Black Hour by Harry Gaeper and Don T. Gagonnit - Short, Horror - Teetering on the edge of madness, a man must decide to listen to the demonic voices in his head or risk the unthinkable. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Nicely written writers. I was able to follow this without any problems. Some interesting little touches kept my attention.  *spoiler* When you guys had Evan turn the gun on himself - my eyes rolled, but then you sprung that neat twist. I was not expecting that.

Enjoyed it, all the best.

Ghost

Well written and nice quick read.

Halloween and midnight, tick... a little light on the curse but you have the devil in there so close enough.

My only gripe really is it just felt a little familiar.

Good job writer.

Fairly standard horror story.  The only surprise for me was that I expected her to be evil too.  Don't know why, but I thought the pair were driving him to it.

Writer,

Quick, easy read and written well. Doesn't break any new ground, but doesn't pull any punches either -- straight up horror with decent tension and a decent payoff. Overall? Pretty decent. Good work.

Steve

If this was a movie, I would have had to watch with my hands over my eyes - peeping through my fingers.  But that's the point isn't it?  To scare the daylights out of the audience.  You succeeded - great job!  **Puts hands back over eyes**  Oh...and the growling baby.... **puts fingers back in ears too**  LOL - thanks for sharing.  I'll be remembering this one...tonight while I'm trying to sleep.  

Well, this sure looks like the work of a seasoned writer. You've got a style and it works a treat.

I enjoyed the story and would enjoy watching it play out on screen, but I have seen a fair few tales like this so it wasn't wholly original, but still good.

I'm a little on the fence (again, might as well start painting it) regarding the challenge - to be fair, it is in there - the devil is in those details, but it's a little covert.

Anyway, I should shut up, good work, great entry.

A decent horror effort here. The writing's good and easy to follow. Although, I feel that the Corey's reveal should've been kept under the wraps until the very end when Carol lifts his sheets. I believe that it would've worked way better in giving the audience a scary ending.

Good luck.

Really well-written, effective description and dialogue. The tension with Evan and his wife regarding the baby feels very genuine.

Obviously it's hard to turn something like this premise into a really unique take in only ten pages, but the conclusion felt very writerly and foreseen. The baby either IS evil or it isn't, and when we know this is a ten-page short, it's obvious which one of the two the writer would choose. It would be more effective if some other element we'd taken for granted was "the" surprise - the wife, the setting, the broader context.

The elements of the competition are here for sure. Midnight, cursed baby, Halloween, breaking the curse. Halloween doesn't feel particularly integral to the premise.

Harry Gaeper and Don T. Gagonnit,

Good effort here. Enjoyed the story and the writing. The curse part didn't seem so much included as everything else, but that didn't matter to me as it was close enough.

Totally thought it would turn out Carol would be the Devil himself, for some reason.

Sean

A good horror script imo. Written well.

This was a nicely written horror story. While the dialog and story building were excellent,  it still felt a little familiar or predictable to me.

I like the crescendo that ended in the crib, but would have liked an incident at the beginning that set the curse in motion. He heard voices, but did he do something to start that nightmare and bring it into his house?  And what would he have to do to stop them before the baby gave new meaning to "little devil?"

Perhaps with those questions asked, the Black Hour would be elevated to an even more terrifying story...which is already scary as hell!

Nice job!

Packs a punch and well written.

Ben kinda summed up what I thought though re it either is the devil incarnate or it isn't.

I don't know... Something was missing for me in the execution regarding setup, misdirection, and the final reveal cause it is expected in a way.

Evan struck me as a coward too that he chose the way out that he did and didn't care to protect Carol from the impending evil. Carol never even questions why Evan believes what he does, just disregards what he's telling her, and maternal love aside if my husband brought up the topic that my child was the spawn of the devil I think I'd be somewhat freaked out and demand to see some evidence. You could of course go the route of a history of mental illness or have her make a comment about his drinking to excess, but perhaps that's cliched.

This needed another element of the unexpected for me, but at the same time what you did present was well done.

Evan... Were you channeling Evan Peters by any chance? I love that guy! Excellent actor and fearless too.

I liked this one. You painted clear pictures without any unnecessary words making it a clean crisp read. You also setup the whole thing with questions, which is good. That keeps the readers/audience wanting to know more. What is going on here? What's wrong with Evan?

It moved along nicely until we got upstairs where it went a little askew for me. Still good, don't take me wrong. I just felt that Evan's and Carol's behavior were a little on the unrealistic side. I think Carol didn't act protective and outraged and angry enough. If it was me, I would have been WTF is wrong with my husband??? Her reaction led me to believe that she already knew he had some mental issues or such, but since that had not been mentioned prior it seemed unlikely too. Then Evan points a gun at her and the baby. I felt there should have been more of a struggle between them. Carol should try to protect the baby with her life! Evan should try to get to the baby only or only threaten Carol for being in the way of him shooting it. Right now it seems he's willing to just start shooting and whatever is in the way that takes a bullet by accident is okay.

Those are my thoughts. Great writing. Great setup. Just needs a little tweaking to be great all around.  

Enjoyable read from start to finish.

It's probably not right but i was expecting him to shoot the baby then himself.
As Carol cradles the baby corpse he starts to morph into the devil.

But that's just me