OVER BLACK -
Prayers, low as whispers, grow in strength:
VOICES
(varied)
Please, God. Let them be okay. Don’t take our baby from us. Let her live. If anyone’s up there - please! Just don’t let them be DEAD-
INT. VW JETTA - NIGHT
A GASP AWAKE. EYES. IRIS.
IRIS
Jesus!
Blood stains the crushed ice cube windshield dangling above her.
She feels her stomach - the steering wheel’s an inch from her chest - the axel pierced through her seat, just above her shoulder
IRIS (CONT’D)
Fuck. No. This isn’t real. This can’t be real.
She winces and blinks. Braces. She can’t look. But she must.
IRIS (CONT’D)
No!
There, in the passenger seat next to her, is LACY - very much dead.
Iris struggles to turn. Pinned down, she can’t move.
She grips what’s left of the rear-view, attempts to twist its mangled form-
IRIS (CONT’D)
Jen! Keesha? Emily?! Please! Anyone- just please don’t be-
DEAD. THEY’RE ALL DEAD.
Okay! That’s the first1 page! I did it!
If you don’t know this writing style, this is written in screenplay format. This is the first page of what will eventually be a horror feature film. I’ll share a little more about the premise (hell, maybe even the title) at a later date if people are interested, but for now, my main goal is to publish and write a new page of the script every day so I can finally finish the first draft.
A bit about the project:
This script has been in my head since late 2013 / early 2014. I wanted to write something neo-gothic and stylized, with plenty of “camp” and gore - think Evil Dead, where it takes itself serious and has a lot of fun. Hopefully I’ll earn that tone as I continue to develop it, but back around 2014 I tried to take an initial stab at it with a more comedic route and it just didn’t land for me. So I shelved it and sat on it for nine years until I finally screamed at myself enough to give it another shot.
The key thing this time around is that going in, I actually know what it’s about. Not just “the plot” (which I’ve had an outline for this whole time), but “the premise” - the thing they don’t teach you in writing school because it’s kind of all-consuming and obvious. It’s the “but why today?” and the “why this?" The “artistic statement.” The “so what?” The “message.” The “point.”
Basically, a premise is a boiled-down version of what you’re trying to say. In its long form, it’s a description of the plot, theme, characters, and their internal change all rolled into one. Imagine you’re writing the answer to the following questions: “Why do these things happen, to these people, at this time, all for the purpose to learn what?” That’s the premise. In its short form, it’s a single statement: “love is powerful enough to conquer death.”
See, I had this whole writing thing wrong this whole time. For years - no, longer! Decades, even.
I don’t know how you write, but when I get the initial inspiration for my ideas, they come to me in neat-little snapshot images. For instance, the initial inspiration for this project was a woman running through a foggy wood with a blood-splattered shovel (we’ll get there, don’t worry). Other times, ideas will come in soundbite elevator-pitch scenarios, like “what if the zombie movie was actually told from the point of view of the zombies?” While these initial jolts of inspiration are important, they don’t carry enough juice to get your Tesla across the country; they’re the jumpstart you need to get the car running and back on the road. But you’ve still got miles ahead of you.
Put another way, it’s really easy to write an idea that starts with “What if…?” and really hard to write one that ends with a satisfying “…and that’s why.”
You’ve always got to start with the why.
One of the things I couldn’t crack about this story was where Iris is seated in the car accident. At first, I always saw her in the middle seat, in the back. You’ll understand why later, but it seemed like the perfect spot for her - trapped in the middle of the chaos. But then it hit me last night when I was having a spiraling anxiety attack and couldn’t sleep: she needs to be in the driver’s seat.
Why? “Why” indeed… Now you’re thinking like the writer I wish I was eight years ago.
See you on Page 2.
Thanks for reading A page a day! Subscribe for free to receive a new page in your inbox every day. If I can write a page, you can read a page.
Eagle-eyed observers will realize that this is technically the second post of the first page. I posted the initial draft of this page, written last night at 1 am on my Apple Notes app, the morning before this first, official version. But this version is pasted from the first page I actually wrote in Final Draft, the screenwriting software I’m using to write the script, so I figured I could get away with publishing it again. Plus, I wanted to change the format of the posts to always start with the story page so it takes precedence.