On Board

My latest is called Howlingween 5: Trip Along. In a way it's about the past not letting go of its hold on the unfortunate Forran family. The major significance of this, my 12th screenplay, is its crafting. Unlike the 11 screenplays before, which would be posted as soon as their first drafts were completed (then repeatedly revised and re-posted), Trip Along has been so thoroughly revised that I can almost guarantee up to 96% of spelling and syntax errors and story inconsistencies have been spotted and corrected.

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My latest is called Howlingween 5: Trip Along. In a way it's about the past not letting go of its hold on the unfortunate Forran family. The major significance of this, my 12th screenplay, is its crafting. Unlike the 11 screenplays before, which would be posted as soon as their first drafts were completed (then repeatedly revised and re-posted), Trip Along has been so thoroughly revised that I can almost guarantee up to 96% of spelling and syntax errors and story inconsistencies have been spotted and corrected. Another significant thing about Trip Along is that, like Beastly Mist, the series has gone off Halloween as being the theme and trigger-event for the story.

Though none of my screenplays (as at 20 March 2023 AEST) has been optioned, let alone produced, I keep writing them because I love creating worlds.

Please enjoy reading any one or more of the following screenplays: Splendid Isolation (story of a frontier town in modern Alaska); On Board (misadventures on a cruise ship); Counterchance (sometimes bad things happen); Twelve Less (teenagers in trouble with a saboteur); We Were Young Once (fun teen musical); Howlingween (a road trip to hell); Howlingween 2: Clarry the Clown (horror island); Howlingween 3: Red River County (unforgiving beggar); Howlingween 4: Beastly Mist (insect sprays won't help with these bugs); Glorious Revolution (unintended consequences); Once Young (love-struck teenagers); Howlingween 5: Trip Along (dreams become real-life nightmares).

Which of the 12 is your favourite screenplay? My most emotionally beautiful screenplay is Splendid Isolation.

How do you see yourself as a screenwriter? As a hobbyist who finds writing screenplays is fun and redemptive.

What does it mean to be a hobbyist screenwriter? Professional screenwriters know how to write and appeal to the current set of pronounced sensibilities, thus positioning themselves well for a possible lucrative career. As a hobbyist, I write what interests me and what moves me. My stories may directly appeal to current sensibilities or they may be tangential to them or instead altogether appeal to other sensibilities that are either yesterday's or possibly tomorrow's. I know for sure many sensibilities change over time: what is current today may become passé tomorrow. So, I write what's in my heart because it's extremely difficult for me to write to another's prescription or to necessarily write to the predominating sensibilities of the day (the latter case reflects the rebellious streak that comes natural to so many writers and other creatives).

Do you see success coming your way as a screenwriter? Every time I complete a screenplay, I feel rewarded. It's a wonderful experience to complete a story that has a beginning, a middle and, most importantly, an end ... that final full stop or "FADE OUT".

What about financial success? I'd love for my screenplays to be optioned or produced and bring in money. But the odds are great against any one screenwriter achieving financial return on their writing.

Are you frustrated as a non-produced, never-optioned screenwriter? Oddly enough, no. When I wrote Splendid Isolation, my first official screenplay (I wrote another before it, but has been archived, most of it subsumed in a later screenplay), I thought the world would sit up and take notice and go "wow". The beginner's wonderment fallacy. It didn't take long to come to the far more realistic view that the odds are overwhelmingly against any of my screenplays being optioned, let alone produced. But life is very much about the unexpected good thing happening: it's called hope.

How did you come to terms with ongoing financial failure as a screenwriter? You've got to love what you're doing, irrespective of remuneration. I love creating worlds. I love letting the characters show me around their worlds and allowing me to discover who they are. My reward is being immersed in those worlds thinking I'm creating them but which at some point they create themselves.

You speak sometimes of a "vision-to-vision" connection between screenplays and producers, what do you mean? It's that all-important moment between a screenplay and the reader. I believe many readers already have in their minds images of a story they would like to see on the screen. If a screenplay meets those images, there is an instant vision-to-vision connection.

What is the future like for you? Before I started writing Howlingween 5: Trip Along, I started writing the sequel to Twelve Less, provisionally titled Twelve Less: Six Now. The six surviving teenagers are recruited by government agencies to go undercover as students to find who killed a janitor.

What advice would you give to beginning screenwriters? Write what excites you. Write what engages you emotionally. Study films that excite you and engage you emotionally and try to learn how they do it and transcribe what you learn in terms of a screenplay. I go for a film's atmosphere or ambience. Within a few minutes I know if I'll like a film by its atmosphere. Though creating ambience is a director's thing, I try as best as possible to hint (and only hint) at ambience in my screenplays.

(Updated: 20 March 2023 AEST)

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