Writing 14 Screenplays in 14 days.
Day 1
10 October 2020
I have to say that I was thrown well out of my comfort zone from the get-go with TLC’s Scriptly Writing Challenge.
The moment the brief dropped into my inbox at 10pm Friday night, I was thinking I had made a terrible mistake in signing up to write 14 screenplays in 14 days.
Then as I was getting ready for bed, I had a couple of little idea worms. Which, by morning had disembarked my brain and wriggled away because I did not write them down *epic facepalm*
Fade In
I had a busy morning getting some photos out for a casting call. Saturday afternoons are movie time with granddaughter, so I didn’t finally sit down to start playing around with ideas until 5pm. By which time I had no idea where to start and in much panic as Day 2 briefing was due to hit the inbox at 10pm again.
I set myself some additional constraints to narrow my focus so that I didn’t feel quite so overwhelmed.
- The random word generator returned me five words. Though, to be totally honest, when I reached ‘Fade Out’, I had only ended up using one, which was ‘Security’.
- The random genre generator gave me: ‘Tech Noir’. I had to briefly go look up what that was exactly.
- The random location generator which gave me ‘An Orchard’. Random indeed.
- The random image generator gave me a photograph of a bee on a flower.
From that point, the idea for the overall beginning and end came quite quickly. Along with who my characters were, at a superficial level. There was no time to go into the depth I usually might dig, but as I gave them names and wrote on, they became less amorphous and began to breathe a life of their own.
I only have a very brief window to create these scripts, which is what I love about this challenge. There isn’t time for overthinking, obsessing or perfectionism. It’s all about making a start and getting the work done. The second brief is already in my inbox waiting for me to make a start on it tomorrow.
Yesterday I had never written a screenplay. Today I have written my first short film. And in a couple of weeks, if all goes well, I will have fourteen under my belt.