Folktale by alex williams - Drama - A broken fishermen devotes his life to vengeance against the Loch Ness Monster, his estranged daughter makes one last attempt to form a relationship out of sheer pity and ends up joining her father’s crusade with plenty scepticism, their cause draws the attention of vapid millionaires looking to cash, in which can only, without a doubt, answer all their dreams. 123 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi Alex,

Are you on the boards to see this?

I'm interested why the title is spelled backwards on the board (elatklof) but spelled frontwards on your title page, is that a webpage error or intentional?

Your logline is bordering on incoherent at the moment. There's too many things happening in one sentence (a logline can actually have two sentences if justified, but at the moment there's too much detail in there. Right now you're putting equal weight on the daughter subplot as the millionaires, I'd pick one to focus on).

Some basic stuff I picked up reading the opening 10:

Really basic thing, but you blank a page to introduce the "Scotland 1977" setting on Page 1, but then also include a "1977" superimpose. Is the viewer supposed to see that super twice?

I really liked the scene descriptions and action/settings in your opening. Very fluid and interesting, considering it's technically just a shepherd on a hill. I liked how you set the scene and introduced the setting. Assuming you continue this throughout, it seems like a really slickly written script. I don't have a strong sense of your style with dialogue yet.

I don't know if you'd considered it this way, but I find the idea of Doug straight up seeing Loch Ness fully in all it's glory in the opening scenes a little...deflating? At least your script implies that we see full-frontal Nessy, so to speak. I'd save that for a later scene or during a pivotal moment. You'd get a lot of mileage just from implying something monstrous and then lingering on the silence after Dad is taken underwater. I get that you're wanting to imply a motivation for Doug to seek vengeance but that can be achieved with a more subdued but still very eerie tone. Up to you.

I'm interested enough to read on for this one, but I'd want to know that you're on the board to see this feedback? I typically try not to scream into the void

Hey there! Sorry I just became a member on the boards (long time coming) so sorry for the very late response.

To answer your initial questions, it was a we page error I believe as I typed the title in the little tab showed the letters coming through as backwards so I just thought it was maybe a weird quirk and would straighten itself out once published.

My longline is very messy I agree, I realised I had lost my own longline and decided to go with one that I had received from a screenwriting friend through coverage swap. I will definitely be changing it as I didn't realise quite how bad it came across!

The blank page is what I was going to stick with, but I erased the location super and forgot about the timestamp super (removing SUPER : SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS, but keeping SUPER : 1977). My fault for not proofing the script more.

I would definitely be up for feedback of any sorts on my script as I love it so much, I want it torn apart in front of me lol, seriously though I would just be very interested in other's thoughts when reading and discussing the script.

(Another thing about the first 5 pages and the Loch Ness Monster, because I saw myself directing it I imaged that I would only be showing tid bits of the Nessie, like half of a frame would be filled with just the grey-green skin of Nessie and another frame would be a single eye, and that's all we'd see until later in the script.

This caused me to just saw well I don't want to say that all we see is these tid bits as it's direction that people don't like seeing in scripts so I just said we could see the whole thing but picturing the scene taking place as different - which was a mistake).


Again, I'd love to read what you have to say about this script.