Irrational Circumstance by Jeff Rosenberg - Horror - A college professor and a group of her students go in search of an undiscovered, but harmless, great ape. Instead they find ravenous, flesh eating zombies. And as they wage a desperate battle for survival they stumble upon a secret even more terrifying than the living dead. 99 pages - pdf, format

Is the title purposely misspelled?  If it's not on purpose, I'd say that's a pretty piss poor start.

Logline also has issues, as it gives way too much away, IMO, and also, the last sentence in it, is very poorly worded, and is missing an important comma.

I tried to open this up, but I get a blank page.

I had no problem opening it, and the title is spelled correctly.  However, if Jeff Rosenberg is out there lurking, I strongly advise him to think up a new title.  Irrational Circumstance?  Does that sound like a horror?  Or a film from any other genre, for that matter?  If your subject matter is ravenous, flesh eating zombies, try and conjure up a title that gets this concept through to us.

Read the first ten, and it's actually pretty clean and fast.  A few grammatical errors, but nothing major.  However, it felt overly talky, with a lot of characters speaking about stuff happening to other characters.  I think you could have fit that first ten into the first five pages, and get moving with the actual story more efficiently.

  

Mispelling in title entirely mine. I have corrected it.

Don

Hi mate,

Have just started the script, noticed a few issues with sluglines, grammar and punctuation, but those can be readily fixed and I always feel they are less paramount than the story itself.

Jo is sassy and has very nice dialogue, she reminded me quite a bit of the character of Lillian DeHaven from G.I. Jane - I mean that in a good way. * One small issue, on pg4 Jo says '...you two are Feds', but then ends with saying 'Who the hell are you people?' - this seems a tad contradictory. Does she know or is she guessing? If she knows why would she then ask?

I agree with Ryan1 that the first 10 pages could have been condensed down a bit, don't worry though dude I'm always doing it. Overwriting is my biggest weakness.

The pacing is good and shit goes down exactly when it should. The teens are all believable and there are some funny lines - Marcie's 'eat me...buy me dinner line' in particular made me chuckle.

I also liked the punk'd by Romero line.

Halway through and I'm enjoying this mate, nice work.

Hey, Jeff

I agree with Ryan, as far as the title. When it comes to genre, premise and title, it's a package… the title doesn’t conjure up horror, and reads out of place once you get through the premise. The premise is too detailed, as dreamscale suggested, it should be concise, one goal, otherwise it gives the appearance of having two or more unrelated stories thrown together.

If you're around, I'd give the first ten a read.

BLB