Convention of War by Eric Shipton - Short, Comedy, War - Lt. Ryan leads his platoon on an authorized mission to kill the enemy, but things don't go as planned. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Interesting idea here but I was left a little confused on the tone. It seemed like a drama but the humor that was sprinkled through was a bit odd. Like campy, if that's the right word.

You did a good job with visual description but didn't mention snow until the end of page 3. You described mist twice, and i was thinking it was spring.

As for the characters, they kind of blended into one another. It was dialog heavy in some parts and for me, they all sounded the same.

The writing here is good, maybe a tad heavy but it was an easy read. And interesting story. In the end what didn't work for me was the disjointed  tone and lack of character development. But solid effort, for sure.

I think it was OK but I think a lot of the dialogue could be cut. I also felt the introduction of the snake was, exactly how it felt, just thrown in so you could get all three elements in.

I liked the first half of this, seemed to be authentic in terms of use of gas... and I have no idea if that's true but the writer persuaded me that it was, so good job.

But the second half seemed to veer into a much more comedic vein and it just didn't fit well with what had gone before, imho of course.

Also, the snake, I mean that is shoehorning of the highest order - made me chuckle.

Writer knows what they are doing though, script reads nice and quick.

Good job.

A bit too much telling us about the character traits rather than showing us their traits at the start.

Quoted Text great coats,

Grey?

Dialogue rang authentic to me - nice.

The snake was really a shoe horn in there - not really part of the story - but okay.

Writing isn't bad - the story was missing something for me - didn't care much for the ending.

Kudos on entering.

Greatcoat - should be spelt as one word?

Dave, this is typically a Brit and (by adoption,) Aussie thing - not sure about European? Of military origin.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatcoat

Great writing, it just feels like a script that's been shoehorned in to meet this OWC, especially the snake.

It's dialogue-heavy and yet didn't help move the story along at all. You could cut most of the talking and not lose anything.  I didn't buy the incompetent gas attack because of the tone shifting and it ended abruptly.

Great descriptions and easy to follow action. It just didn't work for me overall.

Um... Uh... Well... I thought it was good.  And I'm not a big war fan, either, so success there. :)  Pretty well written.  Particularly the action descriptions.  But... I too was left wondering about the tone of the story -- I'm guessing drama.

And second, yeah... I think you can easily lose at least 30% of the dialogue in this piece and replace it with more pointed smaller, visual and thematic components that suggest a specific agenda for your characters.  If that makes sense.-Andrea

As I go:

- The name intros in the dialogue feel clunky.
- "What do you have against the Brits?" seems like an impertinent question at an inappropriate time.
- A lot of standing and talking in these first five pages. Doesn't feel like there's a rising tension -- just a series of jokes. For this to feel madcap, I think things need to keep building on one another more.

Thoughts:

- Okay, satire from the Chris Morris/Armando Iannucci camp. As I've said above, I think the main thing missing is the sense of rising action -- the jokes don't build on one another so much as follow one another.
- The goals of the characters are not really disparate enough, even in this context. This kind of comedy relies on imbalances of power and differences of motivation that are somewhat lacking here. The characters don't clash or try to assert power over one another very much, and the clusterfuck ends up feeling like less of a clusterfuck than it should because of that.
- A bold attempt with some good dialogue. Nice.

Chris

Lots of standing around, talking. Worse, it's very minimalist. That's when characters are standing or sitting around, and the only action they really give is basic facial movements.  Ryan laughs. Miller shakes his head.Miller frowns. Miller looks around. Miller nods...Ryan nods and so on. None of these near comatose action reveal anything about character.  . Smile,Laugh. Look. Rinse, wash, repeat.

  
Tone wobbles from serious to comedy to drama to that irritating coda, meant as a punchline.  I noticed that in dialog headers you tend toput each characters rank, yet in narrative those ranks are missing. Since there are no other Sergeants,  corporals or lieutenants around, you can drop the rank abbreviations in the names-the last names will suffice.

Quoted Text Then the men take their positions around the cylinders, eyes on Ryan, who stands off to one side. Ryan raises an arm, then cuts it down hard.

Action happens as it unfolds. There is no "then"

Not a terrible entry, but it should have been more engaging.

Hi there!

Quoted Text Ryan, 30, is aggressive but not overbearing. Miller, 22, is cynical and finds grim amusement at the folly that’s ensnared him.

Wow - sucks to be the actors in this - They have to stand on a hill and somehow convey that they are aggressive but not overbearing, cynical and grimly amused. Best of luck to them.

The snows a good insulator. what snow? is the hill covered in snow, might've mentioned it earlier...

Dialogue isn't great - forced and awkward.

Quoted Text CPL. DAVIS What’s our story, again, sir?

Come on now, you're better than that.

by page 7 this goes from a reasonably interesting opening and falls flat on its face - doesn't seem recoverable to me but I'll plough on...
No, didn't recover - it became farcical and absurd. Such a shame

The snake is pathetic, honestly - but why did you even bother with it? you had already met
criteria 2 with the shovels they used to dig the holes (you didn't actually say they used shovels, but we can infer considering you told us they were carrying them)

Not really sure why you took this in the direction you did, it wasn't a direction I wanted to go from what the opening built up.

Anyway, best of luck

Hi writer,

FADETOBLACK.

SUPER:

AFTERTHEWAR...

Everyone realized that this war and every war that was to follow in the 20th century was a banker’s war, but, these armchair warriors are to cowardice to fight their own battles so they sent innocent men and women to die on the battlefield for their own personal agenda. So, the masses, onto there scheme, rounded up all these little heart tyrants and threw them in prison forever… yeah, right.

Anyway, after that rant, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that your script is top brass, pardon the pun. It’s difficult to write war tales because of all the detail involved, but you seem to know what your doing, and then some. I could bang on about what I liked et al. but I’m behind in reading so… excellent submission for a week’s notice!

Hello,

nice satirical take on war. Some lines were funny for sure. The gas warfare of ww1 is a sensible topic I think but maybe it is time to make fun of it.

So, it's risky and that's actually the point why I could see this made.

You have talent for comedy and I believe you could even milk some more goofiness out of this script. Well done.

Writer,

Overall this wasn't bad, though you did shoehorn a snake in there for some reason. Anyway, I didn't get the comedy here. Just sounded like banter, and not bad at that. Thought this was pretty well written for the most part, good visuals, but the story and it's outcome didn't do it for me.

Steve

So, first of all, I like the writing; detailed and engaging, but also fast and to the point. The more serious first half came across as very authentic and drew me in.

The tone-switch seemed a bit sudden for me, although I did enjoy the humorous second half as well. I thought the dialogue was funny, although the characters felt a bit interchangeable. There's not a lot happening, though: the gas didn't have much of an impact and there isn't a lot of progress in any way. So I did enjoy the bits and pieces, but I'm not sure whether or not it works as a whole for me.

The story did not really provide a satisfying ending, a soldier group trying to gas the Germans, fail and then it just simmers out from there. Personally I would rather see this platoon break into the wine cellar after. the fiasco. In my opinion, the comedy could be played up a bit more seeing as some moments kind of fell flat.

All in all well written and a fun idea.

Better to introduce the snow at the outset.  First mention was page 3.

The Hague Convention dialogue feels forced—got to be a more natural way to bring the conversation around to it.

Not following the logic about going over the top to finish them off.  Wouldn’t the Germans have gas masks too?  Or just run away?  Gas moves pretty slow.

So the story builds to your big moment which is that the wind changes direction and they’re forced to retreat followed by a quick epilogue of characters we’ve barely spent time with.  Would this be an engaging story to sit through?  Feels like an anti-climax with little conflict, be it internal or external driving the story.

The writing is solid.  Might not be to everyone’s tastes but I don’t mind a little detail given the period setting.  WW1 evokes a certain tone so visuals can help paint the picture so to speak.

As for the snake…  It was literally thrown in for the sake of it.

Not much to distinguish between characters—everyone sounded much the same.  If you come back to this or write something similar, a big part of it is to find a way to make your characters sound distinct.  It’s not easy, particularly when writing about a bunch of soldiers but especially necessary if you’re writing comedy.

An interesting setup, but it ultimately fizzled out with no real consequence for any of the characters.  To be honest, I didn’t realise this was a comedy until afterwards.  That’s not a great sign.

Good luck,

Steve

The writing is so passive and dense, it makes it harder to read. I just got really bored with the content. Then I started skipping and it seems they started running away from some yellow smoke. If the writing zinged off the page, I might have been able to follow the story better. Learn more about writing actively. It will help keep your readers interested in the content.


Criteria Met (Y/N) – I don't care.
Story (1-5) –  1
Characters (1-5) – 3
Dialogue (1-5) – 1
Writing (1-5) – 2
Overall (1-10) – 3.5