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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    One Week Challenge    January 2020 -  One Week Challenge  ›  Quote the Raven, Nevermore - OWC Moderators: ReneC, Administrator
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  Author    Quote the Raven, Nevermore - OWC  (currently 1168 views)
Don
Posted: January 25th, 2020, 12:07am Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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Quote the Raven, Nevermore by Mary Shelley and H.P. Lovecraft - Short, Horror - When a grieving man conjures up a dark twisty tale -- he soon discovers not only can dreams come true, but nightmares, too... - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work



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AnthonyCawood
Posted: January 25th, 2020, 6:25am Report to Moderator
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I'm guessing this is going to be gothic

There is a hell of a lot of capitalisation going on in the first scene, current logic is that these are largely unnecessary in spec scripts... even if you do prefer them then they tend to be sounds or objects, blistering is neither and looks out of place... i'd tone these down - a lot. (which you do later in the script)

Elipsis, twice in first scene and one not used correctly (imho)... I do love a good elipsis too but... well you get the point

Three shows a night in a theatre... nope, not for a proper play surely.

Okay, so I'm vaguely familiar with the source works here and got many, though I doubt all, of the references and these work well in a well worked pastiche like this -  good job.

I think those unfamiliar with the sources may find it a tad confusing, but that's their fault

Liked it.


Anthony Cawood - Award winning screenwriter
Available Short screenplays - http://www.anthonycawood.co.uk/short-scripts
Available Feature screenplays - http://www.anthonycawood.co.uk/feature-film-scripts/
Screenwriting articles - http://www.anthonycawood.co.uk/articles
IMDB Link - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6495672/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
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eldave1
Posted: January 25th, 2020, 11:35am Report to Moderator
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Some folks don't like creative title pages - I love them and this one was especially good.

Great description of the Nurse - very visual. All in all an excellent job in establishing tone here in the opening. Although I did want to know where I was geographically.  Could have been done in the header - e.g., ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE - is an example - this is a real nit, I know.


Quoted Text
Bytheseashore Manor


Need some space between those words.

Loved this:

VINCENT

Quoted Text
If there really is such a thing as
turning in one's grave,
Shakespeare must get a lot of
exercise.


This is start to drag a bit at the end - I dunno - could be the dialogue passages are a bit too long.

Anyway - a skilled writer here especially as it relates to conveying the tone of a setting.



My Scripts can all be seen here:

http://dlambertson.wix.com/scripts
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SAC
Posted: January 25th, 2020, 11:50pm Report to Moderator
Of The Ancients


… but some dreams do

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Writer,

Yeah, I'm one of those not familiar with the source material so this was generally lost on me. Some would say you write to an audience, but with the way this is written only a select few will get this. I did not. You do appear to be a good writer, and I enjoyed a whole lot of this, but it was tedious to get through, and with so many characters -- or ones that are alluded to -- I found this very hard to follow along with.

Steve


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Dan_P
Posted: January 26th, 2020, 10:20am Report to Moderator
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Huh. I did enjoy a good part of this. Your writing style, the visuals you evoke, the dialogue and atmosphere - I thought it was all very intriguing. I fear that a lot of the quality is lost on me, though, since I'm not too familiar with most of the works you're referring to (which isn't your fault). So, while I was struggling to keep up and understand all that was going on, I could still get a lot of good stuff out of this. I might return to this at a later point. And now I actually feel like reading up on Poe .

As someone who suffers from this himself: the capitalization is a bit much and often not really necessary.

"The lights go out, leaves them in the embers of the fire. He�s ripped from is sleep, groggy, clutching the book.  Eleanor is nowhere to be seen."
- This was going way too fast for me...
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JEStaats
Posted: January 26th, 2020, 4:24pm Report to Moderator
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No sh*t, there I was....

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'A dark beat'...that's a new one to me. Some odd formatting and lose the (continued) feature. Some grammar and misspellings too.

Man, that was ambitious. Interesting, what would it be, fan fiction? Not much more to say.

Good work, writer.
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MarkRenshaw
Posted: January 27th, 2020, 6:09am Report to Moderator
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I’m a fan of Edgar Allen Poe and yet I was confused by parts of this. I think this is because the screenplay is written like a gothic novel in style and tone so we get unfilmable comments like, “We sense his sadness.” and even longer unfilmables like  “The irony isn’t lost on him as they are swallowed up by the shrieking darkness... a desperate feeling of anger, frustration, and pity grips him.”  littered throughout. I certainly started to drift off towards the end with the long conversations and prose style action.

There’s nothing wrong with this story that a severe trim and polish couldn’t rectify. It is a creative endeavour to be applauded.


For more of my scripts, stories, produced movies and the ocassional blog, check out my new website. CLICK
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Heretic
Posted: January 27th, 2020, 12:21pm Report to Moderator
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As I go:

- The combination of bolds, italics, underlining etc. is so busy as to read slower for me.
- A Marx Brothers joke? +1.

Thoughts:

- A gothic pastiche that I'm not sure really went anywhere. As a mood piece I dug it, but as a story I'm not sure that the framing device of Genevieve really did anything for us. I'd rather see this as a two-hander without the intrusion of an outside eye, personally. The majority of what Genevieve explains comes through before she explains it -- I think you can trust in what you've done with the back-and-forth dialogue and not explain everything at the end.
- The literary repartee feels a little out of place, to me. Because these characters are caught in a ghost trip, having them get half-meta with literary allusions actually muddies things more, for me. Let it exist on the level of the abstract without going beyond that.

Chris
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Matthew Taylor
Posted: January 27th, 2020, 12:28pm Report to Moderator
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Hello writer

Another style I'm not overly keen on - Some descriptions are vivid and evocative - others are over-the-top and grating, novelistic. Some complete unfilmables in there too.

This is lost on me - I'm sure it's very clever, but I have no idea what it is talking about. I'm not the target audience for this.

I also don't think this meets the criteria - possible through all the words I missed it - sand, snow or space anyone? I'm open to being corrected if I missed it

Well done on entering


Feature

42.2

Two steps to writing a good screenplay:
1) Write a bad one
2) Fix it
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mmmarnie
Posted: January 28th, 2020, 12:59am Report to Moderator
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This was a very heavy 10 pages. The descriptions were very good, for a novel though. Way too flowery for a screenplay.  The story itself was buried under way to much quoted dialog and over description. And there was so much going on with the font...bolding, underlining, italicized, continued's...it was just too much.

What's a "dark beat"?

I don't know...I feel like you were trying way too hard to impress your readers but instead,  you lost them cus your story got buried. You obviously know how to write, I'd be surprised if your main focus wasn't on writing a novel. You seem to have the chops for it. Screenplays are definitely more lean.

Best of luck


boop
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ghost and_ghostie gal
Posted: January 28th, 2020, 2:13am Report to Moderator
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Poe like Shakespeare just makes me yawn.

Did you ever see that Simpsons Halloween episode where they did The Raven? Use that as your yardstick -- equal or better it.   Just kidding. Yea, I'll echo some of the other's.  The dialogue needs a trim.  Consider losing most of the voice-over in the final minutes.  A coupla lines of A/C descriptions needs attention. Too novelistic IMO.

I do agree a pastiche like this is a difficult story to tell and even harder to fully develop in 10 pages. The story is there all right.  You've gotten more or less some good feedback.  Now use it to bring it out.-A


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khamanna
Posted: January 28th, 2020, 5:33am Report to Moderator
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I’m glad I read it as you created some really great atmosphere here. All of your characters are tuned in to it.
At the same time it’s like a narration of everything. Your characters behave like narrators and explain and explain something that’s very clear and doesn’t need an explanation. Even if we didn’t need Raven - we don’t need Genevieve tell us outright what happened there imho.
But I still like it. It’s creatively told.
Actually one of the better entries for me
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Dreamscale
Posted: January 28th, 2020, 2:36pm Report to Moderator
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So we start with pseudonyms again on the title page and these don't work for me at all, so I'm starting off in a not so great mood.

Also, the classic line is "Quoth the raven nevermore", so let's see if this is a mistake or just the way you chose to title this.

Immediately I feel like I just read something from this writer and I was not very complementary.  I know already what this is going to look like and read like and neither are positive.

"Whom will come to know as GENEVIEVE." - This makes literally no sense as written, and it's most likely 1 of 100's of mistakes to come here, based on overwriting, and trying to impress...but it's not impressive at all, sadly.

I'm not going to keep taking notes. as there would be way too many.  Let's see if I can stay in until "THE END".

No ages for characters?

3 shows a night of live theater?  Those sure are long nights!

Yeah, this isn't for me.  The style on display only irritates me and makes for a long, hard read.

Sorry, but I'm out very early.
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Britman
Posted: January 29th, 2020, 2:14pm Report to Moderator
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Well written although I had to go back and re-read a few lines here and there. Not sure if that was because of the unfamiliarity of it all or just confusing ex. "she admires an oil painting above the fireplace of HERSELF as LENORE." Not sure what that means. I assume it's in reference to something specific in Poe's works.

I found myself skimming toward the end. Certainly, it is poetic in style and nicely written so will give you that. Just not my cup of tea.


Producer/Director of The Dollmaker by Matias Caruso
Producer/Director of So Pretty/Dark by James Williams
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Spqr
Posted: January 29th, 2020, 5:53pm Report to Moderator
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Excellent!
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