Genre: Drama
Logline: A family quarrel from Thanksgiving leads to a difficult Christmas dinner.
I wrote this in one weekend for challenge #2 of the NYC Midnight Short Screenplay Challenge (2011). The writers in my heat had to write a dramatic short featuring a cooked turkey. The location for the short: a brewery.
Drama. Blargh. Might as well have “open” as my genre. I’m one of those people who believes EVERY script should be dramatic, so tapping into that creative vein for drama feels like driving in a car with no map and no destination.
To make matters worse, a cooked turkey? Now a brewery, THAT I can get behind, but a cooked turkey? Let’s just say I was less than excited with my parameters this time around.
At least, that’s what I’d tell anyone who asked. ;]
Truth is, I LOVE getting parameters that push me into uncomfortable territory. You can’t grow inside your comfort zone, and I plan on growing as a writer until the day I die. (Even then, I might come back and haunt other writers, so there’s potential for growth in the afterlife.)
Still, I had to come up with a starting point, and where better to start than IMDB? I’ve seen hundreds of dramatic movies, and the IMDB list of best (and worst) dramas is chock full of titles that I’ve either seen or lined up in my Netflix queue. One glance at the list was enough to get the wheels spinning.
When I write fiction, I don’t see it as “making up” a story. I see it as remembering something that never happened. Once I remembered all the key points of this particular story, I sat down at my laptop and banged out the first draft.
I had to travel on Sunday, though, so my 48 hour window was more like 36 hours. I slept on the first draft, tweaked it Sunday morning, then showed it to my wife. I was heads down at my laptop, but I still saw her head snap up when she hit the last page. After she handed my script back to me, she subtly wiped away the tear that threatened to spill down her cheek.
Win.
I uploaded the script to NYC Midnight before I hit the road, although I did submit a last minute title change from my hotel room Sunday night. Other than that, the script you see here is my latest stab at drama.
Let me know what you think!
Download screenplay: Alone
