Dancing in Darkness by Christopher Pope - Short, Horror - Amy tells a paranormal experience she had when she was at Brocker's Mental Hospital. 5 pages - pdf, format

New writer interested in feedback on this work

Some notes.

First, I think there is far too much detail concerning the characters and how they look.  Often, the details are left to the director and producer.  If they want to dress the characters in different outfits, so be it.

I find the use of candles in the hospital to be extremely antiquated.  Also, the idea that a 15 yr old Amy can't go the bathroom by herself seems improbable.

The dialogue is formal to the point of being ludicrous.  If these people work together on a daily basis, they soon fall into familiarity.  Give them that.

The ending while telling seems to abrupt.  I'm not sure how they determined the time of death or why they wouldn't believe Amy when she offered what really happened.  And then, I don't know why the girl would come alive in order to escort Amy to the bathroom.  In any case, this one could be cool if the escorting was really necessary, and the girl had been dead at least 24 hours.  

Best
Richard

Amy should be able to go to the bathroom, by herself. (Not that I'm speaking from experience. :P) Also, patient's rooms should never be cold. 'Jackie is an unusual character, one of the weirder child patients in the facility.' - How could the audience know this, without looking at the script? It's also very hard to kill yourself in a mental institution as you get checked on at least every 15 minutes at night. Not a bad story, but not great.

Hi Christopher,

You can lose the address on your title page, no one is going to send you a letter. Can also lose the scene numbers.

Quoted Text Night has begun to bestow its infernal blessing of the darkness on this warm, summer night.

You are writing a screenplay not a novel. This is way too descriptive and is just over written.

Quoted Text As the sight of the golden sun rises into the air, DR. KELLY FITZPATRICK (34) stares off into the sunrise through a dirty, broken window. She’s dressed in the work required uniform: consisting of a white face mask, a small nurse’s cap and a short white dress inked with the red Brocker’s logo. Her hair consists almost entirely of a light blonde color, polluted with some dirty brown. She hasn’t showered in a week, and her soiled appearance makes this quite obvious. She leans on the window sill, still observing the radiant beauty of the morning’s gleam.

All of that to intro one character and say they are staring at the sun. It's too much.

The dialogue is all very ridged and unnatural. All the characters 'sound' exactly the same.

Quoted Text In a desperate means to pass the time, Kelly gazes at her surroundings, hoping that the other nurses won’t catch a glimpse of her helping out a patient without the proper qualifications.

This is not filmable, how can you visually show that she doesn’t have the proper qualifications?

Quoted Text Amy lays sound asleep on her shoddy mattress

Lies not lays.

Quoted Text AMY Suicide. Her time of death was 11:30 p.m. Nearly 5 hours before I woke her.

Five over written pages and then you sum up the whole story in three lines. It doesn’t make for much of a twist to have this idea delivered in dialogue.

So other than the over writing, there are also a lot of unfilmables. This story could probably be cut down to two or three pages at most.

Some grammar issues throughout.

Didn’t really understand the whole going to the toilet setup, and what purpose did the Larry have? What was the horror element of the script?

I think at its very core there is a story in here but it needs a hell of a lot of work.

All the best.

Christopher: I pretty much echo everything Warren has already said - take a look at some scripts and you'll get the feel. I'll go through your opening as an example:

Quoted Text INT. WOODS - CAMPFIRE - MIDNIGHT Night has begun to bestow its infernal blessing of the darkness on this warm, summer night. AMY STEVIA (20) sits amongst her peers, huddled around a campfire. She is having a conversation with her good friend PETER SEMMË (21), who is in the process of digesting a rather tasty s’more dessert

- First - your outside - so it is not INT - it's EXT.
- It's midnight and the night has just begun???
- Summer night is an unfilmable.
- You don't probably intro her "peers"
- She's having a conversation not needed - once you start your dialogue we know she is
- The Descriptions are way way over-written.

Should be something like:

EXT.  WOODS - CAMPFIRE - NIGHT

AMY STEVIA (20) huddles around a campfire with six FRIENDS (same age).

PETER SEMMË (21) sits on a log next to her devouring the last morsels of a cupcake.

Or something like that. The point being - this opens like an over written novel rather than a script.

Best of luck - hope this helps

This was posted back in May, not even sure if the writer is even around? Won't bother with this unless he is.