We must never forget!
An empathetic young mother moves to a new town. When she finds her neighbor’s house is haunted, she must face an overabundance of feelings to help the woman uncover a hidden treasure.
Time for the next screenplay!
I started this a while back. It’s been sitting on my laptop gathering virtual dust. Time to take it out, shake it off, and get to writing!
This is the first run through of the first scene. I’ve got a lot of writing (and rewriting) to do, but it’s a good starting point.
ESTABLISHING SHOT
Peaceful night in an affluent suburb. Stars shine brightly in cloudless sky.
INT. BEDROOM – NIGHT
A queen-sized bed, with all the normal furniture, in spacious room. Clock on bedside table provides only light as it glows 3:17 am.
A man and a woman form bumps under covers, like parallel mountain ranges.
All is peaceful and quiet, except for symphony of CRICKETS CHIRPING outside open window.
Loud snore from man shatters the peace.
Woman, disturbed by snore, turns over. As she does so she slaps her hand on man’s face, who is sleeping on his back. Without waking he pulls her hand to his chest and lightly holds her hand.
Woman remains still for several seconds, then pulls her hand away to flip to her other side. Man rolls on his side, facing opposite direction. Woman rolls to her back. All signs to her not sleeping well.
MADELINE, a semi-transparent figure of a woman in early 1900s garb, floats into room and stops at the foot of bed. Woman turns again in bed. Ghost tries to adjust blankets, but only manages to pull them off the bottom of bed.
Woman continues to move about, restless.
Madeline gently places a hand on woman’s leg.
MADELINE
Sleep, child.
This calms woman and she settles into a deeper sleep.
Ghost watches for several beats. Moves to stand beside woman. Brushes top of woman’s hair with ghostly fingers. Woman smiles in her sleep. Madeline smiles sweetly.
Madeline floats around foot of bed, moves to stand on man’s side. Watches him sleep for several beats. Smiles kindly down at him. His forehead crinkles with worry in his sleep. She brushes her ghostly fingers across the crinkles.
MADELINE
All will be well.
Man’s eyes pop open. He sees ghost hovering over him. His eyes widen in terror.
MADELINE
Sleep.
Madeline reaches for man’s forehead. But he’s awake. He yells in terror and jumps to his wife’s side of the bed. He continues yelling as wife wakes.
Woman sits up, groggy.
WOMAN
What’s wrong? I just-
Her eyes are drawn to Madeline like a magnet. Her mouth opens and screams of terror pour out.
Madeline smiles at the two like they’re children playing in the mud. Naughty, but cute.
Madeline fades away. Man and woman grab each other and squeeze tight as their yells turn to sobs.
Finally finished the first draft of the new screenplay!
Whew. There were moments I thought I’d never get it done.
It takes a while for me to write a book, but a screenplay usually only takes 6 to 8 weeks. I even wrote one of them, including rewrites, in under a month.
But this one…this one took more than 5 months! I worked on this thing from early October until mid-March.
It was, at times, absolutely tortuous. Especially since I never, throughout the entire 5 months, got into my normal writing flow. I had to simply plug away. Word by word, sentence by sentence, page by page.
But it worked! I got it done.
Anyway…
I’ve written a preliminary logline.
Logline: After a sudden death at a party is labeled an accident, a confused woman must prove it is murder before the killer kills again.
It doesn’t truly show the flavor of the script, which is a bit of a comedy. Hope I come up with a better one by the time I complete the rewrites!
In 2020, I adapted the Spencer, 1928 screenplay into a novel. It was time to write another book in the Behold the Eye series (for middle grade readers), and I love this story!
Unfortunately, once I finished the adaptation, I ran into a problem.
I couldn’t rewrite it. Every time I sat down to change the first line, my mind would go blank.
I was beginning to worry, and I mean really worry, until I finally had a breakthrough and was able to change:
It was quite the epiphany, that Edwin had.
There were two kinds of fun!
-TO-
“It’s my birthday and I’m having fun! It’s my birthday and I’m having fun!”
The words of Edwin’s little song danced around in his head, and only in his head, which was okay with Edwin. He was a quiet boy who tended to keep his thoughts to himself. Never would he dream that he should, or even could, open his mouth and belt out a song, just because he felt like singing.
No, singing aloud was not Edwin-like at all.
Instead, he smiled a secretive little smile as he shoved his trowel into the hard dirt and gave it a little twist to work it loose.
“It’s my birthday and I’m having fun!”
The smile grew slightly wider and more secretive as he carefully moved the scoop to a nearby dirt pile and dumped it on top.
“It’s my birthday and I’m having fun!”
And he was having fun, too. The fact that his head was full of music showed just how special this day was to him.
He moved the trowel back to the hole to dislodge another scoop when an idea leaped out of the sky and struck him like a bolt of lightning.
There were two kinds of fun!
Phew! That was close!
That poor little novel almost had to sit on my computer, undressed with rewrites, forever!
At the beginning of summer ’22 I realized it had been more than a decade since I’d taken any real time off from writing. So, I pledged to put writing aside for a bit and focus on living life.
You know, family, travel, food, laughter…the good stuff!
I also chose that time to give up coffee. If I wasn’t writing, there was no real need to jump-start my brain in the morning. I would let it take the slow road to wakefullness.
At the end of summer I got out my computer, found a nice place to sit, and…nothing. My mind was a complete blank.
I’ve experienced writer’s block before, but this was something else. Something bigger.
In the past, when I was hit with writer’s block, I was still be able to catch a glimmer of ideas flitting about in my head. Sure, it was rather like playing hide-and-seek with ghost flies. I could hear them, I could feel them, but I couldn’t quite grab hold of them. Still, I knew if I kept at it, I’d eventually catch those elusive ideas as they got comfortable and tried to giggle their way into another part of my brain.
But not this time. Days, weeks, and even months went by, and I’d barely begun my newest screenplay. I tried doing rewrites on a few novels I’m working on as a way to get things going, but I couldn’t get past the first page on any of them.
I was stuck. Well, and truly, stuck.
Until, in a moment of weakness, I made a cup of coffee before I sat down in front of my computer. I took a sip as I opened the empty page that was supposed to be my beat sheet. I must have either had an out-of-body experience or been abducted by aliens, because the next thing I knew I had mapped out three quarters of my story!
It was magic.
Unfortunately, it was the magic of coffee.
So, now I have a new plan. I’ll allow coffee back into my life, for a bit. Just long enough to get me back to my normal writing routine. Then, coffee and I are going to have a long talk.
I have no intention of being held hostage by that little cup of magic we call Joe.
May joy and happiness lead the way through the coming year!
