Antoinette Simmons has purchased the house her mother and aunt grew up in. Her goal: to fix it up, take her aunt from the nursing home, and bring her to her own home. However, strange things are afoot at the old house. The house is haunted by a myriad of malevolent spirits. Will Antoinette run or stand her ground against the forces of evil?
Let's jump on in here and start with writing. Writing a screenplay is a labor of love and is no easy task to undertake. In fact, a good story is the starting point for a good film. Without a good story your production value and performances are moot.
With the preface out of the way, we'll talk about the writing/story for "The Eternal." James D. Watkins, writer and director, tries to put too much into a story that is already convoluted. There is a saying that "less is more" and in most cases, like this one, it's true.
The initial premise of the film is that the house is haunted by the spirits of slave owners who lived in the house in their day. That's cool, I can buy into that, mostly (I'll get into that later), but then it comes out that the house also used to be a brothel. A brothel in the exact same place that served as a home to a family, albeit a wicked one? Too much...explore one or the other because they each have numerous possibilities. It's too much to expect the viewer to have the kind of suspension of disbelief that buys into a house that is old enough to have been both a home and a brothel. So either explore the darkness and evil of slavery or explore the degradation of sexual perversion, but not both.
A story needs to have a well defined beginning, middle, and end. The middle of "The Eternal" gets lost in the shuffle. The end credits are rolling while you're still waiting for the middle. There are actually good, solid guidelines that one can use when setting up the beginning, middle, and end (or your three act structure), but I won't go into them here. However, I will suggest a few books that will help in the area of writing. Check out (they're worth your money): Save the Cat and Save the Cat Goes to the Movies by Blake Snyder (available at www.mwp.com and Amazon.com), The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler (available at www.mwp.com and Amazon.com), Screenwriting 434 by Lew Hunter (available at Amazon.com), and then specific to the horror genre that Watkins is trying to write I recommend Horror Screenwriting: The Nature of Fear by Devin Watson (reviewed in our September issue).
One more writing aspect and I'll move on. Characters and dialogue are crucial. Dialogue should flow, sound natural to the hearer, and feel natural to the actor. Many times that means giving your actors some creative liberty so they can personalize the dialogue so it feels right. Trust your cast. ALWAYS read your dialogue out loud before filming it. Many times a line will feel right and even grammatically correct in print, but when it is spoken it feels rigid and forced. Another thing: ALWAYS have table readings before production. Let actors read aloud what you, the writer, have put on the page. Sure it take a little time to set up time with people to do this, but it is worth it.
