The second draft is now up.

I've seen some of the feedback here, so I thought I give this a look.

You made a couple of comments like you're insistent that people will love the twist at the end, if only they'd go read that far.

Kinda like telling some starving guy there's a really good restaurant on the other side of the motorway.

I've got some sympathy, as I had a feeling that there may be a good film here, struggling to get out - but if so, then this is the mother of all labors.

I can only go with what I saw, so:

## In the distance, a lightship which appears as a silhouette against the horizon. As the light from the moon catches the deck of the lightship ...
-- I got the feeling you were conjuring up a really nice image here -  but my problem with it was -

1) Being one of the less intelligent members of the boards, I've not got a clue what a lightship is - so I think it needs some description.

2) One second we're a distance away from the ship - the next we're on the deck. I get the image, and I like it - I'm just not sure about the way you're bringing it across.

## maybe a bit smaller than a soccer ball ...
-- Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Who knows? This just strikes me as passive, bland, writing - as the writer, if anyone knows, it should be you - I think maybe try and go for a more bold style - so it's the size of a football - or it ain't.

DOUG and Craig - one in CAPS one not - and we spend some time with these guys, so I really think some of description is needed.

Doug and Craig - quite a bit of their dialogue is 'agreeable' - really lacked some tension, conflict etc

## When they have finished, the men go out ...
-- You don't say what they are doing. If they just dumped some crates down - then say that.

It really needs some proper formatting too - Final Draft sorts it out nicely (tested it), so you might want to think about something like that?

Maybe you should try cutting some more of the dialogue -- there's still quite a bit of it that is not needed.

But it's all about re-writing, eh?

Best of luck with it.

Simon

I know it's already been stated, but my main problem with this script is the dialogue.
Redundant. You have nearly an entire page where the characters debate whether they should do something... or just do "nothing".
Your characters aren't as active as they could be.
I'll leave the rest of the critiques to the other guys.

I've read your very problematic first draft. Now that you've improved on it, I'll read this one, and try to get back to you in about 24 hours.

I see exactly what you are going for.  Dry staccato-type humor.  And in short spurts, some of it actually works for me.  However, 69 pages of it is too long.  I tired to stick it out for the twist, but like the OWL in the Tootsie Pop commercial, I skipped to the end.  The twist is okay, but not exciting, and the ending didn't leave me feeling anything in particular.

I think this needs to be cut down.  Too much bland exposition.  Make it shorter, sharper and more clear in the description department.  As Simon said, it jumps from a ship on the horizon to 'the deck'.  That threw me as well.  Shorter, sharper and give the dialog some punch.

I didn't see the first draft, so I have no baseline, but this draft has issues as well.  The margins seem to vary from time to time.  Not justified and ragged, the left margin actually changes ever now and then, and you have some odd spacing between the end words in some sentences. The last word is spaced way out.  It looks like you may have applied some template and tweaked it a bit?  Not sure, but it still needs some work.