Hey, lovely blog readers. I’ve allowed myself a break for Easter and now I am tentatively thinking about University stuff again. I was wondering if you could help.
I have to write about 20 pages of script for my Creative Writing: Drama module. I’ve decided I am going to write the beginning of a film. An old man, lets call him Christopher. Christopher Gracy…finds himself in a large echoey, deserted railway station. Inside. Glass roof. Being forgetful, he doesn’t really panic about why he is there. He has died, though, and the train that eventually comes is going to take him to the great beyond.
That’s about as far as I’ve got. First someone suggested that he should see scenes from his life from the windows of the train. I liked this very much. My tutor suggested that everyone else on the train should slowly realise what’s happened/ where they are going. I wondered if Christopher should be alone on the train. Should the ticket man/ conductor be significant? Should the train be a type of purgatory where Christopher works through his unfinished business before arriving in Heaven? Perhaps memories will start to come back to him, as his forgetfulness melts with his earthly life.
Basically I can’t decide on any details… or fully formed story. I’d be grateful for any ideas that you might have and want to contribute? I think ideas are one of the hardest things about writing. I would also rather be writing prose. Flowery and pretty language in the stage directions are lost on the audience!
For inspiration I’ve read The Great Divorce by C.S Lewis. It’s about heaven and hell and starts with people waiting for a bus, I was delighted to see. I watched What Dreams May Come, the film from 1998 with Robin Williams. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. And I think I might be influenced by ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry‘ by Rachel Joyce which I am devouring guiltily at the moment. (I LOVE it. The first line is ‘The letter that would change everything arrived on a Tuesday.’ Need I say more?)
It’s just another worry for me so the sooner my idea comes together the sooner I get writing… Thank you blog friends. I don’t mean to cheat, don’t give me your best ideas ever that you intend to write yourself, it just helps to bounce ideas off people… Just throw me some scraps 
(photo from here)
