A short Horror Script for your enjoyment and my feedback

[ZombieEater00]

EXT. TWISTED HOUSE - Sunrise

Cockadoodle doo. The day is a gray and an eerie temper circles about the house. The two-story manor looks like something out of a surrealistic nightmare. Like it was built soley for the dead to inhabit.

Lightning splits open the sky, and strikes the house.

INT. TWISTED HOUSE

Lucas is thrust from his slumber. The thunder screams in his ear, cracks and roars then fades away.

A picture falls off he wall.

LUCAS
Jesus! Oh jesus christ.

Lucas breathes in heavily and lets out a sigh of relief. He exits the comfort of his bed and moves to the fallen picture. He picks it up.

PICTURE
Lucas is clothed in a priests robe. Sporting the preist collar. He smiles along with a young woamn. She's bald, pale, and sitting in a wheelchair.

Lucas flips the picture over. It reads "Halliluya, there is a god! Thank you for your faith and your prayers, Lucas."

Lucas neatly places the picture back in its place.

Lathargicly and with a yawn he moves over to the newspaper siting atop the red oak dresser.

NEWSPAPER
Its picked up. Through Lucas' eyes we see a TRagic Headline...

"Fire takes many lives at Sunday Worship."
23 dead.

LUCAS
Oh Lord. There's a
Devil as well.

Lucas shakes his head, disgusted. He cant read anymore and tosses the paper in the trash. The phone rings. Lucas answers.

LUCAS
Hello?.... Hello sweetheart.
Yes I am and i will meet you
shortly... I just have to get ready....
Alright.... Luv you to. Alright.... bye bye.

INT. BATHROOM - SAME

THe sink is running. Lucas' hands are cleansed.

He Looks in the mirror and then opens it. Various bathroom supplies and medicine and a bottle of toothpaste. Lucas takes the paste and burshes his teeth.

INT. HALLWAY - SAME

A toilet flushes and LUcas enters the hall through the batthroom door. He's wearing a robe. He walks down the hall, passing several pictures of him smiling with terminally ill survivors. There is a cruciix seperating each picture.

INT. BOTTOM STAIRS - SAME

Lucas trots down the stairs. He's chipper and snapping his fingers to a juanty tune as he reaches the bottom of the stairs and the entrance of the kitchen.

LUCAS
Stops in his tracks. Fear devours his happy face and he gasps as if the air is sucked out of him.

LUCAS' FEET...

...Slowly backing up. Across the tile floorring, under the table a gray, boney, HELLISH creature that might resemble a man if only it had any facial features at all. It lays curled up in a ball.

Lucas continues his retreat but slowly. Fear has gripped him and It wont let him go.

The thing convulses , bends and twists its body before CRAWLING
out from underneath the table. Its head is a smooth pale surface that lacking eyes, mouth nose, ears, etc.

LUCAS
With the lord as my savior whom shall i fear
With the lord as my light and salvation (he begins to cry)
of WHOM SHALL I BE AFRAID!

Then it attacks with the speed of a tape fast forwarding on high and before you can say the devil went down to georgia the faceless creature is upon LUcas.

It knocks him down and hovers over him.
Lucas whimpers.

CREATURE's FACE
Two vertical slits made by a phantom force slice up the right and left side of the creatures face. Eyes bulge out of the middle of the slits

Blood Splatters Lucas' face

Another slit, this time horizontal parts the skin at the bottom of the face. More blood is spattered on Lucas' face.

For a moment the creature stares with its grotesque, devilish face....

LUCAS
What in gods name are u.

The creature doesnt answer. It whips his head back an then with his mouth agape and watering with blood, thrust downwards, wrapping its jaws around Lucas' head like a Anaconda from hell

As it bites down, Two horns shoot out of the top of its head.

EXT. TWISTED HOUSE - Later

A storm rolls in. Rain pours from the Heavens. A symphony of lightning and Thunder is played by a band of demons.

The front door opens. A fragile looking old man walks with the support of a crooked cane. He shuffles down the Driveway and down the middle of the street.

Theres a blinding flashes and we seeis true form. The devil himself.

Then up, far up in the sky their is a fire winged creature. The fire isnt a typical red and orange fire. The fire is white. Its a bright white fire that appears to be blindding at first but infact very soothing to look into.

The devil looks up and then dissapears in a flash of lighting and then he speaks through the Thunder.

SATAN
(IN devilish Latin) Where you go i will follow until i've devoured all you love.

OLD MAN NARRATOR
The devil has many forms and he chooses which one he wants you to see. Some are unfortunate enough to see his nastiest form. He saves it for good people like Father Lucas. The Devil does evil to all those who do good. He devoured the goodness that was Father Lucas.

EXT. NEW YORK - DAY

The sky is sick with overcast. The world is grey.

Satan, dressed in a black suit and firey red pinstripes, watches the world go by from a top a skyscraper. An evil grin curves his lips.

A gunshot echoes.

NARRATOR
Wherever their is Evil their is good, wherever there is a God there's a Devil as well.




Tell if you like it, tell me what you think and if you spot anything i didnt let me know. Did you think it was good.


I think it builds up the tension pretty well. I communicates the message, "where their's good evil is not far from it"

You see that Lucas is goodness incarnate by the pictures of him helping terminally ill patience. The back of the picture says "thank you and hallaylula their is a god" Then lucas says well there's a devil as well. Then it builds tension, we see the monster (evil) eat Lucas (Good). THen we show the devil and evils many forms. He says something to the thing in the sky (Representing the Lord God since god never makes an appearnce himself). Then the devil pretty much explains it all and then the Narrator clears everything up.

[XvoorheesX]

You need to work at clearly communicating what it is you're trying to describe. Right now you're writing "about" things rather than describing them. Also, you try to be too literary with your descriptions and it only comes off as confusing and cheezy.

For example:

"The day is a gray and an eerie temper circles about the house."

I have no idea what an eerie temper is.

wrapping its jaws around Lucas' head like a Anaconda from hell

Go easy with the metaphors and simile's. If he wraps his jaws around somebody's head, I get it. "Anaconda from hell" just comes off as lame.

"A symphony of lightning and Thunder is played by a band of demons."

Screenwriting isn't poetry. Unless I am to assume that there is literally a band of demons actually all playing instruments in the scene, then this is bad writing. You're supposed to describe pictures that a real film crew will have to capture.

The two-story manor looks like something out of a surrealistic nightmare. Like it was built soley for the dead to inhabit.

I know you're trying to set the scene, but this is the wrong way to do it. Don't be vague. My surrealistic nightmare is different from your surrealistic nightmare. If you want to describe something as scary, you can't just say that it's scary. You need to explain to me, in a clear and visual way, why something is that way.

For example, you could say "a creepy house, that looks haunted", but that's really not specific. Or, you could write --

"The house itself looked toward town. It was huge and sagging, its windows haphazardly boarded shut. The paint had been weathered away, giving the house a uniform gray look.

Windstorms had ripped many of the shingles off, and a heavy snowfall had punched in the west corner of the main roof, giving it a thumped, hunched look.

A tattered no trespassing sign was nailed to the right-hand newel post." *

That puts a clear image in the readers head. It gives me the idea of a creepy, sinister house, but nowhere does it use those adjectives. It only uses details.

Also, you really need to start using spellcheck.

* (from Stephen King's article "Imagery and the Third Eye")

[Ronaldinho]

Vorhees hit a key point I was going to hit, so I'm going to talk about something else. I agree, however, with everything he writes.

Remember in the logline discussion, how I kept talking about character, want, and obstacle? Well, those things don't just apply to loglines - they apply to films, as well.

You have a character. Ok. Do you have a want and obstacle?

Not really. Not until the devil shows up. Up until then, you say you're trying to build tension but really I'm just waiting for something to happen. He's just wandering through his house and nothing is going on. Him saying "the devil exists, too" doesn't really create tension, because we have no sense of what might actually happen where the devil's presence would be relevant.

I also don't find the confrontation with the devil particularly engaging (it's a little one-sided. Devil shows up, kills a guy) but up until that point absolutely nothing is happening. Struggling against obstacles is good, but your Lucas doesn't put up a fight or anything - he just sort of gets eaten.

[ZombieEater00]

Really good advice. Barvo bravo and much appreciation tossed your way. Catch.

Anyway, you'e saying to NOT use adjectives? I was trying to create some imagery for one imagery for ones imagination to decide for itself what the house or anything might look like. You though the anaconda from hell line was lame?

It must feel good to know a lot about screenwriting. You're done with the frustration of being a beginner.

Is there any book i could read for a better idea on the right way to describe something.

What is that Stephen King book you just mentioned.

[XvoorheesX]

Originally posted by ZombieEater00
Really good advice. Barvo bravo and much appreciation tossed your way. Catch.

Anyway, you'e saying to NOT use adjectives? I was trying to create some imagery for one imagery for ones imagination to decide for itself what the house or anything might look like. You though the anaconda from hell line was lame?

It must feel good to know a lot about screenwriting. You're done with the frustration of being a beginner.

I'm not saying to not use adjectives (although I am saying don't go crazy witht them). What I'm saying is that you need to describe things visually.

A screenplay should only describe what the audience will see and hear -- movies, after all, are just moving pictures with sounds. So if you say someone has an evil aura about them, or that a house seemed evil... well, that might work in a novel, but you're not writing a novel. How, if I am in the audience, will I know that something is supposed to be evil?

Because if I'm sitting in the audience, I'm not reading the script. So if you're not sitting next to me, ready to tell me, "oh, that guy is evil", then how am I supposed to know it?

You can't rely on the production designer to make it look scary, you can't rely on the composer to use scary music, you can't rely on the director to use scary angles, and you can't rely on the DP to use scary lighting. The scary needs to be in the script, on the page, in your words.

How do you do that? Well, it's not easy. And if you think it ever becomes easy, you're wrong. I've been doing this for a while, and I still struggle with it. Ron has been doing it much longer than me, and I'm willing to bet that if you ask him, he won't say that coming up with the perfect description is ever easy.

Writing is hard work. You get better at it, but it's always going to be hard. My advice? Read. Read all kinds of professional scripts, and pay attention to how they describe things. Good screenwriting isn't about writing more, it's about writing less. Really strive to find the strongest, most vivid words you can use.

Read a script to a movie you haven't seen yet. Read the description of a scene, get the image the writer described in your head, and then watch the actual movie to see how those words were interpreted by the director.

What is that Stephen King book you just mentioned?

I think it's from "On Writing" by Stephen King. But here's a link to the article itself: http://www.wordplayer.com/pros/pr13.King.Stephen.html

[Nima]

The question I leave this with is what is the statement you're making about good and evil? It seems as though you're saying that good is always crushed by evil. I don't believe that personally, and I don't think the script effectively convinces me of that. I think if that's your goal it's going to be a tough sell.

Bringing attention to the sick kids made me think that there was something important to the story about them, but really there isn't. I think it's pretty accepted that by default priests are good, so I don't think you really need to sell that point. Likewise, I feel like the Devil's narration might be a bit too on the nose. Is there another way to communicate those ideas without literally using the Devil?

[ZombieEater00]

I didnt know what i was writing about untill i started writing it. THe message is "if there's a god than their is definetaly a devil. Wherever there is good, evil is not far from it." and "Evil happens to the good"

This is probably the 6th finished script i've ever written. I've started on a couple others but only got to the 2nd page. Right now i'm working on a "Violence is a viscious circle" themed script. So far all i got is character essays and a couple scenes i wrote just to get a better idea of character. I'm having a lot of trouble devising a life or death situation that my char has to get out and the only way he knows how to solve this problem is through violence. In the end the violence comes back around and he ends up dying but i'm stuck in Act 1. If i can just figure out an inciting incident the ball would keep rolling until the end.