Within The Closet by  Brennan Scott - Short, Horror - A man awakens to voices coming from his closet. When he finally ventures inside, the real horror begins. 4 pages - pdf, format

hmm.  feels like the opening scene to a standard horror movie, but something didn't sit right with me, can't really put my finger on it.  

Why has Paul forgotten what happened? I don't know if I can accept that as something I'm supposed to guess on my own.  Not bad though, you seem like you know what are you doing for the most part.

Ok read it. Not a bad effort, but as the poster above said, standard horror fare. Not that thats a bad thing! I'm thinking he's not so much forgotten as suppressed the memories of what he did. Thats MO of course.

Read it.. Not bad.  Keep in mind I'm VERY new to reading scripts, but is it possible for a short to be too short?  I found myself wanting more.  

Not everything has to break the mold... Some things are made, written, produced, developed strictly for entertainment.  Books, games, movies, music etc alike.

4 pages, however, seems a disservice.

It's a well written mess. Technically, it's a good script. On a more creative side, it's really lacking.

Sorry but Paul isn't a believable character at all. He doesn't remember peeping on and then murdering this woman? Sorry, I don't buy it. It's a glaring logical fallacy.

Howabout instead of him "remember" he feels the womans fear and pain? The moment of pure helplessness as she is smothered. It sickens him, horrifies him.

So when you snap back to the present, he should be disgusted and horrified. His last line it too passive.

Try something like this for the ending:

INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT

He snaps back into reality.  Horrified, he lets the box fall to the floor. The contents spill out.  His hand clutches a PICTURE of the woman.

He looks down at her face. His mouth quivers and his eyes well.

PAUL
I liked watching you sleep! You were
so beautiful. I just wanted to look
at you. All the time.

He struggles to catch his breath. Tears stream down his face.

PAUL (CONT.)
You weren’t supposed to wake up!

He sobs, struggling to catch his breath,

PAUL (CONT.)
  But, it’s okay now. It’s okay.

He bends over on to the floor and scoops the contents back into the BOX.
Paul pauses, he looks at her face.

PAUL (CONT.)
You weren't suppose to wake up.

He slowly walks back to the CLOSET and sets the BOX back onto the floor.
Paul stops as he looks towards the back of the CLOSET.

In a flash --

-- A HAND GRABS PAUL’S ARM; PULLING HIM INTO THE CLOSET.

Paul’s SCREAMS swim away as the room falls SILENT.

SLAM CUT TO BLACK

(I didn't read any of the other comments because I'm a lazy bum. Sorry if I hit on a few points that have already been addressed.)

“Paul awakens as the VOICE seems to retreat into the CLOSET.” This is a bit vague. Not sure if that was intentional or no, but it kind of brought me out of the story for a moment. Maybe the closet door bangs shut or something?

Paul's motives for killing the girl are pretty poorly defined. It seems irrational; if he's smart enough to put on rubber gloves when he breaks into her house, surely he understands that it's not at all outside of reason to think that he may be forced to resort to violence.

As for the ending, I think you could expand on Paul's sorrow a bit more. As it is, it seems pretty rushed and almost skin-deep; I don't feel it, and all I see is him crying. I think this could use some expansion beyond what it is now, which is essentially the bare minimum of what I – as a reader – expect from somebody regretting a murder.

The ending was good. I kind of saw it coming, but it was still a nice way to end the script.

All in all, this is a nice little short. I liked the concept, and I didn't know at all what the meaning of the ghost was going to be until you revealed it (I was thinking ex-girlfriend). I had a few problems with some of the behavior and pacing, which detracted from my overall enjoyment; if you spend another page or two elaborating on a few things, I think you'll have a winner. As is, it's still a nice script, with no flaws so glaring as to render it unreadable. Good stuff.

It's very short for this story. Paul is clearly being conscious about what he's done. And he's done it because he's not himself in the first place. In the past he was normal, then he fell in love with the woman and this love turned him into the mad man (here, I think, you could show why - did she wrong him somehow...) and then he couldn't live with it. --I think it's a big story for such a short short.

Paul winces as the thoughts seep in. Paul starts to remember

That gives people the impression that Paul had forgotten he'd murdered this woman. I think it's a pretty simple story. A voyeur ends up killing the woman he's obsessed with and is haunted by her spirit. It works as a short.  

However, like I said above, it needs work in the character department. Rewrite Paul to be more believable. Do you want a "twist" or authentic behavior?  Right now his actions seem off.

My problem is you have all these whispers, and then voices, getting louder and louder.

What the heck is she saying?

You can't just have "A VOICE" in a script, and then leave it at that.  It makes no sense.

That doesn't work on the page, and even less so on film.

I think I know the effect he's going for, you see it in bad horror films, where there are indistinguishable whispers. It never works and often ends with, "the ghost was good all along" kind of thing.  I guess that's kind of the story he wrote though.

Possible angle is to have more communication between Paul and the voice - maybe Paul tries to leave his room, but he can't (door won't open etc) then had to justify what he has done to 'the voice' etc - this gives room for character development, for a bit of a story to work it's way in. As it is, it's written okay - there are a couple of vague bits, but it's a little empty as far as motivation etc is concerned.

Hello everyone. I'm the writer of this short. First of all, thanks so much to all of you for reading WTC and posting about! I appreciate it.

I agree with all of your statements. I know it's very short and could use more development, but this was written as an extremely small idea one weekend that my friends and I were working on another short. I merely wrote this "just in case" we had the free time to shoot something else. This may explain the simplicity of WTC. I just wanted to do a mysterious, almost J-Horror influenced short. I wanted it to be a bit vague because it WOULD raise some questions. Of course this short needed to be 5-10 pages, at least, but we wouldn't have been able to shoot it. We didn't shoot this either, but I wanted to post some of my work on here just to see any thoughts on my formatting or the story itself.

I hope this helps clear up a few things. I was aware from the start that this was extremely short and vague, but I wasn't necessarily trying to make a completely original, mind bending, epic horror short.

Thanks so much for your comments and keep them coming! I'll post more scripts soon!

Hi Brennan -

Read WTC....  Very short script, but the writing is crisp.  I can't say that it was quite my cup of tea...  I've read too many stalker stories in my day for the concept to be fresh, and the horror/supernatural angle of it doesn't have enough internal grounding to work for it to work for me.  (Not that it's unexpected, but it doesn't work organically with other elements in the story.)

That said (IMHO) - the script's tight, and very readable!  I like your writing style.

A good effort.  Writing is pretty tight.  I agree with others about making Paul more believable and his situation better-developed.  

I also had a problem with the "VOICES", wondering what they were saying.  

Also,

An hour later, Paul is asleep. A WHISPER echoes out right
next to him.

An hour later - how do I know this?

Ending was predictable, but I think this is all about the visuals, which makes it okay.

Good job.