The Steel Saint by Praneel Nand - Short, Action, Adventure - In an era long forgotten, a fallen knight renounces his order to fight for justice in a corrupt and decaying kingdom. Can he bring about change, or is the kingdom far too gone for redemption? 26 pages - pdf, format

Hi Praneel,

Let me say first off there is a lot I like about this script – cool title by the way.
I felt for the formatting was good and your writing largely typo free (you miss a few possessive apostrophes throughout, i.e. “pounds the knights chest” and misspell the odd word, i.e. “then” instead of “than”,  “too” instead of “to” etc… ). There were also some lines I felt were excellent, my favourite (although there is a type here - “it’s” instead of its) being:
“it’s grimacing mouth drips oil  as vapors pour from many facets, like a portal to the gates of hell.” Although I fear others might say this is too ornate and prose like – but I like it.
I also felt the pacing was good, good build up, beats in the right place and you also add emotional depth when you have Ether captured and reveal Megdeth as his brother in the prison scene. I felt Ether’s death was a brave move and worked well- his spirit will live on in others.

The main criticism I have is that some of the dialogue is too overblown and ornate. I grew tired very quickly in the opening pages when Ether renounces his allegiance – each pronouncement he makes is poetic and grandiose and it grew stale. To be honest at its worst (for example at the beginning and in the prison scene between Ether and Megdeth) the dialogue is almost a parody and Ether a caricature of heroic literature. It seems that you try to make every line of speech a grand statement, for example on page 17 Megdeth says, “This offer shall part from my lips only once”
Some other points are:
-Page 3, you write “surrounds”, do  you mean “surroundings?”
-What on earth does “dogmatic filth” mean?
-Bizarre sentence, “Of course, if you feel hunger would claim before coin would find it’s (Typo again) way back, I could spare you the misery.”
-Page 10 - “He observes his soldiers as they mill about in a hurried frenzy” (mill about mean to loiter, you can’t loiter in a frenzy, the meaning is contradictory)
-You give us no description for Metrabe when you introduce him on page 14
-You have forgotten to capitalise King Amities when you introduce him on page 15
-Page 14, Ether puts alcohol on his burns, very bad idea
-A couple of times you tell us rather than show, first when a dead child is cold, second when the concrete in the prison is cold. You need to convey “cold” to us visually.

But I did enjoy the read but you need another rewrite, and really need to tighten up the dialogue and make it more realistic.

Good luck
James