The Black Dog by Stuart Mower (scmower) - Short, Horror - After her parents die in a car accident, a young woman and her brother inherit their estate. But soon the woman starts to see visions of a black dog stalking the halls. 19 pages - pdf, format

Wow thanks for getting this up so soon Don. Any reviews will be appreciated, and don't hold back if you think it's bad.

I liked the dialogue. It sounded real. So no problems there.

Your action lines tho could be a little more economical. For example, your first line, "A car drives along the road. There is no other traffic" ...could be "A car drives along an empty road. This would shave seven words from the script and not effect it at all.

I'd consider making it a little more colorful tho, to kinda set a tone. A dusty, gravel road...?  Maybe it sits high above a river bluff? IDK. Just throwing things out there.

Commenting as I read...

On page one you over describe Emily's actions. "Emily looks at him offended". Her dialogue tells us she's offended. You could cut the dialogue or cut the action line. Either way, it wouldn't effect the story, but it would make for a quicker read.

Soon after she is looking out a window, then on this same page she again looks out a window. The repetition is a little boring.  

"His eyelids *drop...and then close." Maybe droop? Also noticing that you could remove the conjunction *and* from a few of your sentences, making for a quicker more interesting read.

"The car is wrecked. Inside both Charles and Emily are dead". How do we know they're dead? I assume it's obvious, but what makes it obvious? Show, don't tell.

"The car pulls up in the drive of a large mansion". I'd like a discription of the mansion. Is it spooky? Would it give me the creeps looking at it? Maybe it's surrounded by an old wrought iron fence with spikes?  

Starting  at the end of page 5 going into page six, Jennifer hears several sounds that are so scary she jumps, yet doesn't tell anyone. We just move to the next scene. I think the scene would work better if what she heard or seen (the shawdow) was more vague, less frightening. Something that gets her attention but doesn't necessarily scare her. Kind of a slow build. As it is she doesn't tell anyone anyway, and really, if you heard an animalistic, primal like growl, wouldn't you tell someone? I would.

Noticing that you could cut the last line of a few scenes, like...

"Jennifer puts the doll back on the bed and leaves the room".

"She walks through. Jennifer follows".

Again on page seven, you over describe the characters action...

"They sit in silence".

"He motions to Jennifer"

"Jennifer nods".

"Jennifer walks out of the en-suite bathroom and heads over to her bed. She gets in and starts reading a book. She gets drawn into it".

More over writing... making things tougher on yourself, and me. LOL

Jennifer's in bed reading.  

Lots and lots of over writing...

"A shadow can be seen from under the bedroom door. Something
is standing outside".

A shadow is seen under the door. (we can assume it's the bedroom door since we're in the bedroom. we know something is outside the door becuase of the angle of the shadow.)

People want quick reads. If you can cut a sentence in half, saving seven words, you should do it. Also, it will leave you more space to  to tell your story.

I don't remember, does jennifer have a reason, is one given eariler in the story, to go to the store? If not you might want to slip one in. Not a big deal, but it might help to pull the story together a bit.

Also, I wonder if you might want to somehow introduce Rachel sooner. Her presence seems random.

On page 13 the story starts to feel rushed. Jennifer was, in the previous scene, with the nutter, rachel...now she's off to look for her. Maybe she should stew a little bit then go in search of her. Idk....just an opinion.  

Rachel's dialogue doesn't feel like it matches her character. Could be more colorful.

I think the story might work better if it went a little deeper psychologically with Jennifer's character. Maybe she could be depressed/anxiety ridden right from the start.

The reader would think it's because of her parents death...even if she didn't like them, there could still be some feelings of loss...loss for what she never had, good parents. This might call into question the reality of what she sees and hears and could later be revealed to be feelings related to having killed her parents. It might also give more credibility to Richard's threat of having her committed.      

One qn, the mother saw the black dog. She's described as not being nice, but what did she do to cause her death? If this is told, I missed it.

Hey Stuart,

I've got to agree with Astrid about the action descriptions. I too, noticed this on the very first line and it happens quite a lot throughout the script. I've been blasted for this in my OWC entry so maybe that's why they stood out. I'd recommend reading over and cutting out any excess, it will help the script flow better and read much quicker. I'd also think your page count would reduce quite a bit which would leave room for some more scares.

Another thing I noticed was the lack of character descriptions. I don't need to know what they look like but giving a rough age estimate would help me get a picture in my head of that character. It was okay with the elderly couple at the start because you mentioned they were elderly, that's fine. But Jennifer, Richard, Hannah and John, it was hard to get that picture. Richard treated Jennifer like a 12 year old with his over-protective big brother act but I didn't know what age they were because you never mentioned it. Even the dog, I think naming it's breed or describing it as a "Slabbering demon dog" or something similar would help the reader create a clearer image of it in their head.

Another example of how that affected the script for me is with Rachel Adams. When I read the name I thought of a young girl in her 20's that's super hot (maybe because of Rachel McAdams) but then I found out she's a nutter and started to think she was an old local headcase stereotype. Giving your characters short descriptions and rough ages would help a lot.

The story - It held my interest throughout, which is good, because I don't like to read shorts over 15 pages, so well done on that. I started to find it boring when the dog kept growling at Jennifer for no particular reason but then you got me with the twist on why she see's the dog. It made the rest of the script much more interesting. Like any story, I think there are places you could improve this on, which I will get to and try to give you some suggestions.

In the car at the start, when Charles nods off for the first time, Emily doesn't mention that to him. Maybe she was too drunk to notice but I think she should at least tell him to pull over and he could snap and say that he's okay to drive which would fit with the conversation they were having. The car crash, was it because of Charles nodding off and he steered off the road? I think it would be better if he opened his eyes and saw the dog in the middle of the road and steered to avoid it and crashed. The only time the dog was mentioned in the first scene was when Emily saw it running alongside the car, it never played much part in their deaths overwise.

Rachel's introduction should be sooner. She came from nowhere. Maybe she should see Jennifer freaking out over the dog in a public place so it doesn't seem so random.

Character wise, John and Hannah aren't doing much. What's their purpose? They seem pretty expendable to me. If they don't have a purpose, they shouldn't really be there, I'm afraid. They take up pages which could be used to help your story.

I think you could lose the scene at the end in the lounge. In my opinion, it would work better if you tied the dog in with the cemetery scene. You could have Richard walk up to Jennifer's grave stone and the dog could walk out from behind it and growl. Maybe this would be a much better way to end it.

Back to the writing, aside from the over-descriptions, some lines read strange. "starts reading a book", should be "reads a book". You are writing for the screen so everything should be as as present as possible. Write it as you see it in your head. Again, it's something I've been guilty of so maybe that's why it stood out.

Dialogue was okay. I had a few small issues where it came across as wooden but not knowing the ages of the characters might have played a part in that because if I don't know their age, how would I know what they are supposed to speak like? Jennifer saying to the dog "what do you want from me?" felt more funny than dramatic. When you start the next draft, the dialogue will take more of a shape and each character will have more of a voice. Take comfort in the fact that I write dialogue much worse than this.  

A few small errors...

p3- "smashes into a at the side of the road" - missing word between "a" and "at".
p18- "It stars to give" should be "starts to give".

There might be more, I wasn't searching for them.

Overall, I like this. I'd be very interested to see this again if you write a new draft. I hope some of that was helpful.

Brian

Sorry it took me so long to reply to this. Been really busy this last week. They're all pretty valid points. A couple of lines of action could be shortened to make it all read quicker. I do tend to overwrite, but it's something I'm working on.  

The mansion isn't really meant to be spooky, it's just meant to be your ordinary mansion. I could make it spooky, you know to blend in with the characters of the parents.

The general idea of the dog is that it isn't meant to be seen on camera. Just cause I think it would be tricky to get a huge devil dog in a short. I could be wrong, I don't know what the budgets are like. Also I was trying to have it in the same kind of vein a Pan's Labyrinth or The Orphanage with only one person seeng the dog and then when it's banging on the door when it opens its the others who arrive in, kind of trying to make the audience wonder if it's all in her head or not. I don't know if it came across the way I had intended.

Also as to why the mother saw the dog: she saw it as it's a death omen and so it was a foreshadow of her death to come. I read in lore that's why Black Dog's appear. Also I added my own twist that it would haunt those responsible for a wrongful death.

And yeah I should have put in some descriptions about Rachel, I picture her as a forty something slightly dishevelled woman. Not hideous but not completely unattractive. I should probably put that in. And I probably should have had another scene between Jennifer meeting Rachel and going to meet her. I was just trying to hurry the script along but I can do something about it in the next draft.

The purpose of John and Hannah: you're right there doesn't really seem to be a purpose for them, I kind of put them in to make up numbers. They could stand to go but I felt the script might be a bit bare without them.

I could have Rachel feeling anxious and guilt ridden throughout and have the audience think it's because of her parents. Plus like you said it could help with the threat of Richard.

On the last scene, I like it. I always thought it would be cool to have him look around and here the dog as it ended. I could have it end at the cemetery, but I think that would work better if the dog was visible. Either way thanks for the feedback and I'll put some of those suggestions in my rewrite.