Monday 18 May 2009

SURVIVAL - Part One

Taking a leaf out of James Henry's blog, I've decided to blog about one of my ideas. Unlike James, I haven't had anything come close to selling yet, so I can't take the posts that far. But what I am going to do is talk about how this idea goes - from inspiration, through conception, premise, treatment, scene breakdown and script drafts. And from there I'll try and sell the bugger.

I suppose the first post about this idea is here. The working title is SURVIVAL. It's an action film about a special agent who seeks revenge on those who killed his partners. But mixed in with the simple revenge story is the theme of survival.

As of yesterday morning, I knew the sort of film I wanted to write and the degree of action. As I blogged before, I had to justify that action. You can read all about that here.

So I suppose the inspiration part of my idea is PUNISHER: WAR ZONE. I watched the film and wanted to write a similar action film. I spent a few days throwing ideas around in my head and yesterday I got to work.

I created my characters and gave a name to my protagonist - Kyle Grant. I then went to work with the research aspect which took the best part of the morning. Then I attempted a very basic treatment. As things stand, it reads at merely two pages. There are no details of the action and such. Clearly every aspect needs expanding - that will come in the scene breakdown.

I also have one section that is not written. In fact, on the page it reads:
"More investigation"
At this point in the story, Grant knows who he's after and knows that he's in the UK. What he doesn't know is where exactly he is. So far, he's travelled to a drug dealer to find information. But that's it. What will probably happen is that he'll find some more leads at the drug dealer and follow them to another lead and so on. That's the part of writing I'm not best at - what is essentially crime writing - giving clues, following leads etc.

So the next stage is to work out how he finds out where the killer is. I'll probably do that as I write the scene breakdown. In that, I'll detail action (but not completely) and character development and insert specific extracts of dialogue if I think of them.

Standby for SURVIVAL- Part Two.

1 comment:

Sofluid said...

Good stuff! You and Paul McIntyre have inspired me to get the hell on with some of my own ideas, even if it's just a basic treatment and general ideas like you've got down for Survival so far. I'm really excited about some of my ideas but other tasks keep getting in the way. I shall definitely try and get some stuff down this week! :)