Quoted from PrussianMosby Ghost Plane Not sure if you should call a fictive story a 'true' story….

I’ll just chime in and say it’s fine, it’s done all the time and means very little. In this case I found it sets up the story beautifully, it helped strike a great tone.

The writing is pretty good. The pace suffers a bit during the action, what should be a snappy read gets bogged down in laborious words and too many beats.

What bugs me about this is the hand sanitizer and the “ghosts” which are really just zombies. The logline says he’s an alcoholic, so he really was just jonesing for a fix, but the hand sanitizer wouldn’t act that quickly. That logic aside, his frantic insistence after that opening suggests there is something supernatural at stake but it turns out to just be alcoholism.

The ghosts really should have been ghosts. The title, the setup, it would have been better if they were more aware, or more sinister, or more capable than just mindless corpses. One creepy ghost would trump a plane full of these zombies.

Vomiting over the zombies was a stretch too, but hey, it was another use of hand sanitizer. I’ll chalk that up to the challenge parameters.

Quoted from ReneC I’ll just chime in and say it’s fine, it’s done all the time and means very little. In this case I found it sets up the story beautifully, it helped strike a great tone. .

Famously the Cohen brothers did the "True Story" for Fargo which prompted people to try and find the treasure... that then led to the urban legend of the Japanese women Kumiko who died trying to find it... which in turn led to another movie about her.

Hello writer

I've read it through without taking notes, so that's a good thing - Although I did get a tad bored if I am honest.

Drinking sanitiser for his fix, it's gross - but, having know a few alcoholics in my time and the desperate lengths they go to to feed their addiction - I can buy into it.

It's alright, not really memorable or different - I like the images at the beginning of the fighters looking into the plane and seeing no pilot, sets up a bit of mystery - doesn't really do it for me after that though.

Some things I wanted expanded but obviously the page limit hindered you - like, why was this alcoholic westerner in Saudi Arabia to begin with? not the best of places for an alcoholic to be lol
I guess it was a decision of convenience - how could you set up a scenario where a plane wouldn't have alcohol.
Feels like you tried to mould the story around the parameters which resulted in a bumpy story.

He saves lives at the end, good for him - he very quickly jumped to that conclusion though - immediately selfless, very quick character turnaround - again, page limit restrictions.

Well done on a tough challenge

This was well written, and was set up well up until the snarly people appeared.

I don't know if it was because we don't see them actually arrive/infect/posses but I struggled to get behind this bit of the script... and them the vomitting hand gel, this could look off when filmed.

Ending sort of recovered itself somewhat and whilst the quote he recites is well know, I thought it was inserted well.

So, good writing just didn't quite buy it.

I liked your set-up and the 'based on a real event' structure. I wish I cared a little more for Jacob. It's difficult to like someone that's a rude alcoholic that wants a drink on a flight from Saudi. He should've planned ahead like the rest of us professional drinkers.

Good story, met the challenge. Another story of someone vomiting HS on the antagonist.

It's tough to write good dialog when there's only one character. You feel obligated to write dialog when it's not needed.

Good work, writer.

This brings back memories of being in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. I don't really drink, but a lot of the other soldiers did. At one point I saw a crap-ton of non-Saudi military folks in a line around the block to get into an ice cream shop in Riyadh. Turned out Baskin-Robbins had managed to sneak in some rum-flavored ice cream.

The initial over-black intro is not formatted properly. Is this a narrator speaking, or a Star Wars text crawl?

The jetliner pilot's dialogue should be (V.O.), probably with (over P.A.) as a wrylie.

For the fighter pilot, it's V.O. if we're outside his cockpit, otherwise it's normal dialogue.

I've never been tempted to guzzle hand sanitizer, but alcoholics have been known to drink all kinds of toxic things that contain alcohol. If he has a belly full of the stuff, would it really be "dry heaves"? Gagging or coughing or something, but dry heaves doesn't seem quite right. Again, not my area of expertise.

My God, is there anything that hand sanitizer can't do?

Long action sequences were broken up nicely to make it read faster.

Nice ending, but a script should end with FADE OUT even if the final image doesn't literally fade. Here I imagine it would scroll up as the closing credits begin.

When I read puke sizzled the monsters I thought this will look funny on screen.  I’m sure you saw this coming.  This met the criteria to me.  And the story was not bad too.

Seems I posted this too early before, attempt number 2.

I didn't enjoy writing this at all (which I think comes across in the script). It's not a short I'm going to revisit so I won't go on too much.

Quoted Text I love the opening text, but how exactly did the �facts� about the doomed flight come out if everyone on board died?...

Good point... I have no idea lol

Quoted Text The ghosts really should have been ghosts.

Yeah - it wasn't until after I submitted that I realised that was a misleading title. Ghost plane is an aviation term for a plane that continues to fly on auto-pilot but the actual pilot has been incapacitated... the fighter pilot mentions it at the beginning - but yea, agree i should have linked it into the story and had ghosts as the antags.

Quoted Text The ending worked for me. (Though, maybe only one body should have been recovered?

Yes! Jacob's body... why didn't I think of that? lol

It honestly didn't cross my mind that vomiting on zombies would be funny - I was hoping for more of a disgusting feel lol we live and learn

Thanks all for the comments  

P.S Alex - I saw your comment before it was deleted (my bad for revealing myself too early) - anyway, thank you for the kind words - Looking back at the comments, the worst comment I received was from myself lol