Saturday, March 28, 2020

E01: Danger Close

EXT. HONEY ISLAND SWAMP - NIGHT
Cyprus trees dangle branches low over the sluggish water. Spanish moss drips down like slow-rotting flesh.
An enormous ALLIGATOR slides off the side and into the muck, eye slowly shutting just as it submerges.
A trail of bubbles and then a low wake traces its motion into the flow. Then it's lost in the dark and swirling mist.
Splashes, nightbird cries, and humid air are the only things making a noise.
Until the TRIBESMEN rise from beneath the water, themselves bedraggled with shreds of Spanish moss, skin in the night as dark as the gator only moments before. Three, five, ten, fifteen -- men and women rising up out of the slow water and stepping out onto the banks. Their hair blends with the moss, matted and dirty. Their gaits are shambling, unsteady. One, then two slip trying to leave the water's embrace and are forced to crawl up and out, dirty hands splayed and grabbing great fist-fulls of mud, dragging their wirey bodies up out onto the shore more knotted roots than actual land.
The first to stand, bigger, broader in the shoulder than the rest, lifts a vacant face to the vacant skies and breathes in. Her nostrils flare, this MIRE PRIESTESS, apparently satisfied.
She takes the first bolder step, then another, before turning to look over her shoulder at her SECOND TRIBESMAN, her thug and general bullyboy, giving him the sign. Second moves along, dragging people to their feet, shoving them roughly but in the right direction to follow, down the line.
The last, a young girl -- so much so that he stops and he holds her in one iron hand. She resentfully turns her face away and he responds with tired disgust, giving her a gentle shove toward the back. He stabs two fingers at his eyes, then two at hers, and then points out behind then, though with a glance back, she nods curtly and grits her teeth.
Second strols back along the line until back in his comfortable mid as TRAILER makes a face at her lousy luck and settles into the bundle of roots, letting the group pull away through the swampland.
In moments, the group is gone, the only things left behind the smell of disturbed silt which brings mosquitoes as big as your hand, and the wary gaze of Trailer, moving slower, watching backwards, knowing full well what's about to come from both before and behind. She smooths down her repeatedly patched cloth shirt with the care of someone raised to better, then moves into deeper water.
The ALLIGATOR from before is back. Gliding fast toward Tracker from the rear, slow undulating tail tightening with restrained power, closer by, and then --
Tracker runs her rough fingers over the gator's head as it slowly goes by. Comforted there's no one behind them, Tracker moves on.
Pushing off one particularly big Cyprus root, Traveler leaves the only trace in the wild that any of them has: a FIN-LIKE PALM PRINT in swamp water, quickly made indistinguishable by the omnipresent drizzle.
EST. GEORGIA WILDLIFE RESOURCES DIVISION STATE HEADQUARTERS - DAY
High above the forested area east of Atlanta, we begin smashing to the ground, seemingly in the middle of nowhere on a back road except for a cluster of large buildings, the Georgia DNR campus. ANGLE ON the LAW ENFORCEMENT DIVISION HEADQUARTERS SIGN.
INT. WILDLIFE RESOURCES DIVISION STATE HEADQUARTERS - CONTINUOUS
Looks about the same as when it was built in the '50's. Offices just a few millimetres short of "comfy." A reception area with a phone, a computer only a few years old, and a RECEPTIONIST who's about thirty times that. A few men who look both embarrassed and defiant scatter apart in chairs too close to one another for real humans.
RECEPTIONIST
Dale? Dale Whitmarsh!
One of the redder-faced middle-aged men slowly gets to his feet and shuffles forward.
DALE
Yessum.
RECEPTIONIST
What in the sam hill do you think you was up in Hard Labor Creek with a jacklight? Again?
DALE
Jus' -- huntin'.
RECEPTIONIST
Illegally. Again. I swear, Dale, you get dumber every time I see you. Look, I --
She eyes the threadbare jacket and the look of tired resignation, like a dog beat too many times and sighs.
RECEPTIONIST (CONT)
Alright, alright. You know how this goes. Thirty dollars and we'll waive the jail time for time served.
(harder)
But stop drinkin' up there! It ain't no ways safe, bein so close to Scull Shoals an'all. Justbe careful.
Dale hangs his head further. Begins to fish around in his back pocket for his wallet.
DALE
Yessum.
He hands her two well-worn bills and she puts them into a locked drawer primly before putting a hand on his shoulder before he goes.
RECEPTIONIST
Go home, Dale. You look like Hell. No more drinkin' up on Sand Hill, y'hear me? Officer Saxon won't be lookin' to see you here no more.
DALE
I know, ma. I know.
RECEPTIONIST
Git on out of here and tell Sherry I asked about her daddy an' them. Git.
They share a fond but quick hug and Dale shambles out.
Her face tells the story of the long battle she's fought and never expects to win before she drops back in behind the desk with a huff.
RECEPTIONIST
Next! Arnold Warren.
An enormous man in a threadbare suit stands, cap squeezed up in his hands.
ARNOLD
Linda.
RECEPTIONIST (LINDA WHITMARSH)
As I live and breathe! I thought you and your daddy Harley was out in Big Cyprus! Lord have mercy, what have you got yourself into now.
ARNOLD
I need to see the big man, Linda. It's urgent.
It's bad.
LINDA
Oh, Lord. You sit right down. I'll get Officer Saxon on the phone. He'll want to see you.
ARNOLD
(dire)
Yes ma'am, I imagine he will.
INT. OFFICER BILL SAXON'S OFFICE - DAY
OFFICER BILL SAXON it says on the DESK PLAQUE. The desk is that kind of industrial sheet metal green government agencies loved well up into the 90's. It's not messy but it's not clean, neat piles of NOTES AND FILES ordered in geometric regularity not always aligned with the edges of the desk proper. In one corner, a PICTURE of an older, white-haired man playing with a golden retriever, both smiling at the camera. In the other, a selection of GLASSY ROCKS like arrowheads but longer and barbed. A much more up to date COMPUTER dominates the center behind the plaque, like a wall between the door and the man.
The real walls have the usual police-type CERTIFICATIONS, meticulously up to date. Weapons use, first aid, range time, modern procedure. There is a distinct lack of awards for valor, investigation, nothing to show he was ever on a case.
Arnold Warren knocks gently on the door.
SAXON
C'mon in, Arnold.
Warren opens the door carefully and closes it just as such behind him before standing awkwardly.
ARNOLD
Lo, Bill. Long time
Saxon unfolds from behind the computer. He's not a big man like Arnold; not even particularly tall, but he seems to have longer limbs than he strictly needs for this office. A shock of very much prematurely greying hair does its unruly thing over glasses and a big smile.
SAXON
Arnold, you old so-and-so. Sit down. Sit. Mind the mess, though, there's a system.
Warren eyes the chair. It's spotless, not a thing on it. Nor a thing in foot-range in a space around it. Sits.
Rather than retreat behind the monitor, Saxon perches on the corner of his desk gingerly. There's just enough room to say he does it regularly.
ARNOLD
How's Mavis, Bill?
SAXON
She's well enough. Just had her calf a few weeks ago. Jenny's pleased as punch. You know she loves that cow. How's your daddy and them?
ARNOLD
That's kind of what I came here to talk to you about. Official and such.
SAXON
Official. That Exxon official or Miskatonic official?
ARNOLD
More the second than the first, I'm 'fraid. Like I said, it's bad.
He slides an SD card onto the desk as if it were polonium he doesn't want in his bloodstream.
ARNOLD (CONT)
A month ago, we lost Whateley.
SAXON
Old or young?
ARNOLD
Younger. Good kid, deep in Miskatonic para. John's other daughter raised him. He's -- was. He was about to do some great things, Bill. He was a friend.
SAXON
Hard luck in your field, that. Not many of those.
Arnold looks for a long time at a spot on the wall behind Saxon before returning to the moment.
ARNOLD
Ain't many a'tall. We both know.
SAXON
We do.
The brief silence of men thinking of friends gone.
ARNOLD
Anyway, it was Honey Island that did it for him.
SAXON
Honey Island? You're kidding me. That place has been flown over, built up around, and generally toured for so long --
ARNOLD
You an' me both know that don't mean squat, Bill. There's still nasty in there. There'll always be nasty in there. More folks around just means more folks to get nasty.
Saxon fidgets with the SD card. He can't keep his fingers off it.
SAXON
Cultists, then.
ARNOLD
S'what I figure. Could be Cthulhu. Could be Tsathoggua. Could be fuckin' Yog-Sothoth for what nobody knows. And nobody knows nothin', or at least they are bein' very public about knowin' nothin'.
Saxon sits down, refolding his long arms and legs as he slips the storage card into the computer.
The image reader flips up something that can only be seen by the glow on his face but the slight widening of the eyes says a lot.
SAXON
Whateley?
ARNOLD
Most of him.
SAXON
Where's the rest?
ARNOLD
The team figures eaten by a gator, prob'ly. Teeth marks match up. So's the tearing.
Saxon flips through a few more pictures with a flick of the fingers.
SAXON
No accident?
ARNOLD
Not with Whateley. Not like his cousin, annat. Animals loved the boy. All of 'em. Mosquitos wouldn't even bite him out of love.
Saxon leans forward a bit and zooms into a pic.
SAXON
This definitely ain't love.
ARNOLD
Or the gator loved someone else a lot more.
A few more images. Flick. Flick. Flick.
SAXON
I fucking hate cultists, Warren. I really do.
ARNOLD
I know. S'why the DNR sent me.
SAXON
You don't work for the Department, Arnold.
ARNOLD
No, but they know you don't want to. Not anymore. And the Special Operations Group wants you bad.
SAXON
They're HQ'd across the fucking road, man! Nobody could drive their Prius over here to have a talk with me face to face!?
ARNOLD
They called me, too. I think we're both fucked.
Saxon unfolds again and puts his hands against the wall of certs, leaning heavily. His head hangs and he draws several long, deep breaths before putting his eyes on anything in front of him.
SAXON
The kid deserved better?
ARNOLD
He deserved better. Not like any of us deserve it better, but if any of us do, he did.
SAXON
Bring your Necronomicon?
ARNOLD
Bring your Testaments of Erlich Zann?
Saxon cracks a faint smile.
SAXON
Audiobook. It seemed apt.
There's a faint knock on the door.
Arnold grins, knotting his veiny fists a moment.
ARNOLD
Well then. Let's go kill some men.

A Word From Our Sponsor

8 pages, on-site shooting, and a tonne of extras. Who could resist?

My name is Alexander Williams and I will be your writer today. I also just happen to be the director of this crazy circus. Let me tell you how that happened.

Eric and I are long inhabitants of the role-playing game discussion site RPGnet. For much of that time, he has been involved in what is commonly referred to as "the draught" there, a round-robin writing exercise where you have the opportunity to mash up two or more media properties (often comic book settings) and use or reimagine characters which are core parts of the experience. My main objection has always been that I hate working with other people's characters and would feel a lot happier if there was more focus on original characters. And screenplays.

I am fascinated by the process of writing a screenplay, from structuring the beats in order to communicate the emotional experience in a temporally expanded way, to the format itself which focuses more on communicating just the barest essentials about a given audience experience and trusting to the other people who are part of the production process to do their jobs well. I love reading scripts, I love writing scripts, and I know the difference between a spec script and shooting script.

I want there to be a kind of media in between classic prose and screenwriting, where a more casual reader could come and enjoy many of the strongest aspects of classical screenwriting but with more flexibility in language and imagery in the action part. True spec scripts can be quite spare as the screenwriter is obsessed with hitting exactly the right points at the right time as dictated by page count. There's a reason that Hollywood scripts feel so formulaic and it's because they are extremely formulaic. Experimenting with something a little more flexible with room to breathe has been high on my list.

I never got around to it. There was always something else to do. Other people always had more projects going and weren't really interested with something quite that experimental. Besides, while there was some experimentation with screenplay format in the RPGnet draught, the limitations of the forum made sure that the actual results never quite looked right. I kept putting off doing something with screenplays and doing something with the draught until I could find a blog that actually supported .fountain files.

Blogger most definitely does not support .fountain files.

It does support relatively nicely formatted HTML which mimics traditional screenplay format closely enough to be worth using, as I discovered a couple of years ago during NaNoWriMo. That bit of information hung out in the back of my head waiting to hook up with other things.

Which brings us to the mandatory lockdowns provided by SARS-CoV-2, or more colloquially "the coronavirus." "Ronnie" to her friends.

It was time. The horsemen stalk the earth. Doom hangs over the head of all living beings. Nothing could be more horrible.

Including my writing.

I dusted off my old ideas, ran them through a little bit of game design urged that I've been feeling since narrative games first walked the earth, found a couple of other people who were probably dumb enough to join me, and here we are – ScreenDraught Season One!

Ready to rock 'n' roll all night and party every day.

Once I commit this post, Eric will have 60 hours to put together between five and 15 pages of screenplay introducing one central character and any number of side characters, initiating some portion of the conflict, and pass on the story to Kari, who will then have to do exactly the same thing except with the advantage of all of the threads that both Eric and I introduced.

It's going to be quite a trip.

I don't know if Season Two will follow the exact same rules but I'm betting there will be some refinement. No good game survives conflict with the enemy.

I'm already looking forward to the opportunity.

While we're here, let me share my notes for this episode with you. I've recently discovered Roam as an information management system which works really well for me. It's like an overpowered wiki that automatically tracks back links and allows you to, to some degree, refer to specific days like a personal log. It's also really, really good for organizing ideas as you go no matter what kind of ideas those are. As I was doing the quick research for this episode, it was really easy to categorize and structure things that I found.

My pokey man's, let me show you them.

Things in [[double brackets]] are references to stand-alone pages that cross-link when referenced.
  • #script #writing #screenplay #episode
  • Published:: [[March 28th, 2020]]
  • Sequence 01: Swamp
  • Sequence 02: DNR
    • Location:: [[Georgia Wildlife Resources Division State Headquarters]]
    • Core Character::
      • Officer [[Bill Saxon]], agent of the DNR SOG.
    • Side Characters::
      • [[Dale Whitmarsh]], local "hunter" and drunk, gets arrested on [[Sand Hill]] a lot for jacklighting (but mostly drinking), son of [[Linda Whitmarsh]]
      • [[Linda Whitmarsh]], Dale's mother, receptionist at the DNR
      • [[Sherry Whitmarsh]], Dale's wife
      • [[Arnold Warren]], explorer and occultist, son of [[Harley Warren]]
        • Works for [[Exxon]] as an oil explorator
        • Associated with [[Miskatonic University]]
        • Friends with [[Bill Saxon]]
      • [[Harley Warren]], Arnold's father, hardcore occultist, disappeared in a crypt in [[Big Cyprus Swamp]]
      • [[Mavis]], a cow
      • [[Jenny]], Saxon's daughter, loves [[Mavis]]
    • Side Characters::
      • [[Whateley]] (youngest), grandson of Old [[John Whateley]], [[dead]]
        • Worked for [[Miskatonic University]] "para"
        • Died in [[Honey Island Swamp]]
The GA DNR LED SEO
That's a good chunk of story hook dropping for an eight minute episode, let me tell you.

And yes, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Law Enforcement Division Special Operations Group is real. They carry real guns. They will shoot you dead, dead, dead in the swamp.

The fun things you get to learn as a writer!

I hope you enjoy the rest of ScreenDraught Season One with as much joy as the rest of us will have writing it for you.

And be careful out there in the swamp. That's where the ugly lives.

60 hours, Eric. You're up.
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Welcome to ScreenDraught: Season One!

ScreenDraught is the all-new round robin writing event that throws writers into a pit, hungry and ready to take on anything that comes at them, arms them with only screenwriting and quick wits, and burdens them with some of the most maddening possibilities faced by writer-kind. Some will rise to the challenge of their rivals to build a compelling story and some will stumble along the way, but all of them will come out seasoned on the other side!

Probably a teaspoon of salt and a pepper pepper pepper to taste.

Beguine the Begin

Our setup and rules run thus:

We frame by imagining that all the writers are working on a single web-broadcast series. There is no FX budget limitation and on-site location shooting is unrestricted. Shoot in Antarctica, blow up Manhattan? We have the funds.

Every round, each writer will post one screenplay-formatted script of 5 - 15 pages, corresponding to a 5 - 15 minute single episode of the series. Every episode must conform to the genre or theme but within that loose bound, anything goes!

The goal is to create story elements, characters, and plots that are so compelling, the other writers need to bring them onboard into their episodes. Tying the episodes together coherently is a big plus.

There are three Acts, each containing one episode per writer.
  • Act One is for Character Introduction
    • Each writer may introduce one central character and any number of side characters. The central character must be an original creation while side characters may be anyone appropriate to the genre, original or not. (Obviously side characters which refer to established characters in the genre or theme are going to provide more hooks for other writers to jump on.)
    • Because writing proceeds sequentially, later writers have the advantage of established characters and setups to play off, early writers have the advantage in shaping narrative.
    • At the end of Act One, the audience should know who the central characters are and at least a basic idea of one of the major conflicts in the story.
  • Act Two is for Conflict Escalation
    • Using their central character, each writer continues the conflict(s) established in the previous episodes.
    • Any and all side characters can be picked up and used by anyone at anytime for any purpose and with any outcome.
    • A writer's central character can only be brought into an episode as a result of a request to do so and positive acknowledgement. What happens then is up to the writers in question, whether the process of integration is collaborative or just the requesting writer getting to write as they will.
    • At the end of Act Two, the audience should know what the central characters want out of the core conflicts and why they can't have it.
  • Act Three is for Conflict Resolution
    • At this point, all characters are up for grabs. Anyone can use any character for any purpose to any end.
    • At the end of Act Three, the audience should see a satisfying resolution of the conflicts created for central characters in Act One and developed in Act Two.
  • Denouement
    • Once all three Acts are done, the writers will collaborate on one final episode (which may be longer than 15 pages), running down a denouement for characters they found interesting in play.
    • Usually these are short vignettes showing how the character ended up, aspects of their legacy, or the impact they had on the world.
Play proceeds in a randomly selected order consistent between Acts. The first writer will remain the first writer through all three.

Each writer has 60 hours from the posting of the previous writer to post their episode. Miss your slot and you will be killed. Or possibly skipped and ruthlessly mocked for being a slacker, but probably killed.

Season One -- Allez Cuisine!

Season One writers will be, in order, myself, Eric the Half-a-Bee, and Kari Wolfe.

The genre in play: Lovecraftian Horror.

At the end of the first episode, each writer should write a bit about themselves, the process they went through in constructing their episode, or some bit of interesting fluff that came up along the way. A good sob story won't help here as much as in reality television!

Good luck to all the writers and may the best plot amuse!
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Location: Lawrenceville, GA 30046, USA
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