What kind of things do you write?

Hi
I'll try my hand at anything except comedy!

I could do with a good horror short or ghost story for two actors (one male, one female) in a house or some other easy-to-get location :). I have a few actors in London who are looking for something interesting for their showreels, and hopefully it could get into a few festivals too.

Been trying to write one but too busy writing feature scripts instead.

Sounds good to me, any ideas on a particular story? Or theme you want to explore?

Grr, the site crashed and ate my reply.

I did have a vague idea for a ghost story about some guy who kills his girlfriend and hides her body, then she comes back as a ghost to try to get revenge... but didn't have an ending for it. Basically something 10-15 minutes long that could be shot mostly 'at night' in a house.

Maybe you should email so we can discuss it in more detail if that's something that would be of interest.

How about if he kills her, hides the body somewhere in the house temporarily but when he goes back to dispose of her more permanently the body is gone? He's absolutely sure she was dead too. Then lots of weird stuff starts happening?

That might be amusing, particularly if he sees her 'alive', then later finds her body again, somewhere that he didn't put it :).

Cool, I think what we need is a twist at the end to really seal this one!

I'd rather avoid a twist, to be honest, since so many shorts have them :). But a 'is she real or is he imagining it because he's going mad?' subplot might work.

Maybe he cuts her body up with a carving knife to get rid of it, but still sees her running around, so he ends up calling the police to get away from her 🙂 ?

Actually, the actress was talking about wanting some 'less innocent' parts, so maybe she should be the one doing the killing?

Anyway, if you email me through the site (don't want to put my address here to avoid spam) we can think about it in more detail.

I like the idea of having the female character as the antagonist, how do I email you through this site? Could there be another character involved too?

There's an 'email poster' link on the posts here.

There might be benefits to having another character involved (e.g. more opportunity for dialog), but if we could get away with just two then it would make for a tighter script. I could see perhaps that the woman is going to run off with another man and kills her boyfriend in an argument over it?

But I think that it would work better if it was mostly silent other than her talking to herself or the ghost, rather than bringing another character in. Particularly if we're going for the 'are they crazy' angle: another character would tend to anchor her more in reality, whereas by herself she might go nutty enough with remorse to turn herself in.

Thats exactly what I had in mind!! What I was thinking was to have the other character brought in to help out with the body disposal and have the two of them trapped in the house being tormented by this 'ghost', maybe have them end up killing each other somehow and then reveal that the male character is still alive and has just been playing them off against each other?

You show the guy choking the girl. Both figures fall. A hand gropes for a knife. The knife plunges repeatedly. The knife clatters to the ground. Both figures lay motionless for a moment, blood is everywhere.

Then you cut to him returning to the scene with bags, a mop, whatever he might want to clean up the crime scene, but there is no body. After a quick search he finds a bloodtrail and follows it. Then he spots the girl and freaks. Then whatever happens.

At the very end he discovers a body in the basement and it's his. She killed him. He's the ghost. It could be like THE OTHERS but actually scary.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

I think he'll be pretty dead after being cut up with a carving knife :). I'd rather have a 'real' ghost than a fake one.

I think the best thing would be to try it with just the two of them, then add in another character if we can't make that work.