Comments Made During the Contest

Aralis Bloise (Level 4)

I like this and I can see it being a very creepy short as it is now, but I think it's missing something to make it great. I think it either needs to be longer (I know it can't be for the contest, but you could lenghten it for your own purposes later.) or simplify it a little bit. Maybe have less scenes/locations and concentrate on enhancing the ones you do keep. As it it right now it seems we are running from scene to scene too fast and I think the story would do better with a slower pace and more suspense.

Brian Howell (Level 4)

This is GOOD, but nothing spectacular. The title was intriguing to me because I had no idea what it meant and it had SERPES in it, which made me think of Serpent. After reading it though, I'm still not sure what the title means. I can assume it is what the girl is called, or the god, or whatever, was being worshiped at the altar, but that's just an assumption.

There are quite a few typos that were kind of distracting.

But ultimately it came down to the question, "what was the point?". Maybe if you had more pages to expand the story and the mystery behind this girl, but right now there's a girl who has a human-sized forked tongue that draws a face in a bible, then kills that person. That's kind of a weird thing, but weird doesn't always carry the story. I can't help ut think about the drawings rendered by her finger and in blood; how detailed could they really be? I pictured glorified smiley faces, so they could have been interpreted as anyone.

I was confused from the start, and willing to go on the journey to get answers. In the end, I'm still confused a little. It wasn't a bad journey, just not very rewarding, hence the GOOD.

Brian Mark Churchill (Level 3)

Formatting: just check whether this is correct: He nears her and produces a small
GLASS JAR. I don't think you should bring GLASS JAR in the next line. The same has been repeated elsewhere. Please do check on formatting style.
Something is missing: The piercing whistle of a...at full speed?

Brian Wind (Level 5)

This was really difficult to read. There were a lot of typos and omitted words, but the biggest problem I saw was a massive overuse of CAPITALIZATION in all the wrong spots. You are only supposed to capitalize a character's name upon introduction and important sounds. Things like Bible, book, traffic light, etc... shouldn't be capitalized. Capitalizing things that shouldn't be capped really only serves to confuse the reader and decrease the flow of your script.

The story was really interesting until I reached the end, which didn't make any sense to me. Why would she draw a picture of herself and jump in front of a bus? I didn't notice any clues in the script as to why that may have happened.

Overall, I think you put in a very nice effort, but I'm afraid that I think this script still needs a good deal of polish.

Write on!

Caroline Coxon (Moderator)

Interesting title.

It's an exciting story that gripped me but I found it quite hard to follow, mostly becaue of the way in which it was written. If you tightened up your style this could really grab everyone's attention.

I'm not quite sure about your transitions.

A THUG on a wife-beater shows the Old Man - uh? What do you mean?

at the feet of the altar - at the foot

tenths of other PEOPLE? Like, just their arms? That would be about a tenth of a person!

The Girl keeps her eyes? - uh?

You only need to capitalise a character's name the first time he/she appears.

Charlie Hebert (Moderator)

"A thug on a wife-beater"? Should that be "A thug in a wife-beater"?

"complains" should be "complaints"

"tenths of other people"?

And that's not all. Sorry, but the errors really draw attention away from your script.

I love your writing and your descriptions. This is really visceral, and extremely interesting - until the end which is totally confusing. Who was the fat woman? The old man? What did she pay him for - to kill White Suit? If so, why? How do the police know who the girl is and why is she so wanted - for having the border patrol kill themselves? White Suit killed himself - the police come after her for that too?

It almost feels like you just ran out of room. You have a 20 page script and only got to write five pages. Just doesn't quite work.

Love your imagination and your style. You are very good, but this story needs lots of work. Fix the typos and give a little better explanation of what is happening and this would be wonderful. Hope to see the other 15 pages some day.

Best of luck!

Chris Keaton (Level 5)

Starting off with poor grammar doesn't endear you to me. Not that I'm perfect, but it's the first line in your script.
You're going to get a lot of formatting help, so I'll just give you one. If you want dialog to drift off use an ellipsis (...), Dashes are to show that dialog is being cut off. If you want a pause use a (beat).
Tenths of other people? Would you really say 'Tens' why not dozens?
Interesting idea and main character.

Chris Messineo (Moderator)

There are some wonderful, dark, creepy images in this story,

However, I found it hard to follow and read. At times it almost felt like a laundry list, where each sentence was incomplete and led to another sentence below it. I think you can do that occasionally, but not throughout the whole script. Also, why all the capitalization throughout?

I think you have an interesting story here, but you need to embrace the craft and try not to let your individual style distract the reader.

Dan Delgado (Level 4)

You had an interesting idea but you didn't have much of a story. A strange girl does a voodoo type thing with a bible and her blood and a portrait of a person is drawn and that person, in different parts of the country, will die when the girl is around them. Okay, now what? I didn't really see any connection to the victims. It just seemed arbitrary. There is nobody that I remotely cared about or was even that interested in. The girl was like watching a freak show, or like a zombie. So she can't be much of a protagonist.

The other characters kind of came and went and seemed to have some vague connection with the girl, but I really don't know what that connection was supposed to be. And this was really hard to read. "A THUG on a wife-beater shows the Old Man" (end of line) That's where I stopped for awhile, trying to figure out what that meant. "INTO THE LIVING-ROOM and whistles to" (end of line) And I stopped again. "MOMMA -- 410 pounds of humanity..." Okay now I get it -- strange formatting. That ripped me right out of any story that could have been developing. There were a lot of spelling errors and dropped words that also didn't help. "Dark and empty with the exception of the WAITRESS (Laura)." The waitress has one line under the heading "WAITRESS". I'm not sure why you'd give her an additional name that nobody could know about.

I gave some credit for a unique idea. As is, I wouldn't watch this. I gave you a rating of "Fair".

Thank you.

David Birch (Level 5)

this is probably one of the tougher entries to assess because it was written like one would do a "high-action" screenplay a la tony gilroy or david goyer...i figuring that it would be much more effective in a feature because the need to introduce so many elements into the story in such a short time would be negated...if i had any problems, it would be with the story itself, the subject matter was just too vast to cover in 5 pages and i really thought the premise of the challenge was just thrown in...the story would not have been changed at all had the picture aspect not been included...but a well written story...just needed more time to develop...

Faith Friese Nelson (Level 5)

Even after reading the screenplay, I don’t know what the title means.

Page 1. “A THUG on a wife-beater”… Not sure what the writer means here.

Page 1: “Mind your fingers with that – I want no complains from her family.” Complains should be complaints.

Page 3: “The Girl and tenths of other PEOPLE…” Do not understand what the writer means by TENTHS of other people.

Page 3: WHITE SUIT. Is this a woman or a man? Age? I have a hard time envisioning this character.

Herman Chow (Level 4)

This is the second consecutive script I read with superimpose texts before the film starts. I don't want to say anything about whether this is all true or not, maybe it really is, but putting it beforehand doesn't really add anything to the story. I forgot this is supposed to be true when I finished reading the script.

The major problem I have is the lack of motivation/reason from the Girl. I know what happened to her, she seemed to be possessed or something by Momma. But why? Why is the Girl doing all that? If the Momma ordered her, again, why?

Right now they are all incidents of the Girl murdering different types of people without explanation. I can let go of killing the border patrol because the Girl can go to New York. But why kill the White Suit and herself?

Also, I'm not sure if drinking brandy fast will cause death.

Your writing is unique, maybe it's too different for my taste. You got a lot of LOCATION, PEOPLE, ACTION that are capitalized in a new line, making the read jagged and disjointed. Other than that, no complaints on the writing.

GOOD.

Jayaram Sanaran (Level 2)

wahh ! this one was very good... it had a fiery pace to it which i enjoyed... it was just like watching a short film of the fantasy genre. Although not a great storyline to it, i felt it was gripping...By the end of the story i was wondering if any picture or portrait did come in your short... i realised later on ! whew.. good one ! But, scram means to ask someone to go away immediately i think.. don;t know of it suits here ? I ve assumed its a typo of 'scream'... good one there at the end !

JeanPierre Chapoteau (Level 4)

That first sentence reads very odd. I don't know why, but it does...

Is it a thug ON a wife-beater or a thug IN a wife-beater? Those sentences mean completely two different things. There are either two people in the scene or three. And what does "shows" the old man, mean?

Oh I guess I got the transition.

"410 pounds of humanity" I like that description.

If a train is going full speed, the little girl wouldn't be able to sit on the edge of an open cart. She would fly off.

How does the white suit guy know her? He saw her on the news I guess, but how does he know about Mama?

I think you over described him taking a drink from the bottle.

What is Madison and East 79?

I don't get any of it. She drew faces on the bible to killed people, I get that. What was her mission? Why did she go into the bar and kill White Suit? How did everyone know her face, and why were they scared of her. It's impossible to know what she does to kill people. Why did she rip the page out after she killed them? Why did any of this happen? I'm asking you all these question so in the rewrite you make sure you answer all of them.

Your style of writing is very confusing as well. You stop mid sentence just to continue on another line. I don't get it. I'm assuming each line would be what the camera would be focusing on, but it is just far to confusing.

Like when you said "The girls slaps her

Bible on the..."

I was wondering who she slapped. I had to read it like 5 times to realizes you were talking about the Bible. You should read more scripts. I think that would help you out a lot.

Jeff Ferry (Level 4)

It's tough not to like the title. I thought this was a great idea that didn't pan out quite as great. The story was a little choppy and the scene cuts were disconcerting. There were a few minor spelling/grammar issues which I'll let others point out in more detail. Overall, it kept my interest, but didn't quite wow me.

Jose Batista (Level 5)

I don’t get the story. The girl is pretty much empowered to kill anyone she draws on a bible page with her own blood. The White Suit must’ve been the target, but there is no reason why. In the end she took herself out in the same way that she did her victims, but that also seemed unexplainable and senseless.
I wish I could understand what’s going on here because the story does seem very interesting and the girl’s power is absolutely charming. The set up in the beginning with Big Momma and the Old man was not clear enough to make the ending all the more interesting. While I like the script in the sense of scenes and action, I couldn’t get into it the way I wanted to because I do not get the purpose of the girl’s mission. A Good Job nonetheless. Your writing could benefit by tightening up those sentences and the dialogue was not bad, but some sub-textual meaning could have made this better understood. Cheers.

Khamanna Iskandarova (Level 5)

This one reminds me of the entry submitted to It's Alive, Pia.

All the visuals are very powerful. She draws then kills the person she drew. The question is what for.
also, why Luna killed her partner - I mean how she got bewitched like that?

The writing here is pretty great... And very powerful transitions... but again I don't understand what for. Too many meaningless characters for a short, I think. Momma was fast forgotten, very powerful image, but did she serve the purpose?

This is an idea for a feature, needs to be thought through and put on paper in 100 pages... to get these images out of your system:)

Rating it Good - the visuals are pretty great.

KP Mackie (Level 5)

Nice variety of locations; Mexican Hacienda, Hut, El Paso Desert, Train and New York are visual. Characters are memorable. Terrific mental image of Momma at 410 pounds waving "a BBQ rib" at the Old Man and licking sauce off her fingers, and The Girl with the fangs using blood from her finger to draw pictures.
Didn't understand why The Girl is sent all these places to essentially rub out different people, but suppose an explanation is not a requirement. Kept thinking, though, that a line or two of backstory about Momma and The Old Man who orchestrate all this carnage could be helpful.
Dialog is minimal allowing the images to carry the story. Curious about Momma's caution to The Old Man regarding The Girl's tongue in the jar, "Mind your fingers...I want no complains (complaints?) from her family." Infers that the tongue is returned to The Girl's family.
Effective style of writing description; it's hard to do well. There are some typos throughout that could be easily fixed.

Kyle Patrick Johnson (Level 5)

The odd thing about this story is that it claims to be based on a true story. But I'm not sure what the point of it was, nor how such mysterious witchcraft came to exist then, nor what the takeaway message is. Many themes are hinted at, such as occult dabbling, revenge, mysticism, etc., but none of them are developed fully within the five pages. By focusing so narrowly on suspense and action, any "moral" or meaning got rather obscured, I think.

As a result of the obscured message, the girl's suicide comes across as extremely abrupt. Why'd she do it?

There are some formatting issues, such as with names. For example, if the Waitress actually has a name (Laura), then I don't understand why she's called WAITRESS in the action and character lines. In general, real names are preferred over generic names.

There are also some typos. For example, "tenths of PEOPLE" actually means a percentage of a person, which is a pretty funny mistake. I had the image in my head of heads and arms moving around by themselves.

I'm not sure what exactly killed the White Suit. He drank a lot of liquor, sure, but I don't think he would've died so quickly.

Margaret Ricke (Level 5)

Very cool title with a couple of interpretations. I'd be interested in learning which you meant - 'sickle' or 'serpent' scorpion? I can see it as the girl, as a grim reaper or, with the split tongue, a snake. Maybe you meant more than one... Great title either way!

I'm not crazy about the style of writing, but I love the story. I found the style distracting. Fortunately for both of us, the story... the images you bring to my mind... out weighs that. I had a pretty great read, and you get a Very Good!

Martin Jensen (Level 5)

A great story. I liked the supernatural element. In particular, the scenes where the girl forced people to kill themselves were creepy and fun.

I'm not entirely sure what was happening in the opening scene. For what purpose was she being trained? That didn't seem to pay off over the rest of the script, which I expected it to, although it could just be me that's missing it.

There are a few mistakes in spelling and grammar that can be easily fixed. There is also a lot of upper case words that don't need to be and many line breaks that come in strange places.

Good.

Matias Caruso (Level 5)

Some cool visuals here. You've got a very rich imagination. Loved how she painted the face of those she was about to kill.

Seemed to lack an emotional spine though. Who are we rooting for?

This tale raises a lot of questions, which is good. But it leaves lots of questions unanswered which is not so good. Who was she? Why all the killings? What was that opening ritual all about?

Michael Cornetto (Level 5)

I thought this was an interesting story about a girl who could control people with pictures. You did a good job of telling it, however, something about the way you told it really bugged me while I read it. That something was generic names.

I can understand why you approached it that way - the names were changed - but IMHO it didn't work. We could have been much more attached to the girl if you gave her a name. And some of the other characters could have had names and that would have benefited our envisioning of the script.

The other thing that really got to me was the ending. I felt like it came out of nowhere. There needs to be some foreshadowing if she's going to kill herself.

Narrative **
Dialogue ***
Character ***
Story ***

3 * out of 5 *

Millar Prescott (Level 3)

Well you had me all the way to the end. Then, I just asked, "Why?" It started out with so much promise. Interesting hook right at the start. Kept me interested, despite the thought that English is not the writer's first language. But the ending made the whole thing pointless. Poor writing. Great story idea. Needs major work, but has great potential.

Paul De Vrijer (Level 4)

Well, I don't mind the

SLUGS you make but it's very

HARD to keep the pace if you

CONSTANTLY do it.

It breaks it so much, it's not even an aesthetic thing any more. It's supposed to be better, not annoy the reader.

It's a good idea, but I don't really get what is happening with WHITE SUIT. He just dies from drinking the bottle? I can imagine it's loads of alcohol, but you don't instantly die from that.

I don't really get the story, she was just enchanted to kill somebody and then kills herself? I'd like a more conclusive story, or some more background, it's a nice little concept, I just don't think this is the way you should approach it.

Paul Williams (Level 5)

This is creepy and vicious, but I have no idea what it's really all about. Who is this Girl? Why is this happening to her? Why is she doing this? Who are all these peripheral characters? What's the moral of all this?

I would simplify your screenwriting and clear up some formatting issues. Just stick with the basics. Some sentences were awkwardly phrased.

Rich Keel (Level 4)

Interesting story but your Caps and whatnot distract from the story when it started to get really good. I did not like the way you did your actions where you would have the action going fine and then you went down to the next line to finish. I think I know what you were trying to acheive with this but to me it just hurt the flow of your story. You have a great idea here but it is flawed with what I mentioned above with typos and a different format then what I am used to...so the story is pushed to the side when the reader has to struggle through it. I gave this a fair to start but checked with other writers and they say this format is legit when not overused. Which you didn;t seem to do too much. So I'm moving you up to good.

Sorry...Good luck to you this month...

Sally Meyer (Level 5)

This is such a creepy story. I'm not sure I fully got what was happening, but it was interesting and colorful.

What tripped me up was the way you formatted it, it's a bit hard to follow.

I think this would be very dark and scary on screen. Not sure what the title means. Titles are so important, that to me it would be better to find one that has meaning, and doesn't leave the average joe wondering what it means.

Good work, you've created a unique creepy story that kept my interest throughout, mainly because I was trying to figure out what the ending might be.

Scott Merrow (Level 5)

There was a recent forum thread discussing the use of this technique where you stop a sentence in the middle and jump to a secondary slug line. All things like this are a matter of opinion, but it seemed to me that the consensus was that this technique can be effective, if you use it judiciously...and sparingly. IMHO, you've used it way too much. It makes your script seem jumpy and difficult to read. For example, on Page 1:

"A THUG on a wife beater shows the Old Man

INTO THE LIVING-ROOM and whistles to

MOMMA -- 410 pounds of humanity sprawled on an oversized bed besides a tray of food."

To me, that's a colossal jumble of words. I had to re-read it a few times to figure out what was going on. (And I still don't get all of it. Why is the thug on a wife beater? What does that mean?)

It also seems kinda random -- there's no rhyme or reason to when you decide to use this technique. For example, on Page 4, you jump to the next line and capitalize BIBLE, and you capitalize THE GIRL and EYES, so why don't you jump to the next line and capitalize "shaky finger"? I just don't get it.

So, my first recommendation would be to go through the script and smooth it out.

I think the biggest mistake you've made in this script is you've sacrificed substance in favor of style. You spend a lot of time describing things like the CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK sound of a bottle cap opening, but...what's the story? All the weird voodoo people in the first scene just go away, and the girl takes off on an apparently random cross-country voodoo murder spree. A lot of stuff happens...but why?

So, my recommendation: first tell us a good, coherent, compelling story. Then worry about the screenwriting style. And keep it simple.

My score: FAIR.

Stephen Brown (Level 5)

I don't know why we need the message at the start. For a feature fair enough, but just seems like wasted space in a 5 pager.

So a girl has her tongue replaced by some freaky snake's? Cool. My problem is I really don't understand why things are happening? Why is she killing these people and then eventually herself? What's the book about? I feel these questions need to be answered.

Some really cool imagery and this is an original, imaginative story but seems lost in 5 pages. I don't get what you are going for.

I had a problem with your writing at times. I'm all for helping a script flow by trimming scene headers but you took this too far I think. A rewrite could quite easily cut this script down to 4 pages.

Overall, points on for originality and creating a visual script. Points off for confusing me and for the script being quite a difficult read.

Tim Ratcliffe (Level 3)

I didn't get this at all. I have no idea what the story is about, who the characters are or what is going on. There are far too many characters and too much going on for a 5 page story. It's also very awkwardly written with a number of mistakes and odd phrasing. I'm guessing English is not your native language, in which case some mistakes are to be expected though. I'd be interested in reading your explanation of this because this makes zero sense to me at the moment.

Wes Worthing (Level 5)

I'm confused why you tell us: "A SERVANT with a tray full with food leftovers crosses" and then we never see this character again. Comes across as a waste of white-space.
Some typos:
"on" a wife-beater
"besides" a tray
I want no "complains"
"tenths" of other PEOPLE.

You introduced your characters properly until you came to: "the WAITRESS (Laura)." It seems she should just be The Waitress otherwise it comes across as you included her name only so White Suit can say, "I got it, Laura."

I was thrown off by: "The Girl slaps her
BIBLE on the counter" because the break in the sentence was at slaps "her" and I was thinking, "Did The Girl just slap Laura?" Better to use "the" at that breaking point.

Storywise, there is no questioning a creative premise exists. Very dark magic, eerie, cultish horror going on here. The fact that this is based on a true story doesn't shock me, but it does make it more interesting; I wanted to keep reading to find out what frightening events occurred, so I think it's best to keep the opening super.

With some TLC you could have something special here.

Comments Made After the Contest

Paul De Vrijer (Level 4) ~ 7/1/2010 1:32 AM

I think this was an amazing idea that would do much better in some kind of short-story format than short-script format.

Really like the setting and such and the story stuck with me through the month.

Teo Gonzalez (Level 4) ~ 7/1/2010 8:23 PM

Thanks to everyone for the comments, and thank you Paul for your note.

I've decided to write down some notes about the story, not so much to change anyone's mind as to acknowledge the effort that you guys put into its reading.


I lied when I said this story was based on events that happened. It wasn't. My apologies for that, but I thought that it would make the read more interesting.

There's only one true event to which I referred in the script, and that is White Suit's death by alcohol poisoning. A guy from my town tried the trick to win a bet -he was dared to do it- and that's the last thing he did. He finished the entire bottle in one gulp and dropped dead. So, for those of you who questioned the possibility of something like this actually happening, for the love of God, don't test it for yourselves!


Now, for the story. Some people felt left down by its resolution. The important clue was the title.

Serpes is Latin name for the English serpent. And a rough English translation of the name “Androctous” is “man-killer”, from the Greek “andras” meaning”man” and “kteinein” meaning “to kill”.
Androctonus is the name of some of those fat-tail, black scorpions which sting can kill a person. I also got drawn to bring the scorpion to the story because scorpions kill themselves when they feel doomed -as in surrounded by fire, for example. That's why the story ends in suicide.
I wasn't really expecting that people would grab the dictionary -or google the word- so I knew what I was getting into when I submitted the story as I did, but once I got the title there was no going back. Plus, I didn't think that an on the nose explanation would help my purpose.

So, Momma and White Suit have some beef, and Momma wants to take him down. The Girl is sold by her family and transformed into this monster by the Old Man. Somehow she can see into the future, so she has glimpses of the dangers dangers ahead. Some of those, she can avoid or even make them work for her, such as the encounter with the Border Patrol Agents. She will draw the face of the person with her blood on the Bible. And when the person sees his or her portrait, the Girl will possess his or her will.
She works her way to NYC and kills White Suit with the same m.o.
Once she feels doomed -surrounded not by fire but by the police- the scorpion part of her new being takes over, and she kills herself.

As for the format, no I wasn't trying to be original and break rules. Rules and principles are there for a reason, and I like that.
I wrote this story visually. I wrote the shots, which, by the way, is what a screenwriter is supposed to do.
I knew I was in for a ton of criticism, so I'm fine with that.
One problem was that in just five pages, five shots make the whole story, so it feels I overdid it. But I plan to write a longer version, so the script will not be cluttered with vertical format.
With regard to the five pager, though, if I where to do it again, I'd do it just the same.

Apologies for the misspells, though I have to say the mistakes are not there for laziness. The spell program in final draft, sadly, doesn't detect grammatical errors and, even just now, tells me everything is OK with the writing.

Wes, I appreciate very much your comments. The introduction “WAITRESS (Laura)” came to be that way because White Suit calls her name in “I got it, Laura”, not as an excuse so that he could use her name. I just followed the flow of the character's dialogue and rectify my description of her.


Cheers, everyone

Kyle Patrick Johnson (Level 5) ~ 7/2/2010 10:41 AM

"I lied when I said this story was based on events that happened."

That's the same stunt the Coen brothers pulled with Fargo. I think it's the kind of trick that only works once, though.

On the title: If one word is from Latin, and the other word is from Greek (which I actually figured out, by the way, though I didn't bother translating), then the clue might not be as revealing as you think. A Latin phrase or a Greek phrase are easily googled. But to expect the reader to google one word and THEN the other word is asking too much. Titles are usually taken as complete phrases, and need to be internally consistent. Clues are supposed to be figureoutable, and you do understand that you painted yourself into a corner with the title.

Of course, I'm notoriously awful at coming up with titles, myself, so maybe I shouldn't be dishing out title advice. :)

By the way, I really liked the visual of the White Suit. I could easily picture him.

Teo Gonzalez (Level 4) ~ 7/2/2010 4:12 PM

Kyle, thanks for your comment, and many congratulations for your new baby and, of course! for your latest win

Yes, the stunt was a take on Fargo's. I get your point, but at least two people who reviewed the story thought that the trick made the story more interesting.

Me, I am surprised that no one voiced disbelief about a mid teens girl growing fangs and a viperous tongue, but some people doubted that a person can die suddenly from alcohol poisoning -the only true fact in the story.

Thanks for the title advice, sincerely. I didn't expect that anyone would check on google just as I don't go to see a movie with a dictionary in my hand. I'm just pointing to where I found my clues because some reviewers asked for clarification.

I also thank you for your compliments. The fact that come from the month's winner make them even more meaningful.