Hello from Los Angeles — Writing “Administrative Horror”

[Fygar]

Hi everyone. I’m David Figueroa, a Los Angeles-based screenwriter coming to the craft after more than three decades working inside large public institutions.

That background heavily influences how I write. I’m particularly interested in what I call “administrative horror,” stories where the antagonist is not necessarily one evil individual, but an entire system of rules, incentives, traditions, relationships, and institutional power.

I currently have two television projects, The Black Sun, a historical science-fiction/supernatural drama set during World War II, and Sleeping Beauty of Catania, a gothic historical limited series set in early-1900s Sicily.

I’m new to the entertainment-industry side of this world, so I’m here primarily to learn, meet people, and contribute where my own experience is useful. Glad to be here.

 

[Cinema Doktor]

Hi everyone. I’m David Figueroa, a Los Angeles-based screenwriter coming to the craft after more than three decades working inside large public institutions.

That background heavily influences how I write. I’m particularly interested in what I call “administrative horror,” stories where the antagonist is not necessarily one evil individual, but an entire system of rules, incentives, traditions, relationships, and institutional power.

I currently have two television projects, The Black Sun, a historical science-fiction/supernatural drama set during World War II, and Sleeping Beauty of Catania, a gothic historical limited series set in early-1900s Sicily.

I’m new to the entertainment-industry side of this world, so I’m here primarily to learn, meet people, and contribute where my own experience is useful. Glad to be here.

Welcome to FilmPlatforms, David!

Thank you for introducing yourself. Your background is truly unique, and I find the concept of administrative horror especially fascinating. As someone who also enjoys a good horror story, I think it's a very original take on the genre.

Both The Black Sun and Sleeping Beauty of Catania sound like ambitious projects, and I hope you'll enjoy being part of the community, make valuable connections, and share more about your work as it develops.

I'd also love to hear what first inspired the idea behind administrative horror.

Wishing you every success, and once again, welcome to FilmPlatforms!

 

[Fygar]

Hi Cinema Doktor. Thank you for the warm welcome.

“Administrative horror” really grew out of spending more than 30 years working inside large public institutions and watching how systems actually function.

What fascinated me was that you don’t always need an evil person for something terrible to happen. You can have rules, procedures, hierarchies, automated systems, institutional traditions, and people simply doing what they believe their jobs require — and together they can create something enormously powerful that no single person completely controls.

That started finding its way into my writing.

In Sleeping Beauty of Catania, that machine is largely social and patriarchal: family, class, arranged marriage, reputation, and tradition all closing around one young woman.

In The Black Sun, it becomes much more institutional. My protagonist finds himself inside the American war machine of 1941, where the Army, intelligence agencies, scientists, classification systems, and eventually supernatural institutions can all exert power over him. Some of the people inside those systems may even genuinely like him or want to help him, but they’re still part of the machinery.

That’s where the “horror” comes from for me. You can defeat a person or win an argument, but the system can simply keep moving.

Thanks for asking. It’s probably the part of my own background that has influenced my writing the most.

 

[Samantha]

Hi Cinema Doktor. Thank you for the warm welcome.

“Administrative horror” really grew out of spending more than 30 years working inside large public institutions and watching how systems actually function.

What fascinated me was that you don’t always need an evil person for something terrible to happen. You can have rules, procedures, hierarchies, automated systems, institutional traditions, and people simply doing what they believe their jobs require — and together they can create something enormously powerful that no single person completely controls.

That started finding its way into my writing.

In Sleeping Beauty of Catania, that machine is largely social and patriarchal: family, class, arranged marriage, reputation, and tradition all closing around one young woman.

In The Black Sun, it becomes much more institutional. My protagonist finds himself inside the American war machine of 1941, where the Army, intelligence agencies, scientists, classification systems, and eventually supernatural institutions can all exert power over him. Some of the people inside those systems may even genuinely like him or want to help him, but they’re still part of the machinery.

That’s where the “horror” comes from for me. You can defeat a person or win an argument, but the system can simply keep moving.

Thanks for asking. It’s probably the part of my own background that has influenced my writing the most.

That's a fascinating perspective.

I think stories become even more unsettling when there isn't a single villain the audience can blame. Instead, the audience is left wondering whether they would make different choices in the same situation and that's often far scarier than any individual antagonist.

I'm curious when writing these stories, do you build the system first, or does it emerge naturally through your protagonist's journey?

 

[Fygar]

Samantha, great question. I usually build the system first—or at least the rules and causal machinery that will eventually surround the protagonist. I tend to reverse-engineer stories. I ask what the system wants, who has authority, what rules govern it, where the possible exits are, and what happens when one decision triggers the next.

My actual process is writers notes first → screenplay. The notes are where I explore possibilities. I run scenarios in my head, ask what each character or institution would realistically do next, test consequences, discard paths that do not work, and keep following the chain until I understand what the scene is really doing.

I sometimes think of the notes as the laboratory. That is where I discover the story. The screenplay is where I dramatize what I discovered.

Then I put the protagonist inside that machinery and let the collision create more story. Sometimes the character exposes a system that was already there. Other times, as in The Black Sun, the protagonist’s very existence forces the institution to invent new classifications, procedures, and rules around him.

So eventually the system and protagonist become inseparable. The protagonist makes a choice, the system responds, that response changes the available choices, and the next decision produces another response. That chain reaction is where the story really forms.

 

[Cinema Doktor]

Samantha, great question. I usually build the system first—or at least the rules and causal machinery that will eventually surround the protagonist. I tend to reverse-engineer stories. I ask what the system wants, who has authority, what rules govern it, where the possible exits are, and what happens when one decision triggers the next.

My actual process is writers notes first → screenplay. The notes are where I explore possibilities. I run scenarios in my head, ask what each character or institution would realistically do next, test consequences, discard paths that do not work, and keep following the chain until I understand what the scene is really doing.

I sometimes think of the notes as the laboratory. That is where I discover the story. The screenplay is where I dramatize what I discovered.

Then I put the protagonist inside that machinery and let the collision create more story. Sometimes the character exposes a system that was already there. Other times, as in The Black Sun, the protagonist’s very existence forces the institution to invent new classifications, procedures, and rules around him.

So eventually the system and protagonist become inseparable. The protagonist makes a choice, the system responds, that response changes the available choices, and the next decision produces another response. That chain reaction is where the story really forms.

One thing that really stood out to me is that your approach seems to shift the audience's focus from asking, "Who is the villain?" to asking, "Why does this system continue to exist?"

I think that's a much more unsettling question because there often isn't a simple answer. Everyone may believe they're doing the right thing, yet the outcome is still destructive.

To me, that's what makes this kind of conflict so compelling. It doesn't end when the story ends it encourages the audience to keep thinking about the system itself long after the credits roll.

 

[Fygar]

Cinema Doktor, I really like that distinction. I’ve spent most of my time thinking about administrative horror from the writer’s side—how to construct the system, who has authority, what incentives keep it operating, and how its responses progressively remove the protagonist’s choices.

What you’ve added is the audience side of that equation. If the story works, the viewer may leave asking not simply “Who was responsible?” but “Why did this system continue to exist, and why did so many people keep participating in it?”

That’s especially unsettling because, as you said, everyone inside the machinery may believe their own actions are reasonable or even correct. No single person has to understand the full consequence for the combined outcome to become destructive.

In a way, I reverse-engineer the system while writing the story, and afterward the audience may find themselves reverse-engineering that same system to understand how the outcome became possible.

I hadn’t articulated that part of “administrative horror” quite that way before. Thank you—you’ve given me something new to think about.

 

[John]

Cinema Doktor, I really like that distinction. I’ve spent most of my time thinking about administrative horror from the writer’s side—how to construct the system, who has authority, what incentives keep it operating, and how its responses progressively remove the protagonist’s choices.

What you’ve added is the audience side of that equation. If the story works, the viewer may leave asking not simply “Who was responsible?” but “Why did this system continue to exist, and why did so many people keep participating in it?”

That’s especially unsettling because, as you said, everyone inside the machinery may believe their own actions are reasonable or even correct. No single person has to understand the full consequence for the combined outcome to become destructive.

In a way, I reverse-engineer the system while writing the story, and afterward the audience may find themselves reverse-engineering that same system to understand how the outcome became possible.

I hadn’t articulated that part of “administrative horror” quite that way before. Thank you you’ve given me something new to think about.

David, what fascinates me is that systems rarely think of themselves as villains. They usually believe they're creating order or solving problems, which makes the conflict feel much more believable. That's a very rich space for storytelling.

Do you think that's what makes "administrative horror" different from traditional thrillers, where the audience usually knows exactly who the antagonist is?

 

[Fygar]

John, yes. I think that’s a big part of what separates administrative horror from a more traditional thriller.

The frightening part is that nobody inside the system necessarily thinks they’re the villain. One person follows the rule. Another verifies the information. Someone approves the classification. Someone else enforces the decision. Each action may look reasonable—or at least defensible—when viewed individually.

But together they can produce an outcome that none of those people necessarily intended.

So instead of asking only, “Who is the antagonist?”, I’m interested in getting the audience to ask, “How did this system make this outcome possible?” And eventually perhaps, “Why does this system continue to exist?”

But I also don’t think the machine is completely monolithic. Systems operate through chains of custody, orders, supervision, administration, policies, procedures and relationships. Every link in those chains ultimately involves human beings, which means there can also be moments when someone inside the machinery stops and says, “Wait a fucking minute.”

History gives us extraordinary examples of that. Oskar Schindler couldn’t destroy the Nazi system, but he learned to use parts of its bureaucracy, classifications and relationships to save people from it. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vasily Arkhipov became a critical human brake inside a Soviet military command process when he opposed the use of a nuclear torpedo aboard B-59.

Those examples fascinate me because they show that the machine can stumble. A single person can sometimes introduce what I’d call moral friction into the machinery.

That adds another question to administrative horror: “Where could somebody have interrupted the chain—and why didn’t they?”

And sometimes somebody does.

That’s also why simply defeating the apparent villain may not solve the underlying problem. There’s that famous line from The Who: “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”

Administrative horror makes me think of a variation: Meet the new boss. Same system as the old boss. You can replace the person at the top while leaving the procedures, incentives, classifications, relationships and chains of authority largely untouched. But the opposite is also true: because those systems depend upon human beings to operate them, they are never completely invulnerable.

A system can win a particular battle, destroy a particular person or produce a terrible outcome without necessarily winning forever. People can refuse. Procedures can be challenged. Institutions can lose legitimacy. Machines can eventually break.

I’ve actually been working through a lot of these questions in a follow-up essay to something I wrote called The Prophet of Systems. Your question lands almost exactly in the middle of what I’ve been trying to articulate.

 

[MICA]

John, yes. I think that’s a big part of what separates administrative horror from a more traditional thriller.

The frightening part is that nobody inside the system necessarily thinks they’re the villain. One person follows the rule. Another verifies the information. Someone approves the classification. Someone else enforces the decision. Each action may look reasonable—or at least defensible—when viewed individually.

But together they can produce an outcome that none of those people necessarily intended.

So instead of asking only, “Who is the antagonist?”, I’m interested in getting the audience to ask, “How did this system make this outcome possible?” And eventually perhaps, “Why does this system continue to exist?”

But I also don’t think the machine is completely monolithic. Systems operate through chains of custody, orders, supervision, administration, policies, procedures and relationships. Every link in those chains ultimately involves human beings, which means there can also be moments when someone inside the machinery stops and says, “Wait a fucking minute.”

History gives us extraordinary examples of that. Oskar Schindler couldn’t destroy the Nazi system, but he learned to use parts of its bureaucracy, classifications and relationships to save people from it. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vasily Arkhipov became a critical human brake inside a Soviet military command process when he opposed the use of a nuclear torpedo aboard B-59.

Those examples fascinate me because they show that the machine can stumble. A single person can sometimes introduce what I’d call moral friction into the machinery.

That adds another question to administrative horror: “Where could somebody have interrupted the chain—and why didn’t they?”

And sometimes somebody does.

That’s also why simply defeating the apparent villain may not solve the underlying problem. There’s that famous line from The Who: “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”

Administrative horror makes me think of a variation: Meet the new boss. Same system as the old boss. You can replace the person at the top while leaving the procedures, incentives, classifications, relationships and chains of authority largely untouched. But the opposite is also true: because those systems depend upon human beings to operate them, they are never completely invulnerable.

A system can win a particular battle, destroy a particular person or produce a terrible outcome without necessarily winning forever. People can refuse. Procedures can be challenged. Institutions can lose legitimacy. Machines can eventually break.

I’ve actually been working through a lot of these questions in a follow-up essay to something I wrote called The Prophet of Systems. Your question lands almost exactly in the middle of what I’ve been trying to articulate.

David, one aspect of your idea really caught my attention.

Many stories reveal how a system works, but the audience still remains emotionally attached to the protagonist. What interests me is the moment when the audience begins to question their own assumptions instead of simply judging the characters.

For me, that's where storytelling becomes truly memorable. A film doesn't just present a conflict it quietly invites the audience to reflect on the systems that shape their own lives.

I'm curious whether you see that as one of the goals of administrative horror. Is the real success of the story what happens on screen, or the conversations it continues to spark long after the audience leaves the theater?

 

[Fygar]

Mica, I think it can be both.

First, it has to work during the story. The audience has to care about the characters and experience the conflict through them. Film and television naturally tend to organize conflict at that level: protagonist, antagonist, hero, villain, and all the morally complicated territory in between.

But what you said about the audience beginning to question its own assumptions really interests me, because I think administrative horror asks us not to stop at the character.

I’ve thought about this for a while, even before I started using the term administrative horror. One example for me is House of Cards, both the American and British versions. I enjoyed watching the characters maneuver for power, but from my perspective the larger institutional machine often seemed relatively static, or barely moving around them.

My experience working inside large institutions has been very different. The machine may be slow, cumbersome and maddeningly procedural, but it is not necessarily passive. It can react very quickly when it wants to. Authority moves through chains of command. Information changes hands. Relationships bypass formal routes. Procedures can suddenly accelerate. An organization that seemed incapable of moving yesterday can move astonishingly fast when the right person, threat, incentive or institutional interest appears.

That changed the way I started thinking about dramatic conflict. Instead of asking only, “What is this character doing?”, I also became interested in what system makes that character’s actions possible?

One place I’ve been exploring this is in Sleeping Beauty of Catania. Angelina’s father, Alessandro, is clearly a human antagonist, but he doesn’t think of himself as evil. He believes he is doing what a father in his position is supposed to do: managing his family, protecting its status and directing his daughter toward what he considers a proper future. In his own mind, he isn’t practicing cruelty. He thinks he is practicing stewardship.

But if we pull the camera farther back, Alessandro is also functioning within a much larger administrative and cultural framework—family hierarchy, class, marriage, religion, reputation, gender expectations and the social authority granted to fathers.

I almost think of it in terms of camera distance:

Close-up: Alessandro.

Medium shot: Alessandro versus Angelina.

Wide shot: the social machinery that gives Alessandro power over Angelina.

So the audience may begin with, “Why is Alessandro doing this to Angelina?”
But eventually I want the larger question to become, “Why does the world around him recognize his authority to do it?

That doesn’t absolve Alessandro. He still makes choices and remains responsible for them. But looking at the larger system helps explain why those choices are possible, why other people cooperate with them, who benefits, who has the ability to intervene, and whether removing one individual would actually remove the structure that empowered him.

So I think administrative horror can operate in two stages. During the story, we experience the system emotionally through the characters. Then, perhaps during the story and continuing afterward, the audience begins reverse-engineering what it has seen: Who had authority? Who had discretion? Who benefited? Who could have interrupted the chain? And what assumptions did I bring into the story about who the villain actually was?

The story still has to succeed as drama first. I wouldn’t want the conversation afterward to compensate for a story that didn’t work on screen. But if it succeeds emotionally while we’re watching it and then continues working intellectually after the credits, that would be an extraordinary second life for the story.
Maybe that’s one of the goals of administrative horror:

We enter the story watching people. Somewhere along the way, we begin seeing the system around them.

 

[norwest]

Mica, I think it can be both.

First, it has to work during the story. The audience has to care about the characters and experience the conflict through them. Film and television naturally tend to organize conflict at that level: protagonist, antagonist, hero, villain, and all the morally complicated territory in between.

But what you said about the audience beginning to question its own assumptions really interests me, because I think administrative horror asks us not to stop at the character.

I’ve thought about this for a while, even before I started using the term administrative horror. One example for me is House of Cards, both the American and British versions. I enjoyed watching the characters maneuver for power, but from my perspective the larger institutional machine often seemed relatively static, or barely moving around them.

My experience working inside large institutions has been very different. The machine may be slow, cumbersome and maddeningly procedural, but it is not necessarily passive. It can react very quickly when it wants to. Authority moves through chains of command. Information changes hands. Relationships bypass formal routes. Procedures can suddenly accelerate. An organization that seemed incapable of moving yesterday can move astonishingly fast when the right person, threat, incentive or institutional interest appears.

That changed the way I started thinking about dramatic conflict. Instead of asking only, “What is this character doing?”, I also became interested in what system makes that character’s actions possible?

One place I’ve been exploring this is in Sleeping Beauty of Catania. Angelina’s father, Alessandro, is clearly a human antagonist, but he doesn’t think of himself as evil. He believes he is doing what a father in his position is supposed to do: managing his family, protecting its status and directing his daughter toward what he considers a proper future. In his own mind, he isn’t practicing cruelty. He thinks he is practicing stewardship.

But if we pull the camera farther back, Alessandro is also functioning within a much larger administrative and cultural framework—family hierarchy, class, marriage, religion, reputation, gender expectations and the social authority granted to fathers.

I almost think of it in terms of camera distance:

Close-up: Alessandro.

Medium shot: Alessandro versus Angelina.

Wide shot: the social machinery that gives Alessandro power over Angelina.

So the audience may begin with, “Why is Alessandro doing this to Angelina?”
But eventually I want the larger question to become, “Why does the world around him recognize his authority to do it?

That doesn’t absolve Alessandro. He still makes choices and remains responsible for them. But looking at the larger system helps explain why those choices are possible, why other people cooperate with them, who benefits, who has the ability to intervene, and whether removing one individual would actually remove the structure that empowered him.

So I think administrative horror can operate in two stages. During the story, we experience the system emotionally through the characters. Then, perhaps during the story and continuing afterward, the audience begins reverse-engineering what it has seen: Who had authority? Who had discretion? Who benefited? Who could have interrupted the chain? And what assumptions did I bring into the story about who the villain actually was?

The story still has to succeed as drama first. I wouldn’t want the conversation afterward to compensate for a story that didn’t work on screen. But if it succeeds emotionally while we’re watching it and then continues working intellectually after the credits, that would be an extraordinary second life for the story.
Maybe that’s one of the goals of administrative horror:

We enter the story watching people. Somewhere along the way, we begin seeing the system around them.

What I find especially interesting is that the system doesn’t even have to be “evil” to become frightening. It can simply be people doing their jobs, following the rules, while no one feels truly responsible for the outcome.

Combined with the right score and sound design building tension subtly rather than forcing it I think those elements together could make the film genuinely unsettling.

Maybe that’s what makes “administrative horror” so effective: everything looks ordinary, yet you gradually feel that something is very wrong.

 

[Fygar]

What I find especially interesting is that the system doesn’t even have to be “evil” to become frightening. It can simply be people doing their jobs, following the rules, while no one feels truly responsible for the outcome.

Combined with the right score and sound design building tension subtly rather than forcing it I think those elements together could make the film genuinely unsettling.

Maybe that’s what makes “administrative horror” so effective: everything looks ordinary, yet you gradually feel that something is very wrong.

Norwest, I really like your point about sound and ambience because I hadn’t been thinking about administrative horror from that angle.

One place I’ve played with something similar is the opening of Sleeping Beauty of Catania. Angelina is running through an empty castle while Jefferson Airplane’s Somebody to Love blasts over the scene, but underneath that you have the echoes of her heels, the empty stone rooms, her breathing, and eventually the wind around the tower.

What struck me when I chose that song is that its opening idea truth collapsing and joy dying almost summarizes the entire series in miniature.

So I think you’re onto something: administrative horror may not only be about what the system does. Sound can help the audience feel that something is wrong before they fully understand why.

 

[norwest]

Norwest, I really like your point about sound and ambience because I hadn’t been thinking about administrative horror from that angle.

One place I’ve played with something similar is the opening of Sleeping Beauty of Catania. Angelina is running through an empty castle while Jefferson Airplane’s Somebody to Love blasts over the scene, but underneath that you have the echoes of her heels, the empty stone rooms, her breathing, and eventually the wind around the tower.

What struck me when I chose that song is that its opening idea truth collapsing and joy dying almost summarizes the entire series in miniature.

So I think you’re onto something: administrative horror may not only be about what the system does. Sound can help the audience feel that something is wrong before they fully understand why.

That opening makes me wonder whether the soundscape could evolve with the story as well. Not just music, but ordinary sounds doors closing, approaching footsteps, a telephone ringing, pages turning, even silence could gradually become associated with the system itself.

By the time the audience understands where the real pressure is coming from, those completely mundane sounds may already feel threatening. That could become part of administrative horror’s own cinematic language.

 

[Fygar]

That opening makes me wonder whether the soundscape could evolve with the story as well. Not just music, but ordinary sounds doors closing, approaching footsteps, a telephone ringing, pages turning, even silence could gradually become associated with the system itself.

By the time the audience understands where the real pressure is coming from, those completely mundane sounds may already feel threatening. That could become part of administrative horror’s own cinematic language.

Norwest, I think you’ve hit on something really interesting there. Administrative horror can condition ordinary sounds into signals of institutional threat.

Your comment also makes me look differently at something I deliberately did in the opening of Sleeping Beauty of Catania. On the page, I rapidly repeat and stack the castle sluglines as Angelina runs through the empty corridors. At first glance that can look redundant, but it was intentional. BAM. BAM. BAM. I wanted the page itself to feel breathless—almost like the reader is hyperventilating with Angelina as the locations, foregrounds and backgrounds rapidly cycle past her.

At the same time, Jefferson Airplane’s Somebody to Love is blasting over the sequence, while underneath it are her heels pounding against the tile, the echoes through the empty stone rooms, her breathing, and eventually the wind at the tower.

So there are several rhythms working together: the rhythm of the formatting, the movement and editing, the music, and the ordinary sounds of the physical space.

What I really like about your observation is how those ordinary sounds can acquire meaning as the story progresses. A footstep, a door closing, a telephone ringing, pages turning, or even silence can eventually tell the audience, before anything actually happens, the machine is moving.

And once the audience has been conditioned to understand what those sounds mean, something completely mundane can become threatening.