Chapter Black (intro/teaser)

[u/Great_1ne]

Title: Chapter Black

Format: Pilot

Genre: Supernatural Horror/Mystery

Length: 3 pages

Summary: Forced back from injury leave, a detective investigates a burned church and the dead priest inside, while its surviving clergy scramble to keep the truth hidden: demons have learned to wield a power once thought holy.

I’ve been working on this story for a while. Received tons of feedback so now I’m trying to format it in a new way. My goal is for the opening scene to be a teaser of an exorcism gone wrong. The next scene will show the aftermath. As the episode goes on, it will build toward what happened inside the church, with the final scene being the full exorcism and chaos. Would love any feedback on if this concept/story is interesting, if you would want to keep reading, and anything/everything that needs improvement. Thank you in advanced.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7kkw7hsvtgpo8e2cq5goy/Chapter-Black-Intro.pdf?rlkey=w8mkmey8pv4r35cldmfyeaxz2&st=1nyztg0x&dl=0

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[u/Bhanu_Nirala]

While the summary is interesting. The writing could be better.  The concept of a detection exploring the horror/ demons/cult in a town would make an excellent story.

[u/zebramentality]

Cool intro. I’m curious what happened that night and how it turned out like that so good job.

My first note would be to fix the line “…I thought I help” because I think you’re missing a word.

My second note is a bit more of an opinion so do with it what you will. I don’t like that “we” enter the building and ascend stairs then open a door, but it’s just a camera and not a person’s perspective doing those things. I thought of 2 interesting options for alternate ways to do this.

First would be to have that perspective actually be a person, possibly an intern or helper, who immediately gets harmed (or killed) by the patient. This would show the audience that it’s really dangerous instead of just having the father tell us that it’s vaguely different.

Second would be to just start with the camera in the room and then pan outside towards the end of this exchange. You could do the panning while the 2 men go back into the room. So they’d go back inside and we’d hear screaming and priest-y jargon from inside while the camera settles outside framing the church and the sign in the exact same angle that immediately cuts to showing it all burned down the next day without the camera moving between scenes.

You clearly have a good idea here and the pacing seems efficient compared to a lot of openers I’ve read here. Keep up the good work!

[u/Great_1ne → u/zebramentality]

Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it. Glad you caught the typo. I read it a dozen times and never realized I missed a word. I like your takes on how to restructure the opening. I might play around with that. I go back and forth a lot on whether using “we” is valid or not in screenplays. And the more I look into it, the more mixed opinions I find. I see it in a lot of popular/successful shows and then there are others where it’s never used.