Devils Lake High by David Voss (davidlau17) - Short, Horror - A group of bored college students get more than they bargained for when they go to an abandoned school to buy cocaine on Halloween night. 13 pages - doc, format 8)

No takers?

Hello David, and welcome to the boards.

What you will find here is not so much a free reading service, but rather a community of writers that provide critiques for one another -- giving freely of their time -- and it is the active members whose work is most often sought out by those looking for something to read.  You are encouraged to participate.

PDF files are the norm, btw, and many readers will dismiss Word files out of hand.

I did glance over your story here, and found that it sticks pretty close to familiar formulae, but with a conclusion that does not satisfy.  One aspect that would help is to differentiate your characters to a greater extent, which will help the reader to identify with them.  For example, your two girls not only sound alike, but you have dressed them in identical costumes.

This advice also extends to the nameless menace that inhabits your school.  The promise of this beastie is the reason most people will stick with a story like this, but unfortunately, the payoff is mostly nil.
  
This story needs something fresh to help it stand apart from many others like it.

Ok a few things:

pg 2 "Paige is wearing what she constitutes as" I would leave out "what she constitutes as" and just put what she's wearing.

pg 10 "We'll find try to find a rope" I think you meant, "We'll try to find a rope"

Final Draft is inexpensive and worth the money if you're new at this or if you don't want to constantly have formatting problems. Although I have FD and I still have some formatting problems :)

I guess it's me, but I hate how in almost all horror stories, characters hear a scream or something and have to go see what it is. I don't like the same ole......change it up(maybe).

The character Grim, he never even made it in the story and was he killing these teens or was he the dead body first walked up on? ((Confused))

Keep writing and reading too.

Hey guys,

Thanks for reading. I immediately noticed reading over some of the other scripts that I had made a mistake not putting the script in pdf format. I'll be sure to do that next time. I just joined , and plan on continuing writing as well as giving my own feedback to others on the scripts they write.

I agree with your criticisms. I'm a horror fan and I modeled this short script after a generic, trashy horror movie.

Being new to screenwriting, I did this more for practice than anything else. I might try to improve it, but I'm working on some other scripts right now that I'm putting more of my heart into.

Some dialogue in there to give the girls distinct personalities would definitely be a plus. As for the ending, I sort of wanted to add to the mystery by not giving any explanation as to what was up with the abandoned school they went to. But as you mentioned it seems a little underwhelming, so maybe I could add something on that front.

I did mean for Grim to be the dead body they found. Guess I didn't make that clear enough.

Hi David,

You say you noticed things while reading over some other scripts. Perhaps you should leave comments? A, it's one way to get your piece read and two, it's a way to learn. A lot of fine writers have just completed not one but two horror challenges, and I'm sure they would appreciate your review as much as you would theirs.

Some quick comments from me - one, your logline contains something that's a pet peeve of mine. No one gets more than they bargained for when they do something out of the ordinary; and scripts are the stuff of drama, and drama is the stuff of people doing things out of the ordinary. If you go to an abandoned school to buy cocaine on Halloween night, and things out of the ordinary happen, didn't you get exactly what you bargained for?

Second, in your comments you said you modeled your script after a "generic" and "trashy" horror film. Why on Earth would anyone want to write anything generic? And a better question is why would someone want to read it, or view it? If you're not bringing something unique to your writing, even in the most tried of genres, then why do it?

I glanced at your first few paragraphs:

"EXT. SUBURBAN ROAD � EVENING

A red mustang speeds down a small suburban road.  Houses at the side of the road are decorated for Halloween.

INT. RED MUSTANG � EVENING

CLAY, a dark-haired, well-built college student in his early twenties mans the wheel of the car. He wears a tight, white t-shirt and Yankees cap backwards. A can of Busch Light is in his left hand.

His blonde girlfriend, PAIGE, sits beside him.

PAIGE is wearing what she constitutes as a bunny costume, with bunny ears, a tight white tank top, tiny black shorts and stockings."

A professional read would be over for the following reasons:

(i) you repeat your slug (SUBURBAN ROAD) in your first sentence, and use the word "road" 3x;

(ii) never name brands or music in a short - this is okay for a feature because there always exists the possibility to product place, but you will never get licenses for anything for a short film; it should thus be a can of beer, not Busch Light, and no Yankees cap;

(iii) "mans the wheel of the car" is redundant - you already told us we're in a Mustang, no? "is driving" or "drives" is sufficient.

(iv) "what she constitutes" as a bunny costume? You can't get into the characters' heads for us, you should only describe what we can see. And yes, we know if it's a bunny costume that bunny ears would be a part of it, so this is another redundancy.

(v) slugs are NIGHT or DAY, not EVENING.

So anyone reviewing this would probably stop before they even got to your dialogue, let alone your story, which you admittedly state is a generic homage to the horror genre.

Again, all this tells me that you should pay a different homage, in the form of reading some of the horror work of these other fine SS writers.

Hope this helps.

AJR

Hi David,

This is my first post!

I just finished reading your script. When I first began reading it I was shocked because it sounded exactly like the kinda thing I enjoy writing, reading or watching! Infact, a screenplay which I'm working on atm, features a red mustang convertible :P

Another thing which you included which is something I like to write about is the surburban roads at night, halloween decorations, the highschool setting, stereotyped dumb blonde- however I do agree with one of the previous comments- I know it's a short story but try in your rewrite to characterise the other girl a little differently, give her an identity. I also love the whole teenagers making out vibe, halloween costumes, driving on a mission to get high...

... However, I found the ending to be a letdown. I realise that you're going for B-grade horror, and I also realise that it is a short story, but you definately need a story. It would be great to have some background to the reasons behind the killings, maybe they could be vaguely discussing an urban legend of the school in the car rather than just concluding that the "school is haunted". In the spirit of horror as well, maybe include a twist & leave the viewers hanging.

Anyway, the screenplay was very John Carpenter's "Halloween" feel and I respect this feel that you were going for and I believe that it is almost there- give the plot a little more depth and this will be perfect for an enticing short film.

I did overlook the grammatical errors, because I assumed that this was a first time writing a screenplay as you used Word to format it. I use "celtx" for my scripts, which you can easily download for free.

Anyway I hope that my review helped and I look forward to seeing your second draft soon!

Sarah

Hey David,

Well, the script did keep me fairly captivated throughout however, the ending was SUCH A DISAPPOINTMENT! I was really hoping for a clever climax but all I got was a cliche cliffhanger. The whole thing is very standard and common so you need to develop the uniqueness of the story line. I'm not really picky with format, I'm more about the overall story. Maybe try making some of the lines a little less cheesy. The characters were really unimaginative and you really need to work on the originality and make your script innovative, unlike any other script ever written before.

That's all from me! Good Luck!

Sam.