Script of the Week - The Corsair Chronicles

[dense spoke]

Hey everyone be sure to check out our brand spankin' new SCRIPT OF THE WEEK!

**TITLE: **The Corsair Chronicles: The Stone Bearer and The Book Thief
**GENRE: **Adventure, Action, Fantasy
FORMAT: Feature
LOGLINE: In an ocean teeming with peril, a charismatic pirate, a resourceful alchemist, and two cunning merchant sisters form an unlikely alliance to thwart the plans of a corrupt crime family and an undead pirate hell-bent on unleashing chaos and destruction upon the world, racing against time to preserve life as they know it.

**NOTES: **This is a first draft. I'm looking for anything and everything constructive that will help me take this script to the next level. The feedback from this community helped my previous Script of the Week, Bane of the Magi, win a few awards. So, I'm hoping for similar success with this script and the feedback I receive from it!

This week's featured script is written by @worldly gale! James is a VIP Member who supports our Discord community via Patreon, which helps keep this amazing resource FREE for everyone else. You can give back to our generous Patrons by providing some much needed feedback on their script. If you've received feedback from this community in this past, please consider paying it forward!

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Any or all notes are appreciated. If you can't read the whole thing, make note of where you stopped reading and why.

You can send notes via DM or post them here. Thanks guys!

[worldly gale]

Eyyyyy, it’s me!

[worldly gale]

And for maximum transparency, I wrote this first draft in a week with no outline.

[high blade]

Hey @worldly gale are you still looking for feedback on this draft? Just wanted to check before I tapped in.

[worldly gale]

Yes, please!

[high blade]

Cool will check it out

[topaz apex]

@worldly gale I have a bit more free time recently so I'm going to try and read through this over the next few days so I can give some notes

Firstly I'd like to offer notes on your logline. I think the last chunk "racing against time to preserve life as they know it" is a bit redundant and makes the whole thing run on a little, it isn't too necessary to know that's specifically what your characters are trying to do when you already open with describing them as forming an unlikely alliance to thwart the antagonists "hell-bent on unleashing chaos and destruction upon the world".

On that matter, this might be a personal subjective opinion, but I think you should get rid of either "In an ocean teeming with peril" or "upon the world". Just use one reference to your setting. It could still work as "hell-bent on unleashing chaos and destruction". Or if you want to keep it get rid of the opening chunk and change it to "hell-bent on unleashing chaos and destruction upon the perilous ocean" or something along those lines.

[worldly gale]

I love this and I’ll fix up the logline with your advice in mind! Again, thank you so much for your feedback and thank you for taking the time to read this script and give me feedback on it. You know as well as I do that you don’t have to be doing this, but I greatly appreciate it and I greatly appreciate your time.

[topaz apex]

No problem, I'll should be able to get you some completed notes by the end of the week so feel free to hold me accountable for that

[topaz apex]

@worldly gale Finished reading and I have a lot to say! For basic impressions, it's a rather impressive draft for having been written in a week without any outline. It's very brisk and fast-paced, and a lot of it comes down to the surplus of individual single action lines. It makes it a lot longer than it actually feels. It can often feel too juvenile and simplistic for an adult audience, but also too violent for a family audience. I'll give some story notes and then some proofreading fixes I encountered.

Before all that, your title. I think it's too long, specifically the subtitle, "The Stone Bearer and The Book Thief". Think of most subtitles, most of them address one topic, or, if they address multiple, they're one word topics. Imagine two subtitles from "The Chronicles of Narnia": The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and The Silver Chair. The former subtitle addresses three one-word topics, easy to list off, and the latter subtitle addresses one subject. Think of a few from "Pirates of the Caribbean": Dead Man's Chest, The Curse of the Black Pearl. Both of them describe one thing. Your subtitle, meanwhile, addresses two two-word subjects that could possibly be applied to the same character. It's a bit of a mouthful. ||I'd recommend changing it once you have everything else in your story set, but a few suggestions off the top of my head: Book of the Alchemist, The Alchemist's Stone, something like that. The title implies Luca is the main character when this seems to be an ensemble piece. Of course he is the most important, but he should get more focus. There's a part where he gets shaken after killing an undead pirate and Serena reassures him he can still be a pacifist. Maybe I missed it but isn't established much that he is a pacifist. It doesn't show much in his behavior.||

Alright, I'm running out of text so next I'll give some actual story notes I wrote while reading.

Story Notes: there might be a few plot details I missed, I wrote these down as I was reading
||As I stated before, there are a lot of line breaks, it wouldn't kill to have lengthier action paragraphs if they revolve around the same subject||
||This is up to personal preference, but if a character has a title, such as "Captain Lastname", the last name is usually more distinct than the first, and thus it's better to use that name in the dialogue, also using "Captain" in the dialogue headings isn't always necessary, like later on you could just use "Corsaro" instead of "Captain Corsaro", would make it easier to read||
||The description throughout the script is quick and light, which makes it easy to read but also means there isn't much support on what's being shown visually||
||For example, page 13: "[Aldonis] shouts orders at his men to do whatever they can to make the ship faster." This is an action line but it's specific enough that it should just be a line of dialogue from Aldonis.||
||Page 15-16: the two girls stole The Scarlet Tempest and are just following The Midnight Serpent for fun, but Aldonis can't tell through the eyeglass that nobody else is on the ship?||
||Idea: when the four are imprisoned, I think it would be a better visual to put them in separate cells. It would allow them to talk to each other through the bars and be in a less cramped space since you've got like 5 characters in a single cell||
||Page 46: "A small island that feels familiar" There should be more visual language to indicate this, maybe a change in expression that indicates they recognize it?||
||The book being on the same island that the characters just left is a little redundant! Makes it feel less like a treasure hunt.||

CONTINUED in next post

Continued Story Notes:
||Page 54: I wrote down "where did they get all that gear?"||
||Page 64: It's not a very subtle excuse given to have specific characters split up with one another||
||Page 67: The terrifying nature of Dragut is mentioned a little before this but there's not really any reaction from the characters to finally seeing Dragut, an undead corpse pirate with a ship made out of flesh and bone||
||Page 73: There's an opportunity for actual dual-dialogue here between Corsaro and Serena instead of having both their names under one line, though I don't know what software you used to write this||
||Page 75: There's description of etching about eternal life but it's not elaborated on in the action or dialogue, is there actual text or is it all glyphs? I think characters expositing here would be okay||
||The relaxed pacing is emboldened by the lack of emphasized, ALL CAPS text, you know? It doesn't need to be that prevalent but it creates a lack of energy or urgency.||
||Page 80: Luca's reaction to his blood seeping into the objects is a little relaxed, no? I get that he's fascinated by it, but maybe have that be more distinct or extreme, like he's excited or something||
||The group had split up earlier but we only ever see one half of the group do anything, Aldonis and Isabella just leave and then reappear already captured||
||So Luca tries to smash the stone and it causes an explosion, but the stone is still fine? Did the impact cause the explosion? It isn't clear||
||I said it before but Luca being a pacifist has never come up before||

CONTINUED in next post

Continued Story Notes:
||It makes sense since it's an early draft but this dialogue is very cliche (to me at least, it might be fine to others)||
||Why is holding a gun to Dragut's head threatening to him when he's undead? They say later on they can't really beat him through conventional means so he really shouldn't be afraid of any physical threats to his body||
||I was hoping Aldonis would become undead, that has potential, that made me happy||
||This ends on a cliffhanger but I don't think it actually needs to, with the amount of separate lines I think it extended the page count beyond what it normally would be, I think you could condense this story and then establish this ending as just the second-act slump, then have a big climactic rescue mission, unless you're really set on this being a multi-film saga, either that or beef up the second act a bit, "The Corsair Chronicles" implies Corsaro will be the central focus (unless that's just a coincidence)||
||Also I just remembered this but Luca's master burning his notes at the beginning never really came up again? Maybe you're saving it for a sequel or something||

Errors Spotted:
||"Thief" is spelled incorrectly on the title page||
||Page 22: "this is going to bed fun"||
||Page 24: Corsaro refers to himself when I think he should be referring to Aldonis, also "you're turn" at the bottom of the page||
||Page 34: "overstayed you're welcome"||
||Page 68: "what's her doing here"||
||Page 80: "I've even had this old sod" is an action line when it should be a line of dialogue||
||Page 90: "Good think that wasn't me"||
||Page 92: Luca says "You've bonded with the stone, alchemist" but I think Dragut is supposed to be the one saying it||

Overall, I think this is a good starting point with plenty of room to grow into something exciting, there were a few good jokes and plenty of potentially-interesting ideas, I like rag-tag swashbuckling adventures like this