The Mummers Tale: A Horror Short (8 Pages)

[lyric venture]

**Title: **The Mummer's Tale
Format: Short
**Genre: **Horror
**Pages: **9

**Logline: **
Mumming is an old tradition in Ireland where bands of actors disguise themselves and visit houses to perform a play or tell stories. When an old couple invite a group of Mummers into their home one night, their ghostly tale of murder and revenge brings back some long forgotten memories.

**Trade: ** Happy to swap for other shorts, preferably genre (horror, sci-fi, action) as that’s what I’m most comfortable giving feedback on, but I’m open to other stuff too 🤝

Hey all, I'm new here. I mostly write genre stuff (horror and sci-fi) and was hoping to get some feedback. I've been writing by myself and don't put much out there so I need to start doing that to improve.

Any and all feedback is welcome!

• What I really want to know is if it's working as a whole?
• What are the weak points?
• Is the idea of Mummers clear to the reader?
• Does the twist work?

LATEST VERSION OF THE STORY IS IN THE COMMENTS!

[lyric venture]

Hey all,

I updated the story based on some great feedback I got over on StoryPeer. Overall they were positive on the story and concept but felt it gave the twist away too early, and also gave some other really useful feedback on writing style -- all of which I hopefully addressed in this version.

As before, all feedback welcome and I'm open to trading with other shorts 🤝

[lyric venture]

Made some more small tweaks, and fixed a small error

Really looking to know if the twist is working well or if it's given away a little too quickly. I think I'll try a slightly more subtle approach on the next version

[astral marsh]

I'm not quite sure you should focus on not revealing the twist. I feel like knowing the genre, the vast majority of people will figure out the twist almost as soon as the play starts. By the very nature that this peice exists we know all the characters are important and we know the play itself is important so it isn't a big leap to assume the play is about someone in the house, it being 2 men narrows it down further. I personally wouldn't even call it a twist ending at this point. Its straight forward and that's not always a bad thing. When what we expect to happen, doesn't, that's a twist. I never expect a bunch of creepy people to come into someone's house at night and leave without incident. If you want this to be a twist, I believe you will need to misdirect us more. You need to give the viewer some sort of way of "figuring out" the story and that be wrong.

I'm not really sure how you could misdirect us more here, it would have to be something crazy like in the end the play was actually about the old lady, maybe then the man is surprised and those mummers are like, "Yo, your mummers are running late, they'll be here in a minute." KNOCK KNOCK.

It might be better to focus on increasing the creepiness and the payoff. There doesn't always need to be a twist, sometimes you can know exactly what is going to happen and the ride to get there is still scary.

[lyric venture]

Thanks for the feedback, and you're right, maybe "twist" isn't the right word. I wrote this after reading a lot of old school ghost stories, and was following that kind of structure. In these stories, while you know something bad will definitely happen, you dont know exactly how it will happen which is what keeps things interesting and satisfying. Maybe this story isn't landing in that satisfying way. Could you possibly tell me your general thoughts on the story as it is and if you found it interesting/satisfying? I haven't got too much feedback on it so far so everything helps!

[lyric venture]

Also focusing on increasing the creepiness/payoff is a good point - I'll try to amp it up more in the next pass for a bit more impact!

[astral marsh]

The mummers are creepy. The tone is good. The concept is simple and clear. Everything lends itself towards a solid scary story.

I personally think, and this is very subjective, so keep seeking more feedback, you may want to treat it like a traditional campfire scary story, Speak it aloud and ask yourself, is this creepy? I think what you will find is that you aren't ratcheting up the tension enough which makes it feel far too long for what amounts to an off-screen decapitation.

I would experiment with making the mummers not speaking at all. Concentrate on making the play simplified enough that narration is unnecessary. Where you need to have someone say something, use the old lady. There is an absurdity to letting creepy people in masks enter our home and put of a play, lean into that. You want the audience saying, "Aw hell no, I'd have never let them in," as they play gets creepier and creepier. If you need to cut the tension use the old man as an audience surrogate, trying to get them to leave.

I'm not saying this is way, but something to play around with and see if you happen to fall into a more natural way to make your story sing. It's honestly almost there, you just need to take it a step further.