I really enjoy writing. Iʼm an English major, and I want to write for a living

someday. I love to play with language, to use words that paint a picture for the

audience that tells a story, makes them think, allows them to escape to

somewhere, teaches them about something without them necessarily knowing

theyʼre learning, or all of the above. Thatʼs why when I heard about this first

project I got excited. Iʼve never had too much trouble writing dialogue and, as

previously mentioned, I quite enjoy writing stories, so I figured this project would

be a piece of cake.

I was right and wrong. I was right in the fact that I enjoyed the project, and

I seemed to be able to get the characters down okay with believable

conversation. I came up with the idea from that massive 70 plots assignment

from a couple weeks ago (Iʼm assuming thatʼs one reason you had us do that

assignment), and started thinking about it, pondering scenarios, coming up with

the different characters, and by the time I actually sat down to type it all up, it

flowed pretty nicely.

The hard part for me was battling myself. I tend to be a perfectionist and I

never think my work is quite good enough. I like my screenplay, and I think itʼs

good, interesting, and all that, but I spent about an hour reading and rereading,

trying to tinker with it, to make it even better. I finally had to just stop, tell myself

that itʼs good enough, and hit submit without looking back.

Another think I struggled with a little bit was the treatment. I wasnʼt sure

how much detail to put in or what to leave out. The instructions were to use

descriptive language, but sometimes I go a little overboard with the details. I tried

to find the happy middle ground, but I still went almost two whole pages for only a

little more of than what turned out to be five pages of script. I didnʼt want to leave

anything out, though, because I had such vivid pictures of the scenes in my head

that I didnʼt want to go unseen.

Overall Iʼm pretty happy with the outcome of my script and treatment.

Even though the dreams and story arenʼt entirely my ideas, I fleshed them out, I

thought up the characters and gave them names, faces, and personalities, and I

created the storyline. I tried to make a creepy concept seem real. Besides, as

Oscar Wilde said, “Good writers borrow, great writers steal.” And since I aspire to

be a great writer, I might as well start practicing now.