Ice Cream Soda - QC - Print Topic

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INT. NURSING HOME - NIGHT It's late...

Yeah... it's night.

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The Girl advances further

No need for 'further'.

I got kinda lost toward the end. But I think the ghosts are representative of the dead person's younger self. Needs a bit of work, but is a worthy enough story.

Oh, wow. THis was a captivating read, kept me on my toes. And suddenly works.
I don't know who the girl is and why these ghost kids are suddenly attacking all the residents of the nursing home but the images in this are very powerful.

I hadn't heard either of those nursery rhymes before so that didn't have much effect. Didn't get the hound either. Would the nurse call to inform of someone passing so quick? Eh, it's horror and doesn't really matter.

Soooo...was the girl the old lady or the nurse? I was sure it was the old lady until a boy showed up for the janitor.

Regardless, this has a high creep factor and I liked it. Give it another page or two and you may have something here.

It was oddly creepy, but, confusing.

SPOILERS

So, when a person dies, they see a young person jump roping? Is that the message?

Why did the janitor vanish early on?

Interesting, but, while it might seem sinister, the fact is, death is a part of "life" so to speak. Nothing sinister about it. If there is something sinister happening, we need to know why.

Dan

First passage loaded with completely unnecessary unfilmables.

"The Girl's skipping rope..." - so...listen...this is passive, first of all, but more importantly, it's awkward, because used like this, it could mean 2 completely different things - 1) The girl is skipping rope, or 2) There is a "skipping rope" that belongs to the girl.

The writing continues to be what I refer to as awkward, and the story, for me, is nonexistent. The jump rope here has been shoehorned in to meet the challenge.

Not for me.

* 1/2

So the janitor is like, "Helen? Hmm." I guess he's used to seeing dead bodies lying around the place.

This was just kind of weird for me, a girl appears jumping rope AFTER Rosemarie dies, but then Helen dies after seeing the jump rope girl. And a hound at the window! But then the Janitor sees a kid with a toy gun. Now he's going to die? If I'm following the logic here, then Rosemarie must have seen someone, but we don't know, because it wasn't shown. So maybe she just died of natural causes and the kids are out to seek vengeance on the nursing home workers.

Not badly written, just a tad confusing.

Good luck,
Gary

Creepy in places and would be great with a clean up of a few things.

Just to be pedantic, IMO there is a difference between a skipping rope and a jump rope: the former is smaller and used by one person while a proper jump rope is usually much longer and is tied to a tree or held by another person to swing.

Writer,

The writing seems awkward. Good in spots, though. Some creepy stuff going on here, but nothing to really explain who the Girl or boy was, and what they signified. That's needed, IMO. Not a bad effort though!

Didn't mind this one, it was kind of creepy but I was lost on the details.

This was pretty creepy, but too much for just 3 pages... I was pretty confused. I wouldn't mind seeing you expand this into something longer. There's potential here.

Nicely written in a sense that I could clearly see what was going on, could do with a polish to get rid of some unfilmables.

Atmospheric and creepy for sure but confusing. Why are these hellish kids appearing? I've no idea, and that in itself is the problem for me. Random supernatural occurrences are great for a writer looking to write themselves out of a corner but they are not satisfying for the viewer.

You are onto something here though, flesh this out over a few more pages and you may have yourself a very creepy short script.

-Mark

Nothing new to really add here. Had some creepy moments. Like everyone else, I wanted these ghost appearances to have some purpose.

It could be a simple revenge tale, maybe the nurse has been killing patients. Although that's not even remotely original. Hopefully you can develop this story more. Solid effort.

The best thing about this was it had that empty weird spook factor going on.

The visuals were really strong with the janitor there, late in the night feel.

I could almost hear the echoes.

The trouble with it is lack of co--relation with ideas that made it into the story. There weren't legitimate reasons for their existence. Even the jumprope, with the ghost girl. What is her link to Helen?

Sandra

Definitely creepy, child ghosts seem kind of random though. I'm sure there's a myth or legend we're missing, will be interested to hear the writer explain it.

If the idea is that people are haunted by manifestations of their childhood memories, I think that's a very cool idea that's worth a longer script.

As is, some fun scares -- nothing too out of the ordinary, but efficient and entertaining. A bit too subtle for me, if there's a more to the story that I was supposed to understand.

Some commenters have offered ideas for making this something more than it is. To me, it's a tad thin. The scary images seem to exist only for their own sake and no other reason. A girl who turns ghastly and scares the nurse to death. A dog at the window. A little cowboy. Is this what St. Gertrude had in mind?

Fun in places but I miss some connectors that clear up and explain me that world exactly.

The boy at the end completely rocks as a concept, like: harmless looking kids stroll around with their toys and rhymes till they turn on their bad sides. As said, some connectors, explaining moments, reasoning, are missing. However, I already enjoyed it as it is. Good job for now and I would like to read it again when it's completely coherent one time.

I wanted to like this because it is very creepy. I like the way you started with the death.

Are those real nursery rhymes or did you make them up? I thought they were cool and different.. as I hadn't heard them before.

Why were the kids there? Who were the kids? Why did Helen freak in the room? I'm left a bit confused. I like it but I need to know more. Good writing through out and easy to read. I'm just wanting to know more.

Good job.

It's horror, it doesn't have to be logical, it has to SCARE the HELL out of people. This was scary and original. I personally liked it.

Quoted from Michael

It's horror, it doesn't have to be logical, it has to SCARE the HELL out of people. This was scary and original. I personally liked it.

I agree. That is the main purpose of a horror. We let horror films get away with a lot because we're not looking for character arcs and great stories. If you seek out a horror to watch, you want to be scared or at the very least be creeped out.

I thought this one was pretty good, but could use a rewrite to make things a bit more clear.

The story is certainly not clear. I don't know what the relationship with the ghosts is to people dying. It's fine to play with a viewer/reader's thought processes, but everything must be tied up at the end - else it seems the writer just didn't have a clue either.

I actually agree with Dustin... and yes, even though you are watching a horror movie and expect to be scared, I still look for a captivating story and characters that I care about. A lot may not, but I'm one of the few who do. Take a slasher, for instance. If you don't care about any of the characters, then you don't give a shit about who lives or dies... and the sad part is, most slashers really DON'T have characters you care about, and in the end, you end up rooting for the killer hoping he just offs the entire fucking cast... when you have a relatable, likeable main character, you root for them to survive, make it to end, and you are on the edge of your seat with them... otherwise, you're sitting back in your seat yawning and falling asleep. I know I just picked on the slasher genre of horror, but that really goes for any genre in horror... possession movies/supernatural/etc. You still have to have good, fleshed out characters AS WELL AS a captivating, well told story IMO.

Had to google Ice Cream Soda nursery rhyme and came up with jump rope... it all ties in lol

For the writing itself a pretty easy read.
The story had a nice horror element going on for just 3 pages with the dead kids, just need to flesh it more and you might have an interesting story.

Interesting but could needed a little something more to really make it complete (I'm sure if you had another page, that wouldn't be an issue)

Thanks to all who read and voted for this story. Pretty fun challenge, and I'm happy this got some recognition.

The main issue I had with this, and it was reiterated almost to a man, was it lacked clarity. The Girl skipping rope, and the Cowboy at the end, were meant to be the Angel of Death. They were actually the same person. I alluded to something with the appearance of St. Gertrude, but the nurse, Helen, should have made it clear she thought the Girl was an Angel of some kind. There's a whole religious angle that never came through here, and the reason it didn't was because I had to fit this into 3 pages. Had I, say, a fourth page to work with I could have given a bit more clarity. So, to make up for it, I tried to make what I had as creepy as possible, hoping that it would earn me a few extra points. I guess it did.

And as for Jeff's review, he was spot on with the awkward writing. I felt it as I was writing this. For some reason I feel as if I almost forgot how to write clear action passages. I'm a little out of practice, and haven't written much lately. I have started a rewrite, though, and hope I can clear things up a little.

Thanks again!

Steve

Hey, Steven, this was really powerful. Creepy, full of imagery. I interpreted it differently, had something simpler for it. I thought that a person who dies fromthe hands octhis ghost becomes a bad ghost himself. I think youcan easily optionit.