Satanas by Jordan Wiebe (theboywhocouldfly) - Short, Gothic Horror - On a dark and stormy night, the Devil will come out to play, or at least try to. 12 pages, Hard R Rating - pdf, format

This script starts out in such a lively way, with trollops on the pathway, and it does put the "special" back in special effects.  Even so, this is not one of my favorites.

A bit wordy at the beginning for me. He opens the door and it creaks, he closes the door and it creaks. One should be enough.

A few spelling & grammar errors, but considering the time constraints it will pass.

The opening is deserving of the hard R rating, graphic and satanic.

I don't see why the couple wouldn't be suspicious of the guy knocking of ten grand from the price just because, that seemed off for me.

The scene with the woman in the bed is already in the bedroom, why do you have another slug that says we are in the bedroom again? Not needed, might be typo?

I didn't realize Hank wore glasses until you mentioned it later. Maybe I missed it, but it might be better to describe him earlier.

Is Hank still naked when he answers the door? Why would he do that?

I liked it until the abrupt ending, felt way too forced just to meet the requirements of the challenge.

Good job on finishing.

You can't misspell a word in your opening Slug.  Just completely unacceptable.

I'm all for hard R rated material, but I don't see these first few pages being something anyone will want to read or watch.  Nothing remotely new or different here.

Sorry, I'm out.

Congrats on completing an entry for the October OWC.

Couple of grammar issues. Perhaps a bit wordy. Gruesome start. Gruesome end, if not just a little over the top.
Reasonably well written, clear, concise for the majority.

This is the first I've read and I liked it. It flowed well, moved quick and I think you met the requirements of the challenge. Dialogue's a bit grimacing at times but for a weeks work, that's understandable. I'd give this a 6/10.

I have decided that whenever I find time to read one of these I will bump up whatever I find at the bottom of the list.

The opening felt familiar and a bit gratuitous, to be honest.  Gruesome, sure, but nothing new.

Why is this set in 1965?  That seems kind of random, and a needless expense.

The story proceeded as expected, and while the conclusion was sort of abrupt, you could feel the glee of the author coming through as they envisioned their gore-drenched details, so that was kind of fun.  The dialogue for the Realtor got to be a little too corny near the end.

A predictable story, but with some clever touches, and a juvenile enthusiasm for bloodshed that mostly won me over.

That opening was all kinds of nasty.  But, I did like the setup here of the house with the gruesome past.  The dialogue at times felt awkward, and none of the characters were memorable in the least.  Although, having the young naked woman appear pretty much everywhere was a plus.

I didn't really buy the fact that no one had lived in the house for two hundred years.  Nor did I understand why you set this in 1965.

But, I'd say this had the features of a Gothic tale with the Mansion and the Satanism.  I just wish you had added more detail to the story and made the characters more distinctive.  Pretty good for one week.

Yeah the early pages were the paint-by-number Gothic type scenes that I guess will be prevalent in a few of these entries.

Nothing wrong with that of course - attention to detail is always good value. But as I said on another post, if there is no new story to tell, it can become a chore to read.

The latter part of this was more like a modern slasher movie, with a ghost thrown in.

However, congrats on an entry - it had some nice writing in it.

I had a big WTF moment when I read that the horse TROLLOPS!!!!!!!!!!  Being a horse person, I can guarantee you that there is no gait called a trollop. I looked up the word and "to act in a sluggish or slovenly manner
(Scotch) to dangle soggily : become bedraggled
to behave like a trollop" came up. Big wrong usage of word!!    Also they are not called straps, but reins.

Story wise this felt disjointed for me. I don't have a problem with hard R and blood and gore, but I felt that the beginning and end didn't match the ghosty middle. You have full on gore and violence in the beginning, but try to be suspenseful in the middle. Felt like we were switching gears.

I didn't see the point in Hank being out driving...

In short, I would suggest toning the beginning and end down or ramp up the middle. If you ramp up the middle however, I think you'll miss the challenge of writing Gothic Horror.

Very clean writing, obviously written by an expert with a full grasp of the craft.  Kudos there.

As for the story - sorry, but it just didn't work for me.  Satanism - as a topic - has been done to death.  But the story still could have worked, if all the other elements had fallen into place.  But the scares were all generic (body standing behind the unsuspecting victim, etc.) and the ending just...illogical.  The realtor happens to be part of the same Satanistic cult?  Geez, if they just needed a pregnant victim, they should have kidnapped one off the streets, vs. duping the couple to buy the house (and therefore creating a major trail of paperwork.)

Oh - and the slurping bit?  I'm not a prude.  But that was way too gratuitous.  And none of it gothic.

Still, congrats on the OWC...and the very nice writing that went with it.

This started out promising, gory yes but it is hard R.
The naked ghost was well used but I expected more from her rather than just scaring the protags then exploderizing the bad guys - awesome.
Ridiculous excuse to put in a BJ scene.
The end read like the writer got bored and couldnt think of a unique way to make the naked ghost fit the "misunderstood" criteria so just made the bad guys blow up.

Ready for some advice from a non-produced amateur? Here I go, so hear it out and decide if any of it helps you. All I can do is give my opinion and hope it's worth something to the writer.

We have here a 12 page story. The protags don't appear until page 4. Not necessarily a problem if your opening scene is going to really do something to grab our attention, but you're really starting behind the 8 ball if we don't meet your main characters until a third of the way into the story.

So is the delay worth it? Did the opening scene grab out attention? Well, it has some vivid images. And it effectively establishes the horror tone. And we do meet our antagonistic force, which is a satanic cult.

However, I don't think it grabs our interest in terms of wanting to move forward. The satanic cult forcing an innocent woman to give birth to some kind of evil offspring has been done, and then done again. By itself it's not interesting. Now, if an interesting character were introduced here, one which becomes important later, that would help. Otherwise it's just standard special effects gore in a spooky house..

While I'm on the opening, I want to look at the first page. Not one bit of dialogue. That is not in itself bad, but it's a clue to a problem. We have a whole bunch of stuff described, but we are not meeting any characters of interest. Without characters, there is no story. It's characters that lead us to turn the page, see what's going to happen. In this first page, there is way too much description. It's not that any one part of that description is bad, it's just too much.

Imagine this: you are around a campfire telling a story. As soon as you see people yawning or not paying attention, you know you're losing the audience. And you want to grab their attention right at the beginning. The last thing you would do is start rattling off descriptions of things. Treat a script the same way. Give us enough to establish the mood and tone, the basic setting. Then leave the rest for the director. Even if you have some great descriptions of stuff, resist the temptation. Get us into the story itself as quick as possible.

Ok, then we get going with the characters, the protags. We never learn anything at all about them, except that they're a couple. There are no characters with flaws, no character arcs, no characters pursuing any interesting goals. There aren't even any stakes in this middle section of the story. We just have people learning their house is haunted.

Then in the final act, we have the attempted repeat of the ceremony from the opening scene, with an evil child being birthed, or at least a child being sacrificed or something. The transition to this scene is amazingly short. The writer was running up to the page limit. And then the whole thing is strangely resolved by the unexplained appearance of the ghost of the girl from the beginning, who for some reason has immense powers now.

And I'm not sure if her ghost is ever misunderstood either.

Those are the problems as I see them. Writing is tough. It's easier for me to take apart your story than write one! Hopefully you took the time to take mine apart as well. If this is early work, you're off to a good start actually. good luck!

TROLLOPS, equine action or loose ladies intro. Hmmm.
Strog visuals, feels more Dunwich than gothic though.
Did your story really need two pages debating to buy the house?
“Your brain’s out of whack”, sounds very awkward to me.
Hank being in the mood while soaked is left fieldish.
More misunderstood ghosts saving the day.
I get the literal translation of the theme from this.
The dialogue came off as hokey to me.
Satan’s cool and all, but other motivations would’ve helped.
Thanks for playing OWC.

Regards,
E.D.

Hello Florence!

I'm not a gore fan so the opening was an eye opener. Indeed most of it was.

My comments;

I think you have probably had enough of trollop by now, but its a good reminder to us all to get the words right. Especially in the first para/page.
The men were not introduced, just appeared
Pregnant, naked, killed and then the child - wasnt required IMO
Coven should have a capital C in the text I think
Too much Latin for my liking
The property is new inside yet owned by the state - doesn't really explain why it's new.
I think a moving in scene would help set up
Why car break down - served no purpose other than mood and by then we've got the message

Well, no one can say you didn't go for it!

Hope these help

All the best.

I'm surprised nobody's brought up the thought that this could be a pisstake of sorts.  I think Bert hinted at it, but I'm not sure.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the story, but the beginning had a different tone than the ending.

In the beginning, it's very well written, serious, thought out, well-planned gore.  Over written, yes, but I think that's just going to be part of the gothic genre.  People have to use a lot of description to hit that perfect creepy atmosphere.

Than the bj scene gets me thinking, and with the 'slurp' (my personal favorite part), I vowed to myself not to take this one so seriously anymore.

Then, after the serious gore in the beginning, now we're getting 'She opens her mouth.  Blood GUSHES out and covers four of the men.  In unison all their heads IMPLODE, their brains and skull PLOP to the ground... The Realtor covers his ears.  His skin starts to peel off. His veins start to POP. He SCREAMS. Then his insides SPRAYS out of his mouth, heart, lung, intestines, everything. His body withers away into a puddle of goo.'  Then, of course, the dialogue started to get over the top.

Someone had fun with us here.  :-)

It definitely succeeded in the challenge all the way around for me, though.  Definately gothic.  Definitely horror.  There was definitely a ghost, and the ghost was misunderstood by the moder-  ...  somewhat modern day couple, because they were scared of her at first.

This one was fun to read.

- Mark

At first, you say the woman is bound to the floor. Then you say she’s nailed. Which is it?

The ritualistic dialogue gets overlong. Then after all that, they exclaim, “Hail Satan!”  Kind of a corny way to end what’s otherwise eerie.

The scene with the realtor doesn’t ring true. Hank and Barbara are on a budget, yet they’re looking at a Victorian house?

After Hank and Barbara are captured, the dialogue gets kind of on the nose.

The woman in the beginning ritual had her tongue cut out. It’s inconsistent when Barbara is only gagged. You should go one way or the other or have them about to cut out Barbara’s tongue.

The original woman needs better development. As it is, she’s just sort of a plot device. Also, Hank and Barbara aren’t developed well enough. What interaction they have isn’t compelling enough.

The graphic imagery feels like it’s there just for the sake of being gross. More story and character development is needed to make this really work.

Good luck.


Breanne

It seems whenever theres a OWC of horror there's always going to be one where you can almost hear the music from 'The Omen'...

In any case, the short has loads of poential. I think the ghost should have done a bit of warning in Barbara and Hank, the most she does is briefly take the place of Barbara during oral sex (!) and then at the end where the ghost is all Dues Ex Machina...

But there IS one, no two things that bugged the stuff out of me. I am not a big supporter of naming characters with a generic profession, and that's what you call them. Yes, I mean the REALTOR. The other is that I think too much time was spent on the Black Mass in Latin. The first few times it's out there, it's nuts and it's powerful. The page following? Loses the punch. Maybe it's just me. Then they end it with 'Hail Satan' which does hit it on the head a bit much. When Realtor leads the new Coven, I thought it would be a bit better if, for the most part, he just shut his cakehole. Most of the babble is talking fallicy.

Some continutity errors here and there hurt the read as well.

But hey, at least we got some splatterpunk action going down. Overall, I thought this was alright, and could have been outstanding.

The opening of this captures the attention because of its horror and shock value. The next scene brings us into the story with this happy pregnant couple about to buy the house and we, the audience, have the benefit of knowing what the happy couple doesn't.

The trouble is, that it's too much. It's relying on heavy gore to bring people in and I think many people have grown tired of that. They just are disgusted by it and probably many other writers feel it's cheap. It's like whoring yourself as a writer to just write that way for a "capture the audience" deal.

I didn't see this as gothic, but just blood and guts.

Sandra

Am assuming the first Golden haired woman was the one who came back to save them? I think you should state that or give her a name.

Had some nice blood, guts, and gore to it. I guess I could call it gothic because of the time period in the beginning. Then again, have seen the definition of Gothic completely debated thi OWC. Not even sure what it truely is myself.

The writing is a bit of a slouch though. Numerous typos and passages I had to go back and read twice. The dialogue with the realtor and the two of them got very wooden to me.

But, i did like the overall story here. Nice and nasty. I see you've got some good advice on your writing. This script could benefit from its use.

Good job completing an OWC...

James

nasty, over the top, and a shit ton of fun. but its severely flawed. the story needs work. setting needs to be changed, characters need to be improved, and dialogue could be more intriguing.

all in all, it was too by-the-books. but i loved it.

revise it and make it more unique. change the timing of everything for sure. let me know if and when you do revise it because i would love to read it again.

Okay IMO this is well writen, I've never been a huge fan of gore but I dont mind em either.

This had a goth/slasher vibe and not a bad job of it either.

Good job on getting it done!

This is one of the 2nd scripts I've read where I've outwardly expressed a bit of boredom in reading it.  The entire 1st page was nothing but, what appeared to me, a giant oil spill and the 2nd page is riddled in some language that looks to be phoned in from babble fish.

In my experience, and I did this with "Coffin Canyon - aka, BEST SCRIPT EVER" once, long, long ago -- Speaking another language never works.  It comes back with red marks and question marks all over it.  I'd simply write it in English and then, (in native tongue) or (In whatever language).  That is honestly the best way to do such a thing.  Cos, we're reading it, man.  We're not listening to it be read... We're not watching this thing on tv where it might be subtitled.  Know what I mean?

Some of the stuff going on here isn't bad -- but when things like this happen "The Realtor picks up a ram mask"  ... I did laugh and I don't know why because I know it was meant to be pretty serious.  Out of all the scripts I've read thus far this is one of the most visceral in terms of visuals and violence, but one of the worst in terms of substance.

I think this one had a lot going for it.  It had Gothic atmosphere, misunderstood ghost, and an excellent beginning.  

It kind of lost track of itself in the middle though, a few edits and that should be easy enough to fix.  There were certainly some scenes that were creepy in the middle but there were some that were a bit silly and probably should be removed.  

The weakest point I found to be the ending, which just sort of happened out of the blue.  I'm not even 100% certain who the naked woman was.  

Good work for a week.  

Man...this was disappointing because I think this could have been the best one but it really played it safe.

The opening is terrific but I think you missed big when you elected to have them speak Latin instead of English for the chants.  I know they do speak Latin for some of these Satanic things (I did some research for my script for last year's October OWC which was also centered around sacrificial Satanism), but to have them speak in English would bring another element of horror to the story.

It took 200 years for these guys to find the perfect family?

Story-wise I didn't feel there was enough going on.  It's  Hank and Barbara doing really basic things and then we see the ghost behind them.  There's nothing really to move the story along here.  Maybe that's good, maybe that's not.  Keeps it simple on one hand, but on the other I think it's almost too simple.  

The sacrifice sequences were great, but overall I feel like you really could have added a lot more to juice this one up.  I think it has a lot of potential.  

I did like it for what it was and I'd be interested to see if you rewrite it.

Nice job.

Greg

I feel as though I've seen this setup before, all too many times: The Latin chanting of Satanic rituals; the young couple buying the new house with a less than wholesome history; the realtor knocking down the price for them so that they think they're getting a great deal; the house not having been occupied for years; the lot.

There are also a lot of typos and such in here, misspellings and such. That could be easily cleaned up. The dialogue once the couple moves into the house, though, serves to make this very easy to read through.

I enjoyed the twist with the realtor, and the cultists preparing for another ritual with the couple.

The head implosion bit was gorey and brutal. You rogue.

Misunderstood ghost? Check. Gothic feel? Check.

I'm not a huge fan of the Latin and Satanic rituals cliche, but this was an enjoyable read. Needs some cleaning up, though!

The first part was a bit of a struggle to get through, but the rest was okay, despite some errors here and there. I'm not a fan of all the gore, though, and to be honest, I feel like I need to pray after reading that:p Seriously...

You hit all the requirements of the challenge, but I don't think you needed all the blood to do it. Which reminds me - is there some explanation as to why the guys at the end imploded and/or melted to a puddle of goo? If so, I'm afraid I missed it.