Last year I signed up for ScriptFrenzy, which is a sister competition of National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to spend the month of April writing a script of some type (TV, movie, play, etc) that is at least 100 pages long. Like my first attempt at NaNoWriMo, last year when I signed up, I half assed looked at screenplay formats, toyed with ideas and then promptly forgot all about it. This year I'm off to a slightly better start. In addition to updating my profile on the ScriptFenzy site I actually put a few pieces of info about what I would be working on there as well. Then I didn't do anything for a couple days. Two days ago I actually pulled a fresh notebook out of my messenger bag and started writing with complete disregard to what an actual screenplay format is supposed to be. I'm just winging it and it's a lot of fun so far. If, and that's a big if, I get this done I'll try to get it into a Word document and follow a screenplay format as I'm typing. I'm not worried if I don't "win" this year, it's just the idea that I'm writing and sticking to something again that is important.
And now for a brief bit on my "screenplay"--I'm using quotes because until it's done I don't think it really counts as an actual screenplay. The story I'm working with is about a couple who move into an older home and the wife thinks it's haunted. She has some weird dreams and after some encouragement from her friends, starts trying to communicate with the ghosts. This leads to the discovery of an old unsolved crime that involved previous occupants of the home. I'm not sure if I should classify this as a mystery, or horror or a thriller, or whatever.
The reason I went with this idea is because my husband and I are convinced that our house is haunted and I've had some weird dreams since we've moved in--like finding stains (that turned out to be old blood stains) on the hardwood floor after we've torn carpet up and finding skeletons in a sealed off coal storage area in the basement. We've heard creaking in the floorboards upstairs when we're downstairs, lights we swore we turned off are on, closet doors open. My brother house sit for us once and we'd never said anything to him about thinking the house was haunted, when we returned home he asked if the house was haunted because he experienced some of things we had. When our son was first starting to sit up on his own and we began using a high chair, he often looked over the should over whoever was feeding him and would smile and nod. Like, someone was behind us talking to him. Recently my husband and I picked up "ghost radar" apps for our cell phones and we've gotten some really interesting results in using the phones in the house. It all just add together in my head and equaled out to a story idea. It's also gotten us interested in the history of our house. Who knows maybe there's a real life mystery in my future.
No comments:
Post a Comment