Lovely Eggs by - D. Brown - Short, RomCom - A husband and wife question why their heads are so itchy while their young butler cooks them breakfast. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hmmmmm, hey writer!!

First one down and what do we have?? Well, we have chocolates, roses, something red, and the aristocracy up to no good...or jumping on the bad foot and doing the good thing...they're up to no good.

Now, it was formatted correctly, no obvious typos and it had some sort of a charm, but you've really used nearly every inch of page and you didn't need to. Essentially you could have taken an axe to nearly half that dialogue (IMO obviously) and had the same outcome,  it slows it down and drags after a while of the back and forward. It kinda reads like one of those toff style plays that the audience titter at, but you're sat there on a romantic night out and you kinda feel you're letting the team down so you titter along too, they aren't really my thing but that's personal taste.

Overall, not too bad, but it's so long and drawn out it got a bit irritating by the end...

Best of luck!

Cam

What the hell is going on here? This is like a review of two different things: the writer's ability to write and the writer's ability to tell a story. You are a competent writer (although there are a few mistakes you make consistently through the script) and have a solid ear for dialogue. But, I'm not convinced that this is an actual story. It's like a skit in the sense of being a glimpse at these people's lives than it is being a story about them. We really don't learn much about them -- certainly not enough to differentiate them -- and this was almost like an anti-romance. This wasn't bad, it's just... there. I wish I had something nicer to say about it.

Looks like we're not going to FADE IN, huh?  Opening Slug is very poor.

"and without looking up from his paper:" This is never needed in a screenplay.

Page 2, and out.  WTF is supposed to be gong on here and why or how could this be a ROMCOM?  So dull, so irritating, actually.

You seem tio be able to write, but this stuff ain't gonna cut it, bro.

*

Hi Writer,

I found it way too dialogue heavy, and quite on the nose at that.

Comedy elements where very thin. To be honest I couldn't get a handle on the tone of this one.

Wasn't for me, sorry.

All the best.

My sense is that this is from a skilled writer but that skilled writer was a bit rushed.

I didn't understand this:

Quoted Text Oliver has a thorough scratch of his head and without looking up from his paper:

What is a thorough scratch??

Quoted Text JAMES Certainly. Apologies, Mrs.

Mrs??

Quoted Text James is entirely stationary bar his right arm, rotating robotically above the frying pan.

I didn't understand this sentence because you missed a comma after bar. I think s/b

James is entirely stationary, except for his right arm, which rotates
robotically above the frying pan.

On to the story - interesting - I think you did a good job with your character voices. I didn't buy at all that the Mother's death would be concealed so that was a problem for me.

It ends rather abruptly - like you got to page 10 and ran out of pages.

I give you credit for an interesting take on this theme.  

I thought this one dragged on longer than it needed to be.   I also found the dialogue to be a little flat.  I wish I could say something profound about how to improve it, but I probably cannot. Dialogue reflects the dynamic that motivates a story, and nothing here really grabbed me.  In a nutshell,  I just didn't feel drawn into the story.

Kudos for finishing.

Well, I read it, darling.

The thing is I don't think there's anything productive I can contribute.

It's itching and scratching and banter that really didn't land for me.
No feeling of RomCom. It just felt like someone up to no good (plot-wise, I mean) and it read like a U.S.writer having a go at writing toffee-nose Brit characters.

Sorry, nothing more to add.

No Fade in and no Fade out

I was enjoying the banter back and forth and then you just had to drop an F bomb as well.
I think you could have made this at most 6 pages.

The writing was very good but the story itself of couple finding out their dark secrets and then covering up was pretty obvious where it was going.

a good entry not great

Good job on entering

I had to smile at the logline.

The story confused me. Getting critted out, maybe, but I didn't want to go back and try and figure it out.

Something about some Maggie girl.

This could be good with more clarity. I just wasn't sure what was up with the missing chocolates etc...

Maybe show what happened first. Then we know and can appreciate watching the characters try and cover it up.

Sandra

Haha, this was absolutely great.
Funny and kept me interested.
The dialog was a lot of fun.
I liked the ending.
You almost fooled me there towards the end - I started to believe Oliver and Leslie and their crazy stories - chocolates for Maggie's dying mother.

I think you forgot a story that Leslie should tell Oliver to redeem herself - how she explains why the tie was in the cabinet? She didn't.

This is pretty great. It's a comedy, not a rom com. But there's love in it too. So maybe... just maybe. High marks from me.

Hello writer - I'm jumping in.

Nice writing. Loving the dialogue and the chemistry between the characters.

I bloody loved it lol I found the characters and the story engaging. I chuckled a few times, cleverly done I thought. Must be a veteran of the forum.

Lower on the romance than some of the entries, but considering other entries include murder, golden showers and a dildo up an ass, I'm considering this one to be on the romantic side.

Very good.

Matt

I missed the romance. You started to bring it around, but then by finishing with "shhhh", we're back to two cheating spouses. Funny, but, not romantic.

Cutting a few pages would go a long way to making this sing. You had me engaged, but as you drug the mystery out, I became less so. Had you finished around 6 or 7 pages, I would have still been at the height of my curiosity.

In the end, I was slightly confused as to the specifics, but no longer interested in going back to find out what I missed.

Tighten this up and post it on the site as a comedy short. It's an easy shoot, if you get it right.

Writer,

Sorry, couldn’t make heads or tails of this one. First off, you lost me with all this dialogue, which rambled about the entire script. By page 4 I still didn’t know what was going on and thought James might have put something in their food. Then more dialogue, then I started skimming, which isn’t good. Nothing happens here, and especially on the first couple pages you need a grabber, something going to pull us along and make us want to read further. You had the itch, but that’s all it was. The tension never mounted, and it wasn’t really funny or romantic. Sorry, writer.

Steve

Very nice. Reminiscent of an old-fashioned comedy of manners. Though it wasn't really a romcom, it was fun. An upper-crust couple with out-dated mores crashes head-on with modernity when they go broke sounds like a good movie.

I think one of the mistakes here is TOO much dialogue. I think there were a couple of pages where it was almost all dialogue and they kep interrupting each other to the point where you lost me on what was going on.

It’s not a rom-com, by my definition, at least. The writing itself isn’t bad, but it’s about 2 pages too long. Give it a good edit and  you might have something here.

Best of luck,
Gary

Whatever story there was, it didn’t seem to show itself.  I have enjoyed topics on the weather in comparison.

No romance that I could see.  The comedy was unusual.  And the ending wasn’t satisfactory.

The title should focus more on the itch.  Perhaps a pun on the Seven Year Itch.

Hmm. I really like the idea of this one, but I had to keep going back and rereading the dialog. Not that the dialog was bad, it was just that the characters kept talking over each other, especially at near the end.

Also, the end seems a little too, well, easy. They just kinda believe each others lies at the end.

Funny enough. And besides the dialog issues I've already noted, the writing is clean.

No real romance here, at least not to me.

And what are Nits? Are they like lice?

Anyways, a good effort here.

Zack

Loved it. I really liked the punchline. Didn't see it coming at all. Your dialogue was entertaining too.

A real head scratcher.

I had to check the previous reviews to see if I was totally wrong about this one.
Turns out the reviews went both ways.

I enjoyed the stuffy dialogue and witty banter.  But then I felt it went on way too long.

I thought it was more a straightforward comedy than a romcom. But then I also thought it played like an SNL sketch rather than a proper film.

I wanted to love this more than I ultimately did.

Good job.

Hi,

There's a decent little comedy in there. It's just buried under a lot of unnecessary dialogue. This one could definitely be trimmed. As written, I didn't find it very funny or romantic at all.

Good luck,
Glenn

Well enough written but there didn't really seem to be any rom in it and the two leads are just annoying.

Progression was a little predictable and the end didn't really satisfy.

And nits???

This could work, given a bit more room to breathe. It's easy to see what you were going for, but it stretches believeability and the climax is a confusing mess of overlapping dialogue that kind of works but not the way you've written it. The most confusing line for me was the first mention of Maggie, I had to go back and re-read that a few times, especially when it became clear that Leslie was actually Oliver's wife. Relationships haven't yet been established that early in the script, so a like like "return home to your loving wife" is super confusing, it suggests an actual third party instead of her simply referring to herself in the third person.

The swearing is completely out of place, it doesn't belong in this script. Aside from that, there is decent dialogue on display, a strong sense of cinematography, and the story works overall. I don't know how funny it is, that would really depend on the actors, but there is the potential for laughs. The characters need work, Oliver and Leslie are strong characters but they're exactly the same, and James has the depth of a puddle, he's a cardboard cutout of a butler.

No real romance, more like lip service. The only hint of romance is Oliver and Maggie, and that's just a plot device.

It's a decent script, it could be much better and easy to film.

I don't get this at all. I get what you were going for with the over politeness but it's not really funny and the back and forth back and forth back and forth is just too hard to keep up with. Without much action it's just hard for me to see where this is going and with the constant stiff upper lip I really have no way of knowing where the characters are either.