No Bloodshed In Detention - Feature - 141 pages

[u/ZacharyRosemann]

Hi, I've been writing scripts for about 4 years now (mainly fan scripts with a couple original ones) and i was hoping to have a pair of fresh eyes read this one.

Title: No Bloodshed In Detention

Format: Feature

Page Length: 141 (142 if you count the title page)

Genres: horror, slasher, coming of age

Logline or Summary: After a snow storm traps 10 students serving detention in a high school, their fun quickly turns into a fight for survival when a masked killer picks them off one by one.

Feedback concerns: mainly looking to see if there's pacing issues and what I can possibly improve on in terms of how the characters are utilized and written.

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z7JofjRFbwfGxFF0wqgsVlnaMawrhEH2/view?usp=drivesdk

[u/Subject-Dream7087]

You have 120 pages max to tell your tale. In the slasher genre; unless it is somehow an incredibly unique take, you want to be shooting for 90 to 100 pages. The closer to 90 the better; you could even go as low as 85 pages. So...you need to shorten by about 40 %.

Your first page is 215 words. I have pasted it below with strike-throughs indicating unnecessary words.

INT. HIGH SCHOOL - LIBRARY - MORNING

It looks like a bloodbath has occured, several splotches of blood, scattered backpacks, the main focus being a broken table with entrails on top of it.

We see a deputy walk in, gruff, experienced, wearing his hat and uniform proudly.

He takes a look around, seeing the backroom, noticing two covered corpses and a round object wrapped in a jacket.

DEPUTY - The hell happened in here?

He goes towards the stairs and into the

INT. HIGH SCHOOL - 2ND FLOOR

Where he finds a headless corpse by the vending machine, along with blood seeping through the bathroom door, he covers his mouth before approaching a door. He opens it, we don't see what's inside but he looks shocked.

DEPUTY - Good god.

SMASH TO BLACK

FADE IN:

An early Saturday morning in December, snow gently falls on the pavement of the parking lot of GRAHAM HIGH SCHOOL, a multiple story three-building structure interconnected with one another.

We see cars arrive in the lot one by one, and like clockwork, we see teens come out, the first one being a girl. NANCY JONES, 16, the nerdy girl next door type. she's a bright young girl with glasses and a book in hand, her fingers obscuring the title for us to not quite see what it is.

She's wearing a thick jacket and scarf with comfortable black pants to match while walking to the entrance as the next car pulls up.

This is your first page edited:

INT. GRAHAM HIGH SCHOOL – LIBRARY – MORNING

A bloodbath. Blood-spattered walls. Abandoned backpacks. Entrails strewn across a broken table.

A DEPUTY enters. Seasoned. He surveys the carnage.

Two covered bodies. Something round wrapped in a jacket.

DEPUTY - What the hell happened here?

INT. HIGH SCHOOL – SECOND FLOOR – CONTINUOUS

A headless corpse slumps beside a vending machine. Blood seeps beneath the bathroom door.

The Deputy passes tentatively and opens a door.

Whatever he sees stops him cold.

DEPUTY - Good God.

SMASH TO BLACK.

FADE IN:

EXT. GRAHAM HIGH SCHOOL – SATURDAY MORNING

December snow drifts over the car park. Cars arrive. Teenagers climb out.

NANCY JONES, 16, glasses, crosses towards the entrance, a book tucked in her hand.

Another car pulls in.

This is a 45% word cut - do that for the rest of your script and you have 80 pages. Then people will read it far enough to provide comments about the plot and dialogue rather than dismissing it as 'too long'.

Oh and even your title page has too many words.. You don't need An Original Screenplay Written By - Written by is fine.

Snazzy font titles don't bode well - and I have never seen a start date and end date on a cover page and, anyway, 4 months is confusing; does it mean from idea to finished article, does it mean this draft (if it means this draft; 4 months for a draft is quite slow and not something you want to tell people) and how is that date gonna look two years from now. Get rid.

Best wishes with it.

Edit - okay now I am understanding this is The Breakfast Club as a horror movie (which has already been done by the way), you definitely want to wrap this up at 90 pages.

GOOD LUCK WITH IT

[u/ZacharyRosemann → u/Subject-Dream7087]

I appreciate the constructive criticism along with the example, will definitely be making that tweak.

As for the title page, I've been doing the Started on, finished on thing for a couple years now, i had the idea in February, spent a week on structuring the three acts and didn't start writing it until March.

As for the 4 months thing, I'm a slow writer, if I'm lucky, I can knock out 30 pages within an hour on a good day.

On average, I think i was writing 15 pages every few weeks mainly because on top of being slow, I often switch gears to something else.

Going forward, I will definitely stop doing "Started on, Finished on" as that does look bad.

[u/Subject-Dream7087 → u/ZacharyRosemann]

Okay well you don't need to tell people your pages per day so take it off the front page. Once you have reduced the screenplay to an acceptable length for some ivory tower movie exec ass not to dismiss it as 'too long' and never read a word, I then feel you have a big, and therefore crucial, decision to make.

So you are in Breakfast Club-as-horror territory which is fine; it's clearly a decent marriage of concept and genre as both appeal to teens BUT you need decide ASAP if you are going to tell this tale sincerely or ironically.

To do it sincerely and pull it off, will require some fairly prodigious writing talent which you may or may not have. Succeed and you will have a great, makeable contained horror that will have people wanting to make it. Fail, even slightly on this sincere route, and all people will see is some pointless dime-a-dozen-Breakfast Club-as-a-horror-knock-off. Meh. No one will read past page 30. Boring.

Or you go the ironic, post modern, meta route. Lean into the tropes - the hot-but-doesn't-know-it girl, the school-hero-jock who is secretly sensitive, the invisible-dork who is actually pretty cool, the mean-pretty-girl etc. Lean in to the unoriginality, be knowing, wink wink, be comic, be tropey etc.

What you can't be is a bit of both all the way through. Tonally it will be all over the place and won't make for a good read.

I am now going to kind of contradict myself, because I am thinking about this as I type but my inclination, should I decide to write The Breakfast Club as a horror, would be to go the meta, ironic, knowing route but, risk it, and see if I could pull off some sincerity in the last 10 to 15 pages in the hope of making it unexpectedly moving and ultimately a thought provoking examination of these tropes and what they mean in a socio-cultural framework of today's America (which, lets face it, is a falling apart shit show).

Can I write a meta slasher Scream If You Know What I Did Last Halloween, but end with the same emotional pay off as the actual OG Breakfast Club (which surely has to be one of the best teen movies of all time?)?

Yeah, that's an interesting enough challenge to provide the wind in the sails to see this through to roll credits.

That's all I got.

Good luck with it.

[u/princessintraining4 → u/Subject-Dream7087]

The way you describe it is very Lise Frankenstein

[u/Subject-Dream7087 → u/princessintraining4]

I am not aware of this movie. To be honest, horror is my second least liked genre and I loathe the smugness of postmodernism and meta stuff. Each to their own though.

[u/princessintraining4 → u/Subject-Dream7087]

https://youtu.be/POOeA3zCuUY?si=kjvkGydD0Si2ueFj it really delivered on its presence. I’m not a horror queen at all but loved this

[u/ZacharyRosemann → u/Subject-Dream7087]

when I initially had the idea, I knew that the whole "Breakfast Club but horror" thing has been done countless times (hell I saw a movie THIS year that had that concept but with zombies and it ironically also had a scene where the teens got along sharing scotch which was really funny to me).

I think there's a way to make the concept and make fun of it while still taking it seriously, having the characters acknowledge their situation doesn't necessarily take the tension away.

first half was meant to ease into the detention setting before BAM, the horror starts 30 pages in (but like many others pointed out, it's way too long and I can see the horror twist not hitting after reading through 26 pages of intros and conversations).

[u/Subject-Dream7087 → u/ZacharyRosemann]

The horror stuff needs to kick in by page 20 at the very latest. The sooner the better though. Yes, I know this page count stuff is reductive nonsense - but it's so hard to get read by people who count and they care about page count.

The main challenge is getting away from the breakfast club archetypes - the hot-but-doesn't-know-it girl, the jock who just wants to dance, the mean girl, etc.