I'd say it would be pretty hard for teens (as it is for anyone) to objectively comprehend what's going on for them while their right the in midst of it. If you had asked me what was going on for me when I was 16, I would have said something completely different to what I'd say about it now in retrospect.

It's hard for people to be objective about an issue that they are totally subjective about. E.g.; Teens and their transition into adulthood.
Therefore, it's not surprising they have trouble writing good original horror, which adherers to all the elements that Kevan's article mentioned.

But hey, their not the only ones who struggle to write a good script. LOL.

Quoted Text The reason Horror is the most popular thing on this site is because it appeals to those who are in transition becoming an adult. It occupies your pubescent ambigious reality which is in flux as you journey from child to adult..

Quoted Text It's hard for people to be objective about an issue that they are totally subjective about. E.g.; Teens and their transition into adulthood. Therefore, it's not surprising they have trouble writing good original horror, which adherers to all the elements that Kevan's article mentioned.

I dont think i'd get that deep with the explanation, which simply is this: horror is fun to write. I agree, a thrirtten year old would defiaintly find it hard to write about adult issues eg drugs, but it's not impossible.  Most writers here are young, too, and like you said, young writers, or teens in general, like horror. But It's a matter what they like writing. Comedy is fun, too, but there's always the fear that "will they find this funny?" etc. With horror, it's like if you find that creepy/scary, most likely others will too.

It is annyonig that horror and shorts are the most reviewed genre on the site, but it isnt that complicated. If something is simple, it's most likely the asnwer.

Quoted from Kevan Read the article and maybe it'll help and assist you introducing these subtle genre elements which go towards making your own Horror story when you write a screenplay.

I finally found time to read it properly, when I got home from work.
It was very good. Pardon my flippancy before; I was just taken back by
the length of the posts. It was well worth reading. Cheers.

Quoted from -Ben- I dont think i'd get that deep with the explanation, which simply is this: horror is fun to write. I agree, a thrirtten year old would defiaintly find it hard to write about adult issues eg drugs, but it's not impossible.

Because they can't write about adult issues, they automatically turn to slasher movies?  How about writing about teen issues?  What do the thirteen years old think about now-a-days?  What's significant in their lives?

Quoted from -Ben- Most writers here are young, too, and like you said, young writers, or teens in general, like horror. But It's a matter what they like writing. Comedy is fun, too, but there's always the fear that "will they find this funny?" etc. With horror, it's like if you find that creepy/scary, most likely others will too.

I've read a handful of horror scripts and I didn't find them at all creepy/scary.  When I was young and my family got its first VCR, I rented a lot of these movies but quickly got bored with them.  Too many people think that good horror is blood and gore and a bodycount.  I remember one script where ten people were killed in less than ten pages  Another script had everything (and I do mean everything) covered in blood.  There's no character development, no suspense.  It's as if some of these stories are just descriptions of violence with enough dialogue to string them together.

Quoted from -Ben- It is annyonig that horror and shorts are the most reviewed genre on the site, but it isnt that complicated. If something is simple, it's most likely the asnwer.

Just because it's easy to write, doesn't mean it's written correctly.


Phil

I wouldn't say it's the most reviewed, if you look at the horror threads it's the most bitched about. Not even half of the posts in Horror are reviews and that's why I don't care to read them, they get all this attention and the writer comes back like "Well I'll try harder next time."

After that sentence I'd ban that member and tell them to quit writing forever, harsh but that makes them think.

We have guys like Alan who spend years perfecting one thing with rewrites and updates and then we have kids who think 30 scripts in a year is OK, I’d rather wait 10 years for Alan to write a new episode than 10 days for a new script by some kid who doesn't want reviews but a pair of lips on his/her ass.

Because everyone tries to impress everyone else with a good scare. They think every likes horror and wants to be scared so they write a horror script.

Horror is also very easy to write but very hard to be effective which is what most people don't know. That's why i think horror is one of the most challenging things to write.

Only a few 'horror' films have actually started a legacy or whatever. Those are:

1. The Shining (Excellent haunted house story)
2. Scream (even though it is considered a Slasher i guess?)
3. The Exorcist (It's scary the first time you watch it)
4. The Descent (It really is amazing)
5. Alien
6. Psycho (For back when it was made)
7. Jaws (I wasn't scared but it is a great horror movie. Is that possible? lol)
8. The Thing
9. The Others
10. House of the Dead (Oh yes)  

I'd like to think that some of the stuff I wrote (Linus, Dreams in Dust and Marble) was scary, but there's no blood, gore, or death in them.  Violence is at a minimum.  Reading about a bunch of teens being chased through the woods by a maniac or zombies isn't scary, especially when there's no chase and everyone is killed very quickly.


Phil

Quoted from dogglebe I remember one script where ten people were killed in less than ten pages.

Haha! That sounds a lot like The Great Brain Robbery. Who the hell wrote that abomination?

I think the main thing lacking in horror scripts around here is suspense. To me, that's the most important aspect of horror writing. It's like the old adage, "the anticipation of pain is far worse than the pain itself."

What's lacking in a lot of scripts, not just horror, is that pesky character development aspect. I mean, it may be fun to write about a bunch of people getting hacked, but when we don't care...well, we don't care. My thoughts to those who like the hack 'n slash is to go ahead and do your hack 'n slash thing for your first draft, but BEFORE you post it, go back through the script and add in scenes that explore the complexity of your cookie cutter characters. Give them a history, desires, idiosyncrasies, a future (that will inevitably be cut short), friends, relatives, people who will miss them, people who won't miss them, hobbies, flaws, and anything else you can fit into a three page interactive scene about just them. (along with one or two others). This might not be the most ideal way to write a script, but I can guarantee if you add in these little tidbits at some point before their demise, your script will be better.

Even Casey Decker in Scream had some character to her and she was kill #1. Why? Because the teaser had considerable time devooted to developing her character before killer her off. Remember her boyfriend? He got developed through her conversation on the phone. It wasn't much, but we know he's a football player and when we see him, he's wearing the letter jacket. This not only gave him a little something, but it also showed the strength of the killer...I mean, they took down a football player...one who was supposed to "kick your ass." Plot motion, development, and 2 kills. Not bad.

Even though Scream triggered an onslaught of horrific, cliched teen slashers... what he said.

It triggered a bunch of clones that missed the best part of the film. The hidden, buried psychological part.

Someone said that today's males don't have a right of passage. I'm not sure about that. I would have thought things like: Graduating from high school or college, getting your drivers license, turning 18 and being able to vote/drink, losing your virginity, joining the work force, leaving home and becoming a father, would all constitute some sort of right of passage. Every person's journey is different, so I don't think you can expect everyone to go through the same right of passage.
For one person their right of passage might be graduating from college, for another it might be completing their first prison sentence
Sure there is no universal right of passage except perhaps death, but that doesn't mean we don't go through one. I know I have.    

Takeshi, I think you touched on another important aspect of this conversation; the fact that most of these scripts are written by males.

I recently watched an interesting documentary on child development that suggested that there are certain aspects of male development that are being suppressed.

One progressive teacher had students (both male and female, ages around 8, I think) make up a story each morning using various characters. The males showed a much higher propensity to kill off characters. When the female students expressed concern about all the killing, the teacher asked the following day for there to be no killing. Many of the male students expressed a serious inability to think or function during the storytelling session. One was plainly stressed out.

Finally the teacher sat the children down to see if they could come up with their own solution. Both boys and girls came to the consensus that it was okay to kill off evil characters. This solved the problem to the delight of that one little boy.

It was also suggested that children below certain stages of development have a skewed idea of death and fail to understand its permanence.

Of course, I’m a woman so I’m sure there are things about the male mind I simply cannot understand. Nonetheless, it’s a fact that mostly males write this stuff and it needs to be established how much of this is societal, cultural influence and how much of it is simply a reflection of the development of the male mind.

I honesty don't think the fact that the majority of horror writers are male is important. The truth is there aren't that many female screenwriters or filmmakers in general so it's only natural that most male writers would write horror.

I don't neccesarily believe that horror is popular on this site because of transition between child and adult either. Perhaps that's the case with some writers but I think for the most part, they're just trying to follow the formulas of the horror movies they love. There're other reasons too. I, myself, am a freshman in college and my "developmental angst", as my previous English professor put it, is coming to an end yet I still enjoy writing horror.

For the most part, it's just fun. There's probably a multitude of other reasons why one may write horror but I think the bottom line for most writers is it's fun. I don't think these younger writers are trying to cope with their transitions when they write. They're just trying to enjoy themselves.

As to why horror is so popular on this site, I'd say it's because there aren't a lot of sites that showcase writer's work online except for fan fiction sites. The majority of fan fiction writers write horror (and occasionally gay romances involving Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings characters) and probably viewed this as another fan fiction site for them to showcase their work. That would explain all the "Rated R for violence/gore, sexuality..." nonsense that appears in some scripts here as well.  

I've posted a lot on this thread already but I don't think I've yet answered the original question so... there you go. I'll shut up now.

Quoted from Breanne Mattson Of course, I’m a woman so I’m sure there are things about the male mind I simply cannot understand.

That makes two us Breanne! One of my friends is doing gender studies and he told me there are just as many differences between individual males, as there are between males and females. I've also heard there are as many forms of masculinity as there are men.