To expand my idea of two women with different lifestyles meeting on a park bench, one living without technology, and one who is obsessed with it, I made a mind-map of all the different components of living without technology, such as what my character would eat and do in their spare time.
When walking in my local park, I had the idea of these two women with opposing personalities meeting after seeing a woman who was dressed formally, presumably because she worked in the town bank or law firm, walking through the park.
After coming up with these characters I then generated names for them by using behind the name.com to help give their names meaning in relation to the types of people they are. For example, Ida has become obsessed with technology mainly because of her job, therefore I picked her name because it contains the Germanic element Id which means 'work' or 'labour'. I also picked the name Diana because in Roman mythology this is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, and wild animals, and living without technology, my character would spend a lot of time in the forest or in fields.
I then expanded this idea by coming up with reasons why these two women would be sitting on the park bench and how they are as people (types of activities they do, types of food they eat). From this, I also decided on the ending of my screenplay, where Ida gives up technology and Diana goes back to using some.
After creating this brief outline, I broke my idea down into the components of characters, location, goal, conflict, and change, to gain a clearer view of what each of my characters was aiming for and why, how they could be stopped from getting this, and how they change over the course of the story because of what they learn from each other.
This helped me to come up with my idea pitch.
Whilst pitching this idea, I realized Ida did not have a clear reason to be sitting on the park bench every day as she could always just have lunch in a coffee shop. This is why I decided to give her the problem that she continually gets headaches, as it meant that the coffee shops were too loud for her to sit in, and also made her more likely to give up technology if it meant her headaches would get better. To highlight her addiction to technology, I also made her more connected to it by giving her a smart watch, several phones, and a tablet.
I then began to draft the story, first breaking it down and constructing each character's story arc separately before later combining them, then tweaking it so each character's development logically fit with the others. From this, I was then able to write my first draft.
The change in my screenplay was inspired by the screenwriter Rob Thomas' work as it made me think about acceptance in my own screenplay as it is a common theme in his shows.
Since Ida works as a divorce lawyer, for research I read articles about what happens in a divorce regarding who keeps what and found out about remortgaging the house so only one person keeps it. This helped me to come up with the moment when Diana unexpectedly helps Ida get promoted, hinting Diana may know more about law than Ida thinks because of her past.
After watching the short film 'I Know You From Somewhere' by Andrew Fitzgerald, I added the element of Diana's artwork going viral to add more conflict to her story arc than just running away from her past. I added this to my second and third drafts.
When walking in my local park, I had the idea of these two women with opposing personalities meeting after seeing a woman who was dressed formally, presumably because she worked in the town bank or law firm, walking through the park.
After coming up with these characters I then generated names for them by using behind the name.com to help give their names meaning in relation to the types of people they are. For example, Ida has become obsessed with technology mainly because of her job, therefore I picked her name because it contains the Germanic element Id which means 'work' or 'labour'. I also picked the name Diana because in Roman mythology this is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, and wild animals, and living without technology, my character would spend a lot of time in the forest or in fields.
I then expanded this idea by coming up with reasons why these two women would be sitting on the park bench and how they are as people (types of activities they do, types of food they eat). From this, I also decided on the ending of my screenplay, where Ida gives up technology and Diana goes back to using some.
This helped me to come up with my idea pitch.
Whilst pitching this idea, I realized Ida did not have a clear reason to be sitting on the park bench every day as she could always just have lunch in a coffee shop. This is why I decided to give her the problem that she continually gets headaches, as it meant that the coffee shops were too loud for her to sit in, and also made her more likely to give up technology if it meant her headaches would get better. To highlight her addiction to technology, I also made her more connected to it by giving her a smart watch, several phones, and a tablet.
I then began to draft the story, first breaking it down and constructing each character's story arc separately before later combining them, then tweaking it so each character's development logically fit with the others. From this, I was then able to write my first draft.
The change in my screenplay was inspired by the screenwriter Rob Thomas' work as it made me think about acceptance in my own screenplay as it is a common theme in his shows.
Since Ida works as a divorce lawyer, for research I read articles about what happens in a divorce regarding who keeps what and found out about remortgaging the house so only one person keeps it. This helped me to come up with the moment when Diana unexpectedly helps Ida get promoted, hinting Diana may know more about law than Ida thinks because of her past.
After watching the short film 'I Know You From Somewhere' by Andrew Fitzgerald, I added the element of Diana's artwork going viral to add more conflict to her story arc than just running away from her past. I added this to my second and third drafts.
I then researched the screenwriter Michael Jacobs because of how the main characters in his shows have changed over several years, making me think about how my own characters change, and how their relationship is affected because of this. It also made me consider Diana's past more and helped me find reasons as to why she would have been a lawyer but isn't now.
When writing my fourth and fifth drafts I added this in and also changed the ending which was inspired by the short film 'On Time' by Ted Chung. I added Diana's father to the present day narrative as when Diana and Ida walk away from him it represents them both turning their backs on their old lives, much like the main character does in this short film when he gets a glimpse of the future.
After reading in Making It Big in Shorts by Kim Adelman (see reading list) that original titles help short films to stand out, I decided to re-title my own to piece from just the word 'Connect' to 'Con-nect'. Not only was this more original but also represented my idea better, as by disconnecting the components of the word this showed that my characters are disconnected and need to re-connect.
I then wrote my sixth draft, in which I changed the beginning of my screenplay to make Diana and Ida get to know each other better in a subtle way over time instead of them talking together instantly as if they already knew each other. I found that this helped me to establish their relationship better as it showed the differences between them and how these change over the course of the story.
A tutorial with screenwriter Steve Coombes helped to better refine my screenplay by coming up with a script breakdown, meaning writing only one sentence for each scene.
To expand on this, I added the words 'but' and 'therefore' to connect the sentences and make sure my story was interesting, advice given by the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone in this video:
By writing both of these out every time I wrote a new draft, I found it helped me to come up with new ideas that fitted into the narrative and were authentic to the characters, which I experimented with in my seventh and eighth drafts, even though it meant these turned out to each be less than ten pages. During these drafts I got rid of the flashbacks included previously as they interrupted the narrative, rather than moved it along.
To give the phone call Ida makes at the beginning of my screenplay more significance other than just to show Diana knows how to do Ida's job better than Ida, I made the unknown person she talks to, 'Jerry', her son in my ninth draft. However, I found that rather than raising the stakes of my narrative it interrupted the conflict between Diana and Ida and did not move it along any further. Therefore, I cut this idea in later drafts.
When writing my tenth and eleventh draft, I added Diana protesting, as well as giving Ida a time limit so she steals one of Diana's drawings which was inspired by 'eat or be eaten' from the short film 'Touch of Magic'.
The drawing that Ida steals being the reason that she loses her job was inspired by character's falls in two episodes of the British drama, 'Black Mirror'. Therefore, in further drafts, I added in the idea that the drawing Ida steals involves the litter she has been leaving on the bench, as she is set up by Diana.
To make the section about the park being built on more accurate, I looked at articles about when areas of green belt land had been built on.
In my previous drafts my action blocks were not visual enough so to fix this I read the screenplays to films I have seen such as Arrival, A Monster Calls, The Martian, and Hidden Figures to see how these writers construct their action.
During my research, I also used several different screenwriting websites and blogs written by professional screenwriters such as JaneEspenson.com, a blog run by Jane Espenson who has since gone on to write a number of successful TV shows such as ABC's Once Upon A Time, and johnaugust.com, which is written by the screenwriter John August, writer of shows such as Big Fish. I also looked at some articles from scriptmag.com. Each of these websites helped me by detailing tips on how to structure scenes, how to write good dialogue, and how to make action blocks more visual so that a script can be easily read and visualized by the reader, so my script improved with each draft I wrote.
To give the phone call Ida makes at the beginning of my screenplay more significance other than just to show Diana knows how to do Ida's job better than Ida, I made the unknown person she talks to, 'Jerry', her son in my ninth draft. However, I found that rather than raising the stakes of my narrative it interrupted the conflict between Diana and Ida and did not move it along any further. Therefore, I cut this idea in later drafts.
When writing my tenth and eleventh draft, I added Diana protesting, as well as giving Ida a time limit so she steals one of Diana's drawings which was inspired by 'eat or be eaten' from the short film 'Touch of Magic'.
The drawing that Ida steals being the reason that she loses her job was inspired by character's falls in two episodes of the British drama, 'Black Mirror'. Therefore, in further drafts, I added in the idea that the drawing Ida steals involves the litter she has been leaving on the bench, as she is set up by Diana.
To make the section about the park being built on more accurate, I looked at articles about when areas of green belt land had been built on.
In my previous drafts my action blocks were not visual enough so to fix this I read the screenplays to films I have seen such as Arrival, A Monster Calls, The Martian, and Hidden Figures to see how these writers construct their action.
A Monster Calls
The Martian
Influence on my own screenplay
Hidden Figures
Arrival
Influence on my own screenplay
During my research, I also used several different screenwriting websites and blogs written by professional screenwriters such as JaneEspenson.com, a blog run by Jane Espenson who has since gone on to write a number of successful TV shows such as ABC's Once Upon A Time, and johnaugust.com, which is written by the screenwriter John August, writer of shows such as Big Fish. I also looked at some articles from scriptmag.com. Each of these websites helped me by detailing tips on how to structure scenes, how to write good dialogue, and how to make action blocks more visual so that a script can be easily read and visualized by the reader, so my script improved with each draft I wrote.
Dialogue tips from JohnAugust.com and JaneEspenson.com
Therefore, I was able to complete my final draft and move onto pre-production.
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