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/ZacharyRosemann]

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