When I got to the final few drafts of my script, it was brought to my attention that there was a major flaw within them - the setting.
Initially, I had a very Gothic undertone to the piece. Within this, I had the main setting being the Tamlock residence - a Gothic manor house. This had acres and acres of grounds, was very large itself and even had a butler. This matched the inside of the house, filled with religious iconography and old furniture. This however, as I was informed, seemed too obvious.
The problem was, if you saw this house on a screen, you know exactly what's going to happen on the inside. Something reflective of what you are seeing on the outside. The storyline of my piece would have been obvious and an audience would be able to guess what will happen in this setting. So I changed it.
I changed it to a standard semi-detached house in a suburban estate in the country side. This, I think, would let many people relate, as many people live on a place like this, but I gave it a twist - I kept it the same on the inside. So initially, when the reader were to look at this house, they would think that nothing out of the ordinary is going on here, but when you get to the inside, you realise just how dark and backwards the family and the house really is.
This change led me to having to change Roland as well. Initially, he was the twins Butler, but this was changed to their Grandfather, who lives adjacent to them. This way I was able to keep the paternal instincts Roland felt towards the twins, and have it justified rather than having him as a family friend or neighbour.
Because of this, I felt I had to change Edward slightly as well. Not his personality, but his clothing. Initially he was going to dress himself very gothic - like an old victorian gentleman, complete with cravat. This changed to a slightly emoesque style for him. Dark skinny jeans and dark shirts, with all the buttons done up. I felt by doing this, it modernised the character slightly and it also gave the same feel as the house - normal on the outside, but dark and twisted on the inside.
Another problem that came up was Edward murdering Evelyn's boyfriend, Richard. Reading through, there wasn't any real probable cause for Edward killing him, apart from him not liking him. It was me, as a writer, killing someone for the sake of killing someone. So I decided to give Edward a reason to kill him.
Edward now tries to connect with him, but discovers that Richard is cheating on his sister. Finding this inexcusable, Edward then takes things a step too far and decides to murder him - and the woman he was cheating on Evelyn with - leading to a very dark and disturbing murder/kidnapping couple of scenes.
One major issues I came up all over my piece was being too melodramatic as well (as mentioned in an earlier post). But other than that, I made things too long. A scene that needed to only be a few lines would be drawn out for as long as 4 pages at a time. By finding these scenes and singling them out, I was able to cut them down, making them more dynamic by just being a couple of lines in length - also allowing for more plot lines and things to happen within the story as it gave me more space to write more.
No comments:
Post a Comment