Red Butterfly by Gillian Fu (gigifufu) - Short, Horror, Drama - Princess Redden's never been accepted for her whole life...till she meets her own dark prince. 5 pages - pdf, format

So, no posts by gigifufu. Why should I read it? Only five pages. What the hell, I’ll check it out. Here we go.

Opening line is not good.

“It’s a still forest at night. Silence and darkness all
around.”

Not sure who did this.

“SCREAM!”

Another line in need of help.

“The forest of fairies. All sorts of fairies mill around,
noisy and boisterous.”

And this.

“She’s shaped differently, heavier than the others. Half mermaid, half fairy.’

What?! Half mermaid... which half? Or a mixture. Some visuals would help here. This is the star of the script.

I wanted to stop here but there was an energy to the writing I liked. Then this.

“He’s handsome, part man, part hobbit.

Review over.

Does it have potential?  Maybe. Definitely needs a tune up.

GARY

Gillian,

I read this over, I don't see you contribute reading much on the site, so I'll be brief.
You have a lot of white on the page, which is good, a hurdle for most amateurs.
Your spacing is off on your slugs and your action description is a bit dry.
You have "hobbit" and "half blood prince" for dialogue on the same page.
Peter Jackson and J.K. Rowling's attorneys may want to have a word with you.
Though Bilbo Baggins and the Half Blood Prince has a nice ring to it.
So is the red butterfly supposed to be a metaphor for your character, Redden?
I'll go into more detail if you're a regular reader on the site.

Thanks for posting and keep writing and rewriting.

Regards,
E.D.

I liked the story but I think it developed a bit too fast. I think it would benefit from going into details, telling us more about her and the death anger...

I just felt it was a little rushed. I can't put a page number that would satisfy me though

Show her grow in love with him, not just fall in love magically. But fall in love and then...

--just an opinion of course.

They quickly advanced from strangers to true love, I couldn't buy into that.

Describe a lot of your characters as part this and part that. I never had a clear picture in my head. Half mermaid? I'm guessing the lower half, because a mermaid could technically be half human, half fish, the upper half being human. So a fairy with a fish tail? I don't know, perhaps I'm not up on my fantasy, but that was a hard description for me to catch.

The story itself didn't feel special. Redden accepts death because the dark prince made her feel love, even though it was a lie?

This was not my cup of tea, I guess.

But you did have a lot of white, and it read fast.

Thank you all for reading and a big thank you to Don who posted it

I definitely understood where each of your were coming from especially with them falling in love so quickly and the descriptions...

As for the formatting, I'm sorry but I am quite unclear as to how to format the slug lines correctly...

Anyway, thank you for reading and reviewing, it's greatly appreciated

Given your script is only 5 pages long I don't think you could afford to bleed out their faitful bond to be honest.  I mean, how many more pages are you willing to burn to get to that stage?

As for your formating, it's a bit off.  But it's also not a lost cause... You have a basic idea of how to write a screenplay, you just need to do a bit more research and read a few more scripts floating around here.

Phil's work is phenomenal
Jeff's work "spacing aside" is Ace
Bert's work is gold

There are others, but to list them would be me doing your foot work for you.  Find them and study them.   I will tell you that your POV junk and your lack of transition into scene after a trans out is horribly wrong... Your narative shit needs to stop too.

"The best thing ever

True love"

Leave that garbage at the door.  

INT. RIVER-MOMENTS LATER is wrong... All wrong.  Leave moments later at the door if it's within the same scene.  Better yet, just stick to night or day.

Hope this helps, but in the event that it doesn't I'm not going to lose much sleep.

thanks a lot....

i'll go check them out.

There were too many references of other material in here for me.  Leave out the Hobbit and Harry Potter references.