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.....

Hey Kirsten,

Interesting story. My kinda thing. For the most part, I really dig it.

My only suggestion is to find a way for the mom to discover that Ethan isn't the real date at the end. Maybe she comes by Kateys phone and sees a picture of Katey and her real date. I don't know. But I like like it either way.

Good stuff.

~Zack~

Hey Zack, thanks for the read!

I like your suggestion, kind of an extra whammy....

Hey Kirsten,

Solid story, simple and nice twist. Good short!

Thanks Jamie, thanks for the read and glad you liked it......

Nice short, Kirsten.

I liked this one.

Not much left to say that wasn't said before...

The only thing that confused me from the beggining (or I found a little out of place) was the thing with the eyeliner, the rest of the beggining made pretty good sense given the ending...

My only suggestion is that would be awesome if you can rewrite the last scene a little so Ethan leaves with Katie and then the mother is who comes out (for exemple to give Katie something she forgot... maybe the purse?) and finds Justin. I think it would give a little push to a turn I already liked (I didn't see it coming even when I already suspected Ethan was a weird).

Best of lucks with this one.

Pretty solid.

Kirsten

Great opening page here, setting up with the Ethan character and a glimpse into his world/mind frame by purely visual means, the pins in Katey’s photo to the state of the living room. His exposed, passed out mother reminded me of that scene in Manchester By the Sea. All in all a good example of conveying so much without hardly anything being said.

Nice twist that although Ethan appears to have it in for Katey he is her date for the prom, a welcome one at that. I sense some vengeance or rug pulling afoot...

Ah, I see, I probably should’ve copped it when Mrs. Williams said “...nice to finally get to meet you”. I thought when he went out to get the phone that he was going to ditch her as payback for some indiscretion she committed against him in the past. Alas, it is altogether more darker and calculating than that.

Fairly decent for a 5 pager, it caught me by surprise so I have to give you plaudits for that, an effective sleight of hand. You packed a lot in here for such a short piece.

Is it twisted of me to desperately want to know what happens after the fade out? Best to leave it to our imagination I guess.

Col.

Hi Phil and Col! sorry I didn't see these posts till just now. Thanks heaps for your read and pointers.

PHIL, the eyeliner thing was just another way to show his personality a tiny bit. It was to convey he does theatre and likes being somebody else, he's kind of putting his makeup on to go do his thang... then deciding not to.... thats why I placed theatre costumes and a poster of a school production on the wall. I suppose in hindsight I could have made it more clearer.

A film student is producing this at the moment so looking forward to seeing it..

COL, yah theres alot of subtleties in this one and no you're not twisted, imagine away I was hoping the last scene showing the terrified look on her face screaming with hands slammed up against the glass was a good hint at how horrible the rest of her night was going to be....  

Thanks again guys! Much appreciated!

Hi Kirsten,

Quite liked this, would be super easy to make. Definitely didn’t see the twist coming. I mean I knew something wasn’t right, obviously, but at no point did I think that was it.

Wouldn’t be surprised if it gets picked up.

Some grammar issues, but it looks like they have already been mentioned.

Also missing page numbers for some reason. It’s not world ending but it is noticeable.

Good job.

Quoted from Kirsten A film student is producing this at the moment so looking forward to seeing it..

- Nice one, I would be curious to see how it turns out. Keep us posted.

Didn’t read the film student producing part. Congrats again!

Hi Duncan,

Thanks for your comments, I'm glad you liked it

Quoted from Kirsten A film student is producing this at the moment so looking forward to seeing it..

Congrats, Kirsten!

Thanks Phil

There’s very little conflict if not any at all and there’s nothing to the characters they all seem one note no personality and we have no idea who they are.  



  Not my cup of tea.

Maybe balance your review Marty with something you do like as well?

Funny all the comments this got with 'no comments required'  - maybe that was a mistake considering the back and forth convo.

Thanks LC, yeah I changed it to no comments after I finished working on it.

I did have a couple of people want to produce it, but of course that never transpired...

Hey Kirsten, good to see you!

Would you like the comments reinstated?
Let me know if you do.

Thanks again LC, I'm good with leaving it at is.