The Path and The Moon by Mahesh P - Short - On a full moon night, an old monk of zen playfully shows the path to the young monks. 4 pages - pdf, format

New writer interested in feedback on this work

Okay, I have no idea what that was, but it wasn’t a script or anything resembling one.

Sorry but if what you intended to do was write a script you need to read a lot more of them. There are hundreds available right here for you to see how it is done.

I wouldn’t know where to start with feedback because it is so far off the mark.

It's not impossible, it just takes practice.

Mahesh, first thing you need to do is download screenwriting software. Try Trelby.org, it's free.

At the moment your formatting is all over the joint, your descriptive passages are a mix of CAPS (which they shouldn't be) and lower case, your slugs/scene headers need to be aligned left. Camera directions do not belong in spec scripts i.e., PAN, POV. Descriptive passages should be kept maximum four lines. You've also erroneously written some info in brackets. Spacing throughout is out of whack cause you're not using Standard Industry Formatting.

As a result your story is getting lost.

You could do with writing FADE IN at the top, and FADE OUT at the conclusion.

Write present tense and only what your audience sees on screen.

SS is a great site to learn from. Stick with it, you'll get it. :)



As Warren said, crack open some screenplays open in the Shorts section - read those written by regulars - you can tell regular posters by the number of posts under their names, and generally a lot of feedback/comments given.

Some notes.

This one is more teaching aid than story--the man who tried to capture the moon.  It doesn't work for me.  The writing needs help, and the formatting, well, it's already been mentioned.  I would think one immersed in zen would understand the importance to learn from others.  Read some scripts.

Best
Richard

This comes across as some strange metaphor, or parable that got lost in translation. There was a similar (type of) story a few years ago that had some kid fishing on a boat under a star lit night, but was fishing out the stars reflected in the water. I thought that was a cool little tale... is this the same writer? Just curious...