much to say. You know your way around a story.  Your writing is above my skill level so I can’t really give you constructive criticism.

Good job.

This one is one of the best if not the best for me. Great job for the challenge. If it was a standalone I would say she tamed that rat too easy. And İ would suggest some talk about rabbies and all. But for this its great. Now I have to reread the other entry I scored highly to score you both accordingly.

Yes, there was a story and it met the criteria. Not an interesting story for me and not very funny. I was just waiting for something to happy besides finding reasons to tweeee the whistle. Characters and dialog were so-so.

Not a bad story at all, just not for me.

What was that? Isn't it supposed to be comedy this round? It seems that you made no attempt whatsoever. It fails on criteria. It reads more like a horror.