Comments Made During the Contest

Bill Clar (Level 5)

"poll" should be "pole".

Bobby witnesses a river's miraculous creation and doesn't ask the driver about it? He just falls asleep?

It's hard to visualize the action with the cube. They're at the bottom of the ramp, so where does the cube initially land?

Your ending is incomplete. Dave lacks a motive and Bobby has to get home. The story cuts off right where act III should begin. Now, Bobby realizes that Dave isn't all there and he can control reality. Bobby needs to learn patience so that he can convince Dave to take him home.

Byron Matthews (Level 4)

There's quite a few spelling errors, and I'm not following your script. It felt like it was jumping around towards no real goal. There are a couple of things that I don't understand: (1) why Dave took Bobby to this fantasy world garage; (2) what exactly is the point of going to this garage; and (3) what exactly was going on?

Caroline Coxon (Mod Emeritus)

I'm afraid I just didn't get this at all...the purpose of the story, the motivation of the driver...

The bus motions for the first floor basement of a parking garage???? TWO major things about this make no sense at all

A very steep incline or ramp? Well, which is it?

I can appreciate that is some sort of fantasy but it's just too weird for words...

Joggling? I think you mean jogging.

Sorry, but this leaves me flummoxed.

Chris Setten (Level 4)

I had a great deal of difficulty following this story. I thought there was some good writing here and there but it just wasn't consistent enough. I think your structure might be too complex and suggest you refer to a guide on short story structure and plug your story into it. Writing is tough enough, use the tools to make it a bit easier.

Christina Anderson (Level 4)

What?

I never understood anything about the story. I was completely hampered by the script. I never got any traction to try and find the plot because I never felt like I understood what you were trying to TELL ME.

It's not CINEMATIC (for instance at the bus stop-- we start looking across the street as a bus obscures a bus-stop sign; from there we go down the street to look at Bobby, and then we're at Bobby's POV looking into the bus at Dave.) Think about scenes in terms of the camera-- where's it sitting and what all can we see from here. Eventually you're going to want to move the camera, so stop the take-- SLUGLINE it, and go to the new scene.

Poor WORDING. Sometimes is was just hard to comprehend (i.e.-- "Bobby, sleep, leaps up, peers through the window, notices something, and yanks the cord.") I have a couple of problems with this sentence...
1. write what happens (Bobby awakens...)
2. don't pour over the details-- give us the gist of what's going on (He spots something troubling out the window and YANKS the cord.)
3. try not to make sentences into lists of actions. make every moment important.

I felt like it was supposed to be a dream-- things weren't supposed to be logical (a very interesting concept).

Christina Kishpaugh (Level 3)

What? I have no idea really what was going on. Was it more experimental? Is it all deep and heavy and metaphorical. Seems to be. Not my cup of tea at all. It wasn't written all that well either_ the dialogue was clinical even though I didn't understand what was going on.

David Serra (Level 4)

Negatives: This feels a little rushed and you have WAY to many commas in sentances that need reworking.

Positives: I liked the idea and if it was a little simpiler I think this would be cool to film.

Overall, Fair.

Elias Farnum (Level 5)

Say that was a very imaginative use of shape shifting. This would be a cool animation, but there is no punch line or twist to give the story any cohesion. It is not even a dream as far as I can tell. Tight writing technique it seems no errors detected, good job.

Eric Boshart (Level 2)

This script was awfully weird. I had to go back many times to understand what the heck was going on. Obviously Dave is sinister and is making Bobby suffer, but I didn't understand the message or the tone. I wish you would have been more specific in your writing, you still had a whole page to use! I liked the ending lines of Dave, but still, this needed more description and more clarity. Good luck on your writing!

Faith Friese Nelson (Level 5)

This script was well written but the story felt like a dream/nightmare to me and I couldn't follow the plot at all.

Gary Rademan (Level 5)

A bus rider gets on the wrong bus

ENDING: What was the point of this parking lot training? To break a man of his childish behavior? Strange ending to a strange story.

GOOD.

Kenneth Hurd (Level 4)

I liked the interaction between the two characters. They both had distinctive voices and seemed to be very fleshed out. The only thing I'm not sure of is the story. While reading it, I often found myself confused, so I immediately read it a second time after my first read, and I'm still confused. Some of the descriptions, like "A bus sign on a poll disappears when a bus passes by." and "the stop Bobby stood at vanishes." and "A grassy field down the road transforms into a river." had me confused. I wasn't sure if they actually disappeared/vanished/transformed, or if it was your way of saying that we no longer see them. Like the sign disappears because the bus is now in front of it, or the stop vanishes because the bus has driven Bobby out of sight from it. When writing a script, you simply write exactly what we see. So if we are to see these things actually disappearing/vanishing/transforming, then that's fine, but if not, then I would recommend that you watch your wording. However, the ending led me to believe that the disappearing/vanishing/transforming was what we were meant to see. But still, if you could make it just a bit more clear, that would be helpful, because the constant confusing pulled me out of the story at times.

Having said that, I did find this script to be quirky enough to be interesting. Like I said earlier, your characters are well made and definitely carry the script. It was a joy to read them and I would have liked to see more of them. You actually had an additional page to write, since you ended this script at 4 pages instead of 5. If you expand it to 5 pages, I think you could really flesh a few more things out and make this into a fun little sci-fi story.

Khamanna Iskandarova (Level 5)

typo - "Bobby, sleep", maybe "Bobby, asleep"
I don't understand this: "The bus motions for the first floor basement of a parking garage."
It'll be very hard to film it perhaps.
I understand the purpose of the script - Bobby was disrespectful to the driver and the driver punished (scared rather) him, but the imagery was too grand for this. Or so I think:)

KP Mackie (Level 5)

Quite creative. Poor Bobby, stuck on that bus with the odd Dave.
Bit confused by what the character Dave is. He appears to be the driver later on, but the script doesn't indicate he's behind the wheel. There's a hint that he's simply standing inside when "the (bus) door slides open." Might be a good idea to include a word or two about the personalities of characters when they're first introduced.
The secondary heading THROUGH THE WINDOW' is a nice addition; helps speed up a read.
Might contrast the two characters a bit. Since the story is Bobby's, maybe Dave could be a man of few words. Limiting Bobby's dialogue to two or three lines max, but Dave's to one or two words would differentiate the two considerably.
Not entirely clear what the title means. The bus ends up in a parking garage; could the bus actually be in the parking lot of the garage?

Martin Jensen (Level 5)

"A bus sign on a poll disappears when a bus passes by."
"poll" should be "pole", and for a moment I thought it literally disappeared and was confused.

This never really felt like real people reacting to a real situation. I got that he was trapped in the parking lot, but neither of them acted like it.

Mike Senkpiel (Level 4)

Sorry, I couldn't figure out what was going on here. I like the surreal feel of it, but I think in this case, it was not clear enough.

I was confused with "A bus sign on a poll". Did you mean pole? Then I was not sure that Dave was the driver and I wondered at that. "The bus motions" and "A cup of ice lies" phrases also seemed awkward to me.

You did a great job making me feel like I was in a dream reading this. The images, symbols, and foreshadowing were great, but I didn't get it at the end. I wonder if you could have used the extra page to clarify?

MJ Hermanny (Level 5)

Some good imagination on display here.

The story is not too clear as some of the action and description are not very eloquent.

The dialogue also needs work.

Olga Tremaine (Level 4)

I'm probably incredibly dumb but I didn't understand the very first line in the first scene. It doesn't make any sense to me at all.
This story is so confusing, I don't understand what's going on. I'll read it one more time.
You don't mention that Dave is the driver. So when I read I'm trying to figure out if he is another passenger or the driver. I guess he's the driver.
Bobby says "Just let me out and open this door." Isn't it should be "just open the door and let me out"?
The whole story feels like someone's dream.
The formatting and dialog are fine. The writing is okay, but I'm very puzzled with the story, not sure what I've read here. I read read read and not really sure what's going on. Bobby wants to go to Broadway and takes a bus - the rest is mystery...

Pete Barry (Level 5)

All right, you'll probably get a lot of this: I really tried, but I just didn't get it. It's not so much the random (and it is extremely random). It's mostly a combination of two things.

First off, the characters don't feel real at all. If they're speaking in a kind of dream-talk, that's fine. But these guys don't even sound like they're having a conversation. They don't react to what the other guy is saying in a human way.

The second problem is that I can't follow the visual sequence of events. It's not even clear that Dave is the bus driver at first; once that's established, getting to the country (which seems to surprise even Dave) just seems to happen. The ice cube growing and the escalator appearing are more events that are hard to imagine exactly how they're happening on the screen. If you're going to try this kind of surrealism, it has to be crystal-clear how a person is going to see it.

Maybe others will enjoy it, I'm sorry if I couldn't be more helpful.

Raymond Kwok (Level 3)

I must say from beginning to end I have no idea what is going on. If Bobby were on drugs, I could kind of see what's happening. All in all a bit of a muddle. So what happened in the end? Dave says Bobby was not ready to leave the garage, and yet the escalator becomes a smooth level walk out of the garage.

Maybe if Bobby was overweight and the whole escalator thing was set up to make him lose weight??? I don't know. Just to hard to rework this one.

Sally Meyer (Moderator)

I was pretty confused by your story. I congratulate you for finishing a short script, it easy as people think.

I'm not sure what is going on here, there's stuff that went over my head. Such as what is the story about? Bobby gets on a bus and misses his stop. DAve said he lost his watch and the go to the garage and get it, Dave can drive him home.

It all went downhill after that, I wasn't sure what was going on, it was very confusing.

Scott Merrow (Level 5)

Whoa, I guess Bobby got on the wrong bus! (This script does not speak well for the efficacy of public transportation.)

All kidding aside, I was confused by this script from beginning to end. It seemed like a modern-day Lewis Carroll-type tale, only instead of "down the rabbit hole" or "through the looking glass", it was "onto the magic bus".

Was this some kind of allegory and I totally missed it? Or was it just a phantasmagoric romp in the night? Either way, I'm not at all sure what the story was about. A guy gets on a bus, fields transform into rivers, bus stops vanish, and a whole assortment of odd things (including gigantic ice cubes) happen in some sort of funhouse parking garage.

I was lost.

Nice try at writing a bizarre and eerie tale, but you really need to give us readers (or movie viewers) a little something to hang our hats on, otherwise it's just total confusion.

My score: Fair.

Comments Made After the Contest

Dan Delgado (Level 5) ~ 5/1/2012 5:26 PM

Due to a lack of time, I didn't read or comment on any scripts this month. I read this one first. I liked the way it flowed and how it got right into the action and never quit. It was fun to read. Give it some kind of a hook and it would be better. But at least it wasn't" JOHN (14), BOB (14) and MIKE (14) wait at a bus stop."

Having said that. Tough crowd. Lewis Carrol would have been in trouble on this site.

Elias Farnum (Level 5) ~ 5/15/2012 1:38 AM

Ahhh, I get this now from the rewrite, you really cleared things up. Much better, much better.

Reginald McGhee (Level 0) ~ 6/8/2012 5:39 PM

Thanks everyone for taking the time to read this and reviewing it. I think the reviews are awsome. It gives me something to improve on.

Anyway, thanks.