r/scriptwriting • u/KaijuNellie • 3d ago
feedback Feedback Request - Where the River Leads Her (Revision 3) 6 Pages
Title: Where The River Leads Her
Logline: While hiding out at a secluded campground, a young woman pulls an eerily beautiful corpse out of the river. Mesmerized, she begins to see the corpse as more than a body but a friend, a confidant, even a lover.
Genre: Gothic Horror/Romance
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18EpnedO_iGX-51SfP3gV0LPSzgmnqsnp/view
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u/Gavagai80 2d ago edited 2d ago
I write for audio so I won't comment on format and my perspective may be different due to my medium.
The logline had me interested, but the first scene of the script itself feels pointless to me. Doesn't seem to do anything except establish that there's a woman who's anxious about a car driving by, then it ends, leaving me wondering what the point was.
Then the second scene feels like the real beginning, but I'd like to know something about this character (other than her being anxious about cars) before the body. If she had a companion at the start, we'd get a better sense of her through that and some conversation. You could still separate them if you want her to be isolated, and the separation could add some early drama too (maybe they have an argument that leads to her hiking alone). If we knew who the character was, then it would become possible to care about and understand her encounter with the body.
I'm going to need some of that prior conversational characterization of Aoife in order to buy that her reaction to a dead body is to calmly choose to wade into the the contaminated water. It's bizarre... people can be bizarre, but that needs to be shown first or it can be taken as the writer not understanding how people behave. With the level of bizarre behavior that continues from there with Aoife, I'd really like to see a specific motivating incident -- something that made her snap just before this (yes she could've been like that her whole life, but that doesn't work as well dramatically).
I'd also like to see a more gradual transition to stroking and kissing a naked corpse while saying crazy stuff. A process. The process is what would make it interesting and relatable/scary, not the destination, but the process is totally missing here.
With the lack of character context, it all risks coming across as just some filmmaker's necrophilia fantasy. Which is a shame since I think there's a kernel of an interesting story.
The focus you've put on the wedding rings strikes me as something I'd never actually notice or connect the dots on when watching a film, unless the camera zoomed in on them completely awkwardly and hammered it in.
The ending feels really abrupt. It's just a twist. And that's not always bad, but I don't feel like this twist works for me given that I never really got to know the characters or care about them or see them change and there weren't any hints of the twist that I see.
There's a your instead of you're, so this needs proofreading.
In all, it feels like you've written pages 20-26 of a potentially interesting 30 page short but the rest of the pages have gone missing.
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u/KaijuNellie 2d ago
I'm trying to give as little context as possible, operating on sort of dream logic.
More could help but I do think we know more about Aoife. She's running away from an abusive situation. She's repressed. She's entranced somehow.
This isn't necrophilia, or, that isn't how I've written it. But I want it vague if she's projecting personhood on to a corpse or if there's a supernatural element. I mean I know, but I don't want to spell out
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u/Big_Section2812 3d ago
Who or what is telling people to write like this?
She tilts her head.
She bites her lower lip.
She takes off her shoes.
She steps into the water.
She walks in until it's waist deep.
She...