Bug Out Blues by James Austin McCormick - Short, Sci Fi, Fantasy - A backwoods prepper is hunted by alien invaders intent on wiping out every human on the planet. 6 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi James,

It’s a familiar post-apocalyptic/survivor setup, but the question of what and who worked enough to keep me engaged.  Keeping the threat off-screen is a nice way to ramp up the tension while keeping the budget to a minimum so kudos there.  Feels like a student-friendly project.

The moment Rick discovers a second survivor by radio is where it strays into too familiar territory: can this stranger be trusted?  This goes as expected with it being a ruse to draw Rick from hiding and finish humanity for good.  Given we know so little about Rick or the wider picture it’s hard to make it land with much weight.

There’s enough to work with here in the setup and atmosphere, but ending-wise, I felt like I was already ahead of the story with nowhere left to go.  It's a well-travelled scenario and one that's going to be tricky to setup and payoff in the short format - at least with a fresh twist.

Hope this helps.

Steve

It very much helps- thank you Steve.

Actually, I wanted this to be more ambiguous with the radio broken so the suggestion was he might be delusional - I couldn't think of a good way to do it so I went with the cliched ending (as you so rightly point out).

Thanks so much for taking the time to comment- I'll go back and try to rework it so it's more in line with my original idea.

Thought this was well done for the most part - got confused in the opening.

Quoted Text ANNOUNCER (O.S.) Nobody know where...major cities in ruins...billions dead....they came from the...

Something wrong.

Know where? or nowhere? Knows where?

Cool story - kudos

Thank you- and thank you for pointing out the typo

Quoted from James A McCormick Thank you- and thank you for pointing out the typo

my pleasure

Bug out Blues has just been filmed under the title "The Last Survivor"

The script is just a little 6 pager but director Jason Bullock and his crew have done a really amazing job.

You can find the YouTube link here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9VIN9qy0eM&t=51s