please help

[FuzzyBC]

Hi everyone,

I have decided to reshoot a film I made while I was in college. The film is an emotional drama about love, jealousy, and suicide. In my original film the characters were all in high school. Chris, a depressed loner high school student ends up spending his summer with one of the most popular girls in school working at her parents ranch. He views their relationship as being something serious where she views it as a simple friendship. When the summer is over and they get back into school he realizes that he didn't mean as much to her as what she meant to him. She becomes involved with another guy which causes chris to become extremily jealous eventually resulting in his suicide. Its a very dark film.

I made alot of mistakes in the production of that movie. It was way too ambitious for my first independent film project, and I did not have enough time to shoot it. I didn't spend enough time in pre-production either. Now seems to be as good of time as any to go back, redo it, and correct my mistakes.

There are some fairly significant changes I am going to make with the movie though. First the characters will no longer be in high school. I don't want to have to get permission to shoot in a school again and deal with all the extras like I did last time. Rather I want the characters to be young adults who are all done with school. The leading female character I also want to change. Before she came from a wealthy family and was popular. I would prefer in this remake to have her be more of the bad girl/goth type. And, instead of having the relationship between the characters grow while working together at the ranch, I want for them to go on a road trip together.

However, there are still some things with the story I need to work out. I figure I will have the two main characters first meet at a laundramat, but I am unsure of how exactly they are going to end up going on a road trip together. Also I don't know what all is going to happen on the road trip to evolve their relationship. I would very much appreciate anyone's ideas or suggestions as to what I should do for these parts of the story. I have some ideas, but I would like to hear what other people think too. Alot of the time I like others ideas better than my own.

So... how should the two characters end up on the road together?

And what events should take place on that road trip to cause a relationship between them to evolve?

Please share your ideas. I don't have that much experience in screen writing and I would love to get suggestions from some more experienced writers.

[Joe Calabrese]

It is admirable to want to tweak work you are not proud of.

In essence you want to make a road trip film in which two people learn something from each other along the trip.

The laundromat is a good meeting place. They are both there for the same reason and that shows a common thread between two seemingly different characters. Good start.

As for how they decide to go out on a road trip together is up to you, but I would assume that they don't go directly from there unless an extreme situation arises at the Laundromat that forces a trip (witnessing a crime and running for their lives for example). Normally it would be the place where they meet, get to know each other and after a few scenes of being together, they decide they need to go on the road for some reason, if even only for a vacation.

Not knowing enough of your story or premise, I can only give weak advice as to how I would do it, but I can say this much...

Use conflict to propel the characters forward. Conflict is the glue that binds character's to their journeys.

[gogoshire]

Just got back from the laundromat myself - my favorite place to write.

I agree with Joe. I'm hard pressed to think of a reason that two new acquaintances would leave on a road trip together from a laundromat without some dramatic impetus such as witnessing a crime.

Your story premise reminds me of something I saw on Oprah. This guy who wrote for "Sex and the City," Greg Behrendt, was talking about his book, "She's Just Not That Into You," written for women who just don't pick up on the clues that guys give them. Some of the women in the audience stood up and shared their sob stories about guys who led them on and then blew them off. Some had even become suicidal. I know that in your story, the genders are reversed, but the book might be of some help/inspiration to you in writing what goes wrong with Chris. You can probably find the book at your library (it was on Oprah, so every woman in America needs to read it, right?) and it's on Amazon, too.

Also, in some weird way, your story reminded me of a film that I watched last night, ASHES OF TIME, by the Hong Kong New Wave director Wong Kar-Wai. The story is nothing like yours, but the general theme was unrequited love. Also, he's a pretty cool filmmaker. You might want to check it out to get you thinking about how/why relationships work and don't work.

[IWrite]

I figure I will have the two main characters first meet at a laundramat, but I am unsure of how exactly they are going to end up going on a road trip together. Also I don't know what all is going to happen on the road trip to evolve their relationship. I would very much appreciate anyone's ideas or suggestions as to what I should do for these parts of the story.

It sounds like you have a beginning and an end but no middle at the moment. That is actually a very good thing. Because if you know where you want your characters to end up - and you know where you want them to start - you have the two tentpoles for mapping out your journey.

Your story is that journey, and it is your responsibility as a writer to figure out how your characters get from point A to point Z. Asking others to give your story to you is ignoring your own responsibility as a writer.

Figure out exactly what you are trying to say - and then spend a lot of time in a room by yourself and figure out how to say it. Map out the major beats i.e. the inciting incident, climax et. al. Once you have them in place you can lay in the scenes that will take your story and your characters from one of these major beats to the next. That is essentially how you build a story.

Good luck.

[zagoraz]

Just a few thoughts...

Maybe your characters are both running from something. Maybe it's the absolute worst day in both of their lives and they were destined to meet at the laundromat. Maybe she has an abusive boyfriend. Maybe she just lost her entire family in a car accident and is in shock. Maybe he owes a serious gambling debt. Maybe his wife just left him and took the kid. Something tragic that connects them together in the beginning.

I'm not trying to give you specific ideas. Just trying to get your mind churning a little bit.

[FuzzyBC]

I agree with you IWrite, that is exactly what I have... a beginning and an end, but no middle. I know where I want the story to end up, and I know what I want the characters to be. However I am unsure of how to get the characters there. The way I originally solved this problem seemed to work, but I do not want to have to deal with the logistics of getting permission to shoot in a high school or at a ranch again, or deal with extras- that is why I am chainging it. And I do have ideas for different events along the road trip to help bring the characters together, but I like hearing other peoples ideas, and the people on this forum seem to have some really great ideas that I could never come up with on my own.

[Chesher Cat]

And I do have ideas for different events along the road trip to help bring the characters together, but I like hearing other peoples ideas, and the people on this forum seem to have some really great ideas that I could never come up with on my own.

I also agree with IWrite. Maybe you should consider hiring a screenwriter. ;-)