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