Prom Night by Kirsten James - Short, Horror - Prom night ends before it even begins for a high school senior and her new boyfriend. 5 pages - pdf format

For production consideration - No comments required

Kirsten,

Not a bad effort. Definitely knew something was amiss with Ethan from the get go, and I liked where you took this. It's short and creepy. The main issues I had were with your writing. A lot of your action blocks could be trimmed, made clearer and more insistent. Some unnecessary words make your sentences too long. Less is more, so they say. And your formatting could be better. Example,  INT or EXT should be followed with a period, not a colon. I am pressed for time, but if you like I could go into further detail later. Best of luck!

Steve

Kirsten:

In addition to the comments Steven made, you have this nitty  little error throughout.

Quoted Text ETHAN Hello Mrs Williams.

You need a comma after hello - issue throughout.

On to the story. There is a whole lot to like here. I thought your dialogue was the right tone and the voice of your characters rang true.  It read pretty quickly and I am not a fan of the genre - but you pulled me in all the way too the end. Nice job.  A little clean-up here and there and you 're there.

Solid little short. I got the sense something was off with Ethan but I didn't see that ending coming. Short and effective. One thing to consider...

Quoted Text MRS WILLIAMS So, Katey says you play baseball? ETHAN Yes, I’m on the team but I only really play to keep my dad happy. MRS WILLIAMS Oh? ETHAN My dad played for the Indians. I’m more the creative type, I like working with people.

Here's a place where you could work in a little subtext. Admittedly, he's pretending to be someone else. So this probably isn't the best scene to use. But, it's something to consider going forward with other scripts. Let's just pretend Ethan is not a psycho killer in this scene for a second...

I think you could work in Ethan being pressured into sports by his father and that he likes creative stuff without being so direct about it. In a lot of situations, it can help give dialogue that extra punch.

Just an example:

MRS WILLIAMS
So, Katey says you
play baseball. Your
dad played for a
professional team?

ETHAN
And he never lets me forget it.

MRS WILLIAMS
Well, I'm sure it's very rewarding.

ETHAN
Coach let me design the team logo. I drew
out a bunch of templates. Did the coloring. That
was pretty cool. If only hitting a curveball
came as easy.

Again, maybe not as applicable for this script. But, something to consider going forward.

This was a pretty good effort, but I was confused by the beginning. Was Ethan a cross dresser, from all the wigs he had and him starting to put on the eyeliner? Didn't make sense to me and just seemed out of place. Or, was Ethan the killer all along and the guy found dead at the end was the real boyfriend? If so, that should be made more clearly. It confused me. Also, I was a little put off by the grammatical/punctuation errors. With a little revisions here and there, this would be a lot better! Overall, pretty good!

Hi, everyone thanks heaps for the read and feedback! Always greatly appreciated!

Steven - I like that you found it creepy, and yes I have a lot of work to do on my writing, and thanks for letting me know about the colon, I'm not sure where the heck I got that idea from?! I can look stuff up on the internet about formatting etc, but thank you heaps for your offer.

Dave - Hey, very happy you liked it, and thank you for pointing out the comma issue...

James - Thats good dialogue advice, thank you, I'll be using that for sure.

Tyler - Thanks for pulling me up on the grammar errors, I do need to know cause I've got a lot of learning to do!
SPOILER - Yeah, Ethan was the killer all along. It's vague on purpose, but if you just go with it I've made sure all along that his name isn't mentioned by the mother, Katey never sees him, and he makes sure he goes out to the car before she gets downstairs. In the end scene I write that she looks at 'Ethan' and gasps. On screen it will be clear it's him.. So when you look back once you know, it should all fall into place...

I put the eyeliner bit in to add a hint of 'somethings not right here'. He's into theatre, as there are theatre costumes and wigs hanging up,  and he is probably use to wearing his eyeliner when acting, or just being someone else? Tonight he is going to have to perform to Katey's mother and finally be what he is .. a killer!

Quoted from Kirsten Hi, everyone thanks heaps for the read and feedback! Always greatly appreciated! Steven - I like that you found it creepy, and yes I have a lot of work to do on my writing, and thanks for letting me know about the colon, I'm not sure where the heck I got that idea from?! I can look stuff up on the internet about formatting etc, but thank you heaps for your offer. Dave - Hey, very happy you liked it, and thank you for pointing out the comma issue... James - Thats good dialogue advice, thank you, I'll be using that for sure. Tyler - Thanks for pulling me up on the grammar errors, I do need to know cause I've got a lot of learning to do! SPOILER - Yeah, Ethan was the killer all along. It's vague on purpose, but if you just go with it I've made sure all along that his name isn't mentioned by the mother, Katey never sees him, and he makes sure he goes out to the car before she gets downstairs. In the end scene I write that she looks at 'Ethan' and gasps. On screen it will be clear it's him.. So when you look back once you know, it should all fall into place... I put the eyeliner bit in to add a hint of 'somethings not right here'. He's into theatre, as there are theatre costumes and wigs hanging up,  and he is probably use to wearing his eyeliner when acting, or just being someone else? Tonight he is going to have to perform to Katey's mother and finally be what he is .. a killer!

Ah yes, that does make sense now, thanks for clearing that up for me. Not that it was badly written, tbh, I can be retarded sometimes. lol

Hey Tyler, I nearly went cross eyed trying to get the logistics of this short right in my head. So yeah I understand

Some notes.

I like this one.  It is short and to the point with a nice reversal at the end.  It lacks a certain reason for our imposter to kill both the young man and his date, but I suppose killers don't always need reasons.

A couple of points.  It might work better to reinforce that Mrs. W doesn't know him if she says something like..."you must be Ethan."  Add something like..."you look as handsome as Katey said you were."  and it's solid that she has never seen this guy before.

Best
Richard

Hi Richard,

Thanks heaps for the read and notes   Glad you liked it, good idea about making it solid that the mum hasn't met the boyfriend, that part does need to be clear.  I saw him as young psychopath just starting out so I suppose I could say thats his reason .

I get he's a psycho, but why this couple?  It's not a crime of passion, something unplanned and by chance.  He's targeted these two...why?

Richard

Okay good question, he has a strange obession with Katie, and to show that, I have the pictures of Katey on the wall in his room. So at first glance the audience might deduce that they are a couple since there are photos of her,  plus he goes to her house etc...but then we find out they never were. He killed the boyfriend to get him out of the way, and because he's with Ethans 'girl' which was not a good place to be..

Kirsten,
I liked your script. However, I agree with most of the comments. I was confused by the wigs etc. at the opening. I loved "don't embarrassing me mom" typical teen woman. The ending was in my opinion too "short" maybe more goriness before the killed body. But you're the writer, you know what you want in the story.
All my best,
Fausto

Kirsten.
all is clear now. I've read your explanations. Clever! However, I have only a couple of questions: why the killer wants to kill both the boy and eventually the girl? Was he a stalker first? Had he been rejected by Katie? All this should be, in my opinion, more clear in the script. It was an elaborate killing...hence, where's the motive?
Fausto

Hi Fausto, Thanks heaps for the read and feedback

To answer your question, the motive to kill Katie's date is to get him out of the way and for him to kill, cause that is his thing...... and yes he has stalked her hence the pics of her on his wall. He is pretty much a fledging killer.... he's finally able to go ahead with his urge to kill.

I tend to write too much in shorts and this is one of those short and sweet twist ones. I think I just wanted to give enough info that it wasn't a give away but once you know what just happened you can go back and see some of the possible reasons why he's a killer.  The motive is vague but there are hints of his dysfunction to show he has deep issues. It's kind of left open for the viewer to decide what is going on with him.....