“Horror is a genre worth taking seriously because of how well it can inform and enlighten our vision of the world by reminding us of our inner moral frailty.”
— Philip Tallon, essay Through a Mirror, Darkly: Art-Horror as a Medium for Moral Reflection from the book The Philosophy of Horror
I LOVE HORROR! I love storytelling and I love writers. As a life-long horror fan, I was excited to be a reader for the Killer Shorts Screenplay Contest. For the past two seasons, I’ve had the pleasure to read hundreds of creepy, gory, dread-inducing, spooky, scary scripts. Thanks for all the new nightmares writers.
I hope what you are about to read will give you a bit of insight into the mind of a script reader and help prepare for your future submissions. Please do submit, keep putting your work out there.
Everything I have outlined below can be boiled down to this one piece of advice:
Keep in mind that reading your script is an experience
We all want to have a memorable experience from reading your script. So before you hit that submit button for the next competition, review your script for anything that might distract the reader from enjoying it.
Here are a few suggestions of things to examine:
Assume The Reader Has Not Worked in Film Production
Your submission should not be a shooting script. Unless it is vital to the telling of the story don’t put in camera angles, and if you do, use them sparingly. If I’m spending too much time visualizing where the camera is, and not enough on what’s going on in the story, or relating to the characters, that’s not good.
Assume the readers for a script competition are not a film editor or a cinematographer. Don’t add overly technical terminology in your script, it could be confusing, and therefore distracting. Worry about directing and editing the film later, right now it’s about the experience of reading it.
Don’t add scene numbers, that’s for production purposes.
Easy On The Transitions
I read a handful of scripts that contained a ton of transitions. A few scripts had them at the end of every scene. That’s too many. I agree with most of the screenwriting gurus on this matter, in most situations you don’t need to use CUT TO or any other transition. The only reason to use these is if you want to convey a sudden or abrupt visual change. So if it is relevant to the flow, pacing, story by all means use them, but sparingly.
I was also seeing some different types too, such as sharp cut, smash cut, graphic cut??? Hmmm. All these do is slow down the pacing. Sometimes I even stopped reading and was wondering what exactly that is – the last thing you want is a reader to stop reading!
The Road To Hell Is Paved With Adverbs
Perhaps Stephen King had a good point when he said this. Overusing the same adjectives or adverbs frankly gets annoying. If I could eliminate one word from ever being allowed in a screenplay forever, until the end of time, it would be ‘SUDDENLY’. Why is that word so overused?!
“He SUDDENLY remembered what he forgot to do, SUDDENLY he turns and SUDDENLY picks up his car keys then SUDDENLY walks out the door SUDDENLY closing it behind him.” Please stop. Like everything else, use it sparingly, otherwise, it becomes redundant and loses its effectiveness.
Pick It Up or Slow It Down – Work On Your Pacing
Put yourself in the reader’s mind and think about the experience of reading your script. Think about the pacing. There is no universal sweet spot page count, every script is different. The length should be whatever makes sense for your story. This is one of the biggest questions you should be asking yourself before you call your script finished – did it feel too long or too short?
By the way, I am also a screener for film festivals and this is something that is discussed A LOT. While a film is different than a script, it is still an experience you are putting someone through. You need to know where the sweet spot page count is for your script.
One specific area to look at for pacing is the action description. The action description may be too dense and contain too many unnecessary details. The reader needs to be able to visualize the world you’ve created, but reading a script with pages upon pages filled with massive blocks of action description is daunting. Or on the other end of the spectrum, there may not be enough action description. As a reader, I need to be able to visualize the location, the characters, and the overall situation. It doesn’t need to be overly long, but there should be enough details for me to get the big picture.
Rule of thumb: make it the shortest you possibly can without sacrificing the integrity of the story or characters. Visually concise are the magic words.
Where’s The Magic?
You may be a fantastic writer. You might have a technically well-written script but there may not be anything particularly unique standing out about it. Remember you have to find a way to get noticed out of the hundreds of other scripts. This is a competition don’t hold back.
As a reader, I can usually find at least one element of uniqueness in each script, even if it’s something like a line of dialogue or use of a prop or interesting setting, character, etc. Figure out what that is in your script then work on accentuating it even more. If you’re unsure what the unique element is then you might have some more development to do.
It could just be an overdone concept, which can still be a great script, but you need to find a way to make it special. Your script may not be a complete story, it’s a scene, sequence, or moment. Please read Garth Ginsburg’s blog post, he does a great job of explaining an example of this with what he calls punchline scripts. I completely agree with him.
Find the magic and work on ways to heighten it in every way possible.
“…horror movies possess positive subversive potential, a space to explore gender ambiguity and transgress traditional boundaries of masculinity and femininity.”
— Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film
Beware of the Gender Swap
Taking a well-known concept with characters we’ve seen a million times before, and switching the gender from what we’ve typically seen, is not enough of a unique element if the characters behave in the same manner. It’s still the same story and the same character. Ask yourself how they can be different from what we’ve seen before, work on developing the character and pushing them in a new direction. Dive deep.
I am very interested to see how a female chainsaw-wielding serial killer, with a dysfunctional cannibalistic family, can be different from the horror films I’ve seen in the past. Write that script!
Trigger Warning: The below section of the article uses the terms “sexual violence, sexual assault, and torture porn” pertaining to using this as a device in the horror sub-genre.
A Few Thoughts on My Personally Least Favorite Sub-Genre of Horror – Torture Porn
There are a few good films out there that fall into this category I do enjoy. These films use interesting techniques to make the disturbing elements palatable and entertaining but…keep in mind, this is the most extreme sub-genre of horror, and this is a competition, so you have a chance of alienating some of your readers (also the judges,) and possibly offending them. So all I’m saying is you better know what you’re doing!
Don’t write something for pure shock value. If you’re going to write something overtly grotesque or sexually violent there MUST be elements in your script to back it up – and by that, I mean all the elements. It should have an appealing storyline that supports it, it should make sense for the characters (who are of course well-developed), it should have something that makes it make sense, otherwise, you’re simply writing something gross for the sake of being gross which lacks substance, heart, and creativity.
It’s more interesting and engaging if you go against the grain and find other ways to make us feel uncomfortable and mess with our minds. I (I’ll guess all the other readers too) don’t want to read a script with scene after scene of massively detailed sexual assault, or nothing but long blocks of action description detailing all the grotesque ways to torture a victim, and telling us nothing about an actual story or character outside of these scenes, that’s not entertainment.
Plus this is a short script competition which means you have even less time to ensure those elements are in place to make the disturbing palatable and entertaining.
But hey you do you. If the script is something you are passionate about, then find a producer, a production company, or make it yourself, but if your goal is to advance and win a competition, think twice about submitting something like this.
Final Thoughts
When I was a kid there were not that many women making horror films. Bless you Debra Hill! Now there are many. I recently devoured the book 1000 Women in Horror by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. I highly recommend it, it’s not just an encyclopedia of women in horror throughout the history of cinema it also has incredible interviews so check it out.
It is fantastic and refreshing to see so many once underrepresented perspectives in the genre receiving more representation and gaining recognition. This competition is a testament to that. I read scripts about powerful women defeating the monster or being the monster themselves, many with LGBTQA+ characters, scripts with wonderful single fathers, there were some fantastic international scripts about varying cultural-based folklore, there were stories that spoke on a variety of points of view from writers from all walks of life. Keep it up!
ALWAYS BE LEARNING! Being a screenwriter is about endless curiosity and discovery. The Screenwriters Network has many resources you can take advantage of and connect with other screenwriters. There are horror-specific websites out there to catch up on news, reviews, interviews, and articles you should be reading – Rue Morgue is a great one.
WATCH FILMS! It’s your homework. Horror fans are ecstatic with the popularity of channels like Shudder which has introduced us to all varieties of horror. I for one am over the moon with all the international films I’ve discovered on there. You should be watching short films too, check out Alter, a YouTube channel that features new short horror films every week.
It was a pleasure to read your scripts. Thank you for sharing your talent with us readers. Keep submitting, and keep writing!
Featured Image Credit: fotografierende on Unsplash
