Writers Lab Releases Participant Loglines

The Writers Lab, supported by Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, has released the loglines of this year's twelve participant scripts.

The Writers Lab 2018 Scripts

AN AUSTRIAN HOLIDAY, by Ann Hawker
Drama: A proud woman with Alzheimer’s sets out across Europe for an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland, pursued by her daughter who is determined not to let her mother succeed.

ADA (75) female, retired science teacher succumbing to dementia.
ZOE (42) female, artfully dishevelled photographer.

DAWN, HER DAD & THE TRACTOR, by Shelley Thompson
Drama: Five years after leaving home, a young transgender woman returns to her estranged father, keeping a deathbed promise to her mother. As they restore the old family tractor together, they come to understand the mechanics of the heart.

DAWN MCGINNIS (20s), transgender woman.
JOHN ANDREW MCGINNIS (50s), Dawn’s father.

DIPLOMATIC CORPS, by Nadia Fares
Drama: The favorite son of an Egyptian diplomat assists his father at the U.N. in New York to accomplish a prestigious mission, but when a journalist threatens to reveal his homosexuality, the brilliant young man must choose between family and truth.

ISMAIL ATTIA (21) male, Egyptian, closeted homosexual, cosmopolitan, thoughtful.
AURELIE (22) female, French, student at Columbia.

LADY KATE, by Avra Fox
Western: An unrepentant gunslinger endures a brutal cross-country trek with the bounty hunter who killed her gang and now marches the outlaw to her own hanging.

KATE (30s) female, hardened outlaw.
WALKER (40s) male, quiet bounty hunter.

LILA ROSE, by Gail Segal
Drama: A young mother and Iraq War widow who works the line in a school bus factory must decide if she will use her gift with a fiddle to carry her out of southwest Georgia for good.

LILA ROSE (24) female, soap-and-water beauty who sings and plays guitar and fiddle.
RUBY HART (38) female, hardened welder who once resembled her sister Lila Rose.

NEXUS, by Shelagh McLeod
Sci fi: After a cataclysmic event in space, an astronaut returns to Earth a stranger. Grappling with the truth of her encounter, she is torn between her life on Earth and the unknown beyond.

KATHERINE HARRISON (late 30s / early 40s) female, brilliant, astronaut, wife, mother.

ONE WHITE CROW, by Pippa Hinchley
Historical Biopic: In 1890, a brilliant scientist who debunks fraudulent spiritualists and a Bostonian housewife with an apparent ability to communicate with the dead prove there is life after death. Based on a true story.

DR. RICHARD HODGSON (35) male, brusque Australian who moves to his own beat.
LEONORE PIPER, (30) female, high-strung reluctant medium.

ON THE BLADE, by Cornelia Ravenal
Drama: When a brutal hazing turns deadly, a young athlete risks his future to expose the truth, only to realize his own complicity.

TONY RUSSO (18), male, blue-collar Boston, college hockey star.
EMILY DIAZ (19), female, smart, no-nonsense college student.
COACH DON GOSEK (50) male, sharp-eyed college hockey coach.

ON THE WING, by Lynn Esta Goldman
Drama: After a miraculous recovery from a terminal illness, a young African-American woman sets out to confront the mother who abandoned her -- with an eleven-year old boy from a foster home who insists on coming along.

MARIDEE HUTCHERSON (26) female, black, buttoned-up professional.
JEROME BISHOP (14) male, black, talkative.
GRACE HUTCHERSON (late 40s) female, white, Maridee’s mother, life’s been rough.

SPIRIT HALLOWEEN, by Billie Bates
Family, Seasonal: When a pop-up Halloween store opens in a haunted strip-mall, three middle school friends ditch trick-or-treating to spend the night inside, only to find themselves battling possessed animatronics.

JAKE (12) male, angry at the world but doesn’t know it, lives for Halloween.
CARSON (13) male, scrappy know-it-all, Kate’s twin.
KATE (13), female, confident, Carson’s twin.

SUNDAYS AND MONDAYS, by Teisha Hickman
Drama: A recent widower struggling to raise his daughter discovers an unlikely ally in a self-destructive artist. Can these three lost souls find their way?

NOLAN CHRISTOPHER (37) male, black, professional, recent widower.
ERICA THOMAS (28) female, black, artist, struggling with depression.
VANESSA PETERS (40s) female, black, psychologist.

SUSPENDED BELIEF, by Catherine Craig
Drama: A camera woman flees her abusive husband with her children but when the shelter system can’t protect her she finds unlikely allies in an oddball special effects studio.

CADY LANGTON (30s) female, abused, wary, mother of two.
BARRETT ARMSTRONG JONES (50s) male, frumpy FX studio owner.

Updated: 12/14/2018

Additional Contest Info: The Writers Lab US