Scaregrounds by Morgan Cooper (MBCgirl) - Short, Family Horror - A small town Haunted House is no place to be a scaredy cat for two young girls when teenage bullies seek revenge.  14 pages - pdf, format

This meets the OWC challenge.  It was easy to read and I actually flew through it pretty fast.  

This is perfect for a family with young kids and can be enjoyed by all.  I liked the dialogue...seemed realistic and I enjoyed the masked bandit the best!

Great job!

Morgan

This is cute and defintely meets the challenge, although the horror is light.

Pretty clean script with some good characters...especially liked Samantha...a few of her lines were very good.  I liked the coons and wish there was more with them.

I was a bit confused in the haunted house with the nameless boys and some named characters that we never met.

It ended rather abruptly, with the girls being saved OS, and Peter finding the stolen treasures a bit quickly, but the last line is great!

Good effort here.

Cute.

There wasn’t really much tension here. Nothing at stake, it was feel-good, which is all right but it felt as though the writer was out of their comfort zone writing a family story.
Yes, it dealt with a family. Yes, it was at a Halloween festival. And yes, strange things happened. Besides that, I did not find it very interesting. It was just too sedate for me.

Just my opinion.

-electricsatori

Yeah, i got confused like Jeff. so the hooded guys early on were the boys who scared the girls?
Also i don't think Steph was described as wearing a costume when they went to the the Festival, then at the end, she is a fairy princess?   just checked: taylor looks up at her mom, the beautiful fairy princess.  Maybe an after edit?

Overall, though, it had a good feel to it. I really liked the action/dialogue when Peter and Jacob were trying to win stuff - maybe cos my son is nearly three and I can identify with it.

the endiing was sort of abrupt and tacked on - did the writer run close to the deadline?
I know I did!
Another read of this and it's probably the best so far - i've read 7.

I could see what you were going for with this one multiple scary stories surrounding one family at a fairgrounds.  And while I thought it was nicely written, I thought they ultimately didn't go anywhere except to accentuate the pun at the ending and in the title.

This was too big of a story for 12 pages.  There were far too many characters to follow.  You left the subplot with the eyes in the woods pretty much hanging - that is a sign that there is too much in here.

This would have been much better if you developed a single story and followed that story through.  12 pages does not need a subplot.  You could have spent those extra pages telling us more about the boys.  Or perhaps have given the girl in the coffin claustrophobia, given her something to get over.

For what you did it was good - if you had concentrated on one story it might have been excellent.

***OO

Good job Ophelia,
it was a cute story perfect for the kids.  The only criticism I have is the fact that Frankenstein has "bolts" coming out of his neck...not screws!  lol

I liked this one, but the dialog for a three year old was a little advanced.  The story was good and cute, and I liked the raccoon idea.  A nice harmless conclusion to a mystery.  Perfect for a kid's story.  

Well done.

Nice effort here.  I especially liked some of the small touches - the way the boy pats the pumpkin when he puts it down.  Very real.  And of course meets the challenge, with the family and the stange and all.

You want to use fewer direction details (fir trees?  blue Jeep?).  

It took four pages before we got to the festival which felt long, and once there it wasn't clear where the tension was.  As it is I'm not sure who the real protagonist is here?  Dad?  Girl?  Your story would be more terrifying if told from the point of the of the mother - a "lost child" horror.  

I found the dialogue toward the end a bit foced - not how I would expect it to come down given the magnitude of the scene.  All in all nice work!

This was a cute one and is definitely suited for families, nothing too scary, or even that scary at all, which is probably my only beef, i wish that it had a little bit more of an edge to it, but this did fit the challenge very well.  good work!

The more you read these the more you get a feeling that everyone ran out and watched Trick r' Treat before this contest went down. so many of these stories seem familair. Albeit, this was one of the better ones I've read next to Ghost in the Graveyard.

I didn't play in the OWC this time. Various things prevented it, life can get in the way. Need to know more? You'll have to by me a pint. Now, to the chase.

Interesting little sory, first one I read of these and I get the feeling the writer is good, but could do better. But then again, couldn't we all?

It did what it said on the tin, sadly no more. I'll read more by whoever once they're revealed. They obviously know what they're doing and how to 'manipulate' the audience. An important skill.

Baltis,
Nice tune fella. I see you're getting more macho in the avatar pictures. I did like the tune. But fella, where's the vocal? Reminded me of Faith No More. And in my book, there's no higher praise.

Quoted from rendevous I didn't play in the OWC this time. Various things prevented it, life can get in the way. Need to know more? You'll have to by me a pint. Now, to the chase. Interesting little sory, first one I read of these and I get the feeling the writer is good, but could do better. But then again, couldn't we all? It did what it said on the tin, sadly no more. I'll read more by whoever once they're revealed. They obviously know what they're doing and how to 'manipulate' the audience. An important skill. Baltis, Nice tune fella. I see you're getting more macho in the avatar pictures. I did like the tune. But fella, where's the vocal? Reminded me of Faith No More. And in my book, there's no higher praise.

Ha, nah.. I've always been into working out... I was just actin' like an idiot that day. She took the pic at our last baby check up. More an inside joke about the Nurse. As for the music, we're posting up a few demos we done from the Aquatic Astronaut EP/animation gig we're doing. That was a throw away... The ep has no vocals and is a concept/instrumental album about an alien who is thrown to earth and evolves into a functioning being and then realizes earth isn't his place and devises a way to get back to space... We're gonna be unloading about 15 demos onto that esnips thing. Check out some of them... Some are short, some are long. They are all the tracks that were too heavy and not melodic enough for what we were going for. Some we hate, some we love.

I even wrote the arrangments, aside from guitar work for sins of our sunsets... Which was a name I used for a batman script once. Which has nothing to do with the source material.

Oddly enough, I read your alien script today and thought how great it would be as an animated reel like that.  I'll be posting the Aquatic Astronaut, with music as soon as it's finished. We're got 1500 frames of animation done on it right now and we're shooting for 2000.  We're using toon boom animate pro, so don't let the frames fool you... It's also a lot easier to piece together animations nowadays too, though.



P.S. I love faith no more and Mike Patton is a huge influence of mine.

This one was okay. Pretty good dialogue and actions for kid characters -- it actually sounded like real kids esp. the closing line. Almost too cute. But, as said above, the story suffered from too many things going on to fit nicely into 12 pages.

I thought the four hooded guys were actually teenagers that were hired to be haunters. But I was wrong.

Gary

I liked the ending - how Taylor is going to call the place Scaregrounds.

It was too many characters for me. I felt I was missing something - Peter sees pile of treasures and in the next scene he presents a fish to Jacob.

I think that some explanation is need as to how the girl escaped. Felt like you just cut to "teh girls in tow".