Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Shifted

I woke up this morning after some very weird dreams...dunno what they were, exactly; I just was saying, "That was weird," the moment my eyes opened. But the first thing I decided to do was rework a little SF horror script I have into something as bone-chilling as I can make it.

It's a story about shredders (skateboarder kids) fighting off an alien that wants to use them as its power source. I aimed it at being cheap to shoot and open to a franchise. But something I figured out was, the opening is too low-key and the horror is too cerebral. So now...it also uses them as food. And not in a very nice way.

I had to upload it from a thumb drive to set it up on my desktop computer (my laptop won't support my version of Final Draft, anymore), then I proceeded to completely restructure it. I cut out everything introducing the shredders in the first act and added in another scene where the alien's human helper brings some people he knows to be used, then I cut to the kids driving down a desert highway.

I'm about halfway through...and if this turns out even half as scary as I want it to, I think it'll kick some ass. Because I've thrown in things that come close to torture porn...but I don't think I actually go over the line into that. Plus, I plan to make the alien sympathetic. It just wants to get home and is doing what it must to survive. And if that means slaughtering a few innocent humans, well...we lower-echelon creatures don't really matter.

Hm...maybe I'll make the alien look like Romney.

Anyway, once it's done, I'm sending it off to some horror script competitions to see what the reaction is. If I don't get bawled out by someone for the script being over the top, I won't have done my job.

So be prepared, all -- I am about to unleash "We-Come" on the world. And you can blame it all on my psychoses, if you like. Those...I got plenty of.

Hee-hee.

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