This is from a screenplay called, at the moment, 'Big Moon Forest'. Here two boys are walking to the forest to see something. It turns out Rhys is telling the truth, but it's not really a monster. And I couldn't resist the 'trees' comment, even though it's a pretty bad joke. I was told that I shouldn't write about children, because my style is too obvious a fit for them. For some reason I'm not listening, and am writing two stories about children. They start in the same place but go off in wildly different directions. This one involves a bit less of the surreal. A bit.
'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' has been attributed to Aesop. So this is something clever my university lecturers would have called 'intertextuality'. Maybe. I could just be making it up as I go along. What other way is there? Like everything else, the story is summed up in The Simpsons, when Bart tells lies about a test, and is then chased around school by a wolf.
Is the idea of 'a minute a page' true? Doesn't seem accurate to me. Some pages can go by in half that. Some could be about three. I'll play along with that idea if it makes things easier, but I don't believe it. A script of a hundred and twenty pages would be two hours long? Okay then.
Simpsons did it!
ReplyDeleteYou’ve been told your style is too obvious for children? What does that mean exactly, it’s not like kids regularly deal in cryptic metaphors and advanced subtext. I quite liked it. Reminds me of Deep Space Nine’s analysis when Garrak thinks the point of the story should be to never tell the same lie twice.
Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to write for children, just about them. That comment, from a wise creative writing tutor, was more about my prose, which is all a bit minimalist. Minimalism which is more interesting when applied to adults. It could be a fair comment, but one I'm ignoring for now. At least, the things that happen later in this screenplay definitely aren't child-friendly.
If you did a series of mini-fictions and made them into a blurb book...I'd buy it. And do a cover design/illustration for it too. Have your people call my people!
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