The Invited One by Curtis James Coffey - Horror - On a dark and stormy night, a couple on an isolated farm take in a wounded stranger. As the days tick by in the company of their mysterious guest, strange things begin to take place. Crops rot, livestock dies, and terrifying apparitions appear, driving the couple to the very edge of their sanity. Could there be more to this stranger than meets the eye? 94 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hey all,

I thought I should mention that this script was intended to be for a production company that was looking for a single-location script with limited characters that could be shot for $100k or less. This is something that I'd never done before, and although nothing ever came of it with the company I wrote it for, I'd like to know how I did, as I never got any official feedback from them, either.

The name is professional, which is fairly rare.

I like the log line /premise.

I'll give it a read this weekend.

Was this part of a competition or something? I find it hard to believe that a prod co would pay you to write something and then not offer any feedback afterwards (eff you, Grammarly!).

Code The sun is just beginning to grace the world with its presence. All is still. Thin rays of light rise from the horizon and dance among rows of corn.

Why not just start with the second action line? The first seems pointless after the second.

Code A rooster crows. Cows softly moo in protest of the noise.

Aside from cows mooing in protest, how do they do that softly? It's a soft moo, yet one can determine from this that they are doing it in protest at the noise?

Code A nice home. Two stories. Large front porch. Old, but it's been well kept through the years.

A long-winded description. Don't tell us it's a nice home, simply describe it as such. What would you do if a director could only get a three-storey (eff you, Grammarly!) farmhouse, would this be a dealbreaker?

An old, well-kept farmhouse with a large, oak-beam porch.

OK, maybe you don't want to use oak-beam, but I used way fewer words than you did and I said more.

Anyway, that's all I have. Good luck.

No, it wasn't part of a competition. A friend of mine works for the company and told me what they were looking for and asked me to write something. I did, which my friend liked, but then the company themselves never said anything on it.

I tend to start my scripts a little too-wordy to set the scene. The rest of my scripts don't contain as much frivolity. I'm not sure why I do it. I guess I want to paint a picture and rope in the reader?

Also, I agree. Grammarly is a jerk.

Ok, I read this as promised.


I thought it was pretty good. I really have no suggestions on what to improve, specifically, so I'll just give you a generalised response about how I felt about it overall.The writing was clear, at no point was I confused as to what was going on. There are a few moments that felt a little false, but they were such minor things I can't be bothered finding them.

I think the thing that was lacking the most was the feeling of terror, of the feeling that they'd truly let something genuinely frightening in the house. Julia and Thomas argue quite a lot, but I never felt a significant level of fear about the situation. If it's possible, I'd try to ramp that aspect up. Make the Luciano incidents more frightening and bolder and then it will be easier to have Julia and Thomas react in a more terrified manner, and that will elevate it some, I believe.

I think that is the key to take it from pretty good, to good.

Hey, thank you! I really appreciate the feedback and I'm glad that you didn't hate it.

My intention was to make it more psychologically scary than outright terrifying. (I think you know why, without providing spoilers here in the comments.) But I would definitely like to make it good, rather than just pretty good.

Thanks again so much for reading!