The Bunyip by Jon Garland (wordartisian) - Short, Drama - A daughter's strange behaviour after the loss of her father is a concern for her mother. 19 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hi Jon,
I really enjoyed your writing style.It's very visual and you describe things really welll. Also liked the foreshadowing via the radio voice overs. By the time they became relevant, I'd become so interested in the relationship between Emily and her mother that I'd quite forgotten there could be danger lurkiing.



spoiler







The  thunderstorm and the break-in, them seeing the latch had been opened was quite spooky, and the subsequent attack by the intruder was tense.

I'm not sure I've understood who rescued them though. I'm guessing it was the father, because of the bouquet of flowers tied like the father tied them and his spectacles lying oin the ground but, if that's the case, I'm not sure why they assume he died in the accident/ He seemed to have had such a close bond with Emily, if he was alive, I don't get why he lets them believe otherwise. Or was it some magical thing, that his ghost came to rescue them? I hope I didn;t miss anything significant.

I really enjoyed reading this though.

Seems to be a rash of stories about poor kids with dead parental figures on this site.  This was certainly well written, same as harriet i got into the relationship of mother and daughter and forgot about the looming danger.

Not sure if its me being an ignorant american but i've never heard of a billabong other than the store
'Ouch. If Emily weren't so calm, that would sound like an accusation.'  that's an unfilmable.  try to tell us the same thing by the mothers reaction to what she said.
Alright figured out what a billabong is, I would use a different word throughout the script.  If it's an aboriginal word not in common usage its just going to confuse the reader.  Still have the dad explain it to the daughter, it wont actual change anything in the movie, you just need to include the word in the dialogue, since the dialogue seems to reference the scripts writing.  
I think it works to use a word like bunyip more than billabong, but just be careful the audience will have some understanding of what it is they're talking about.  
The dialogue between mom and daughter on p8 seems to go on longer than it needs to, repeating itself a bit.  Though the ending reveal is very good.
p19 some of emily's dialogue seems pretty unrealistic for a girl her age, even with her life experience.
Also at the end I think you should cut some of the dialogue when Emily and her mom are talking about what happened.  I like that they bring it up, but they kind of do all the explaining, you should leave some of that to the audience so we're still working it out after it ends.

Other than those little gripes it was very well written, and an interesting story.  keep it up.