Writing A Script About Microwaves...
The first prompt that I chose to tackle went as follows:
"A three-page dialogue scene about a person trying to return an item to a store. The scene about a person trying to return an item to a store. "
Naturally, I felt like this kind of prompt best lent itself to a comedic situation, especially since long dialogue scenes are either dramatic (which could work) or comedic. I tried wracking my brain for memories of times I've had to return things to the store after a catastrophic failure, but fortunately for me, that's never really happened to me. Unfortunately for me, that also meant I didn't have a lot of experience in this subject from my own life, which felt limiting for how I would write this piece.
Luckily for me, however, I am surrounded by plenty of "interesting" characters in my life, and even then, those people often interact with people who are even more "interesting" than they are. As I sat there trying to spitball ideas, I suddenly recalled a conversation I was having with my roommate Wade, who was telling me a story about his partner Sam's roommate and a goofy interaction between the two of them. To make a long story short, Sam's roommate had repeatedly unplugged Sam's microwave whenever they would leave the dorm, and when she was finally confronted for an explanation, she explained that "the microwave gives people cancer," which was such a bizarre excuse that it simply had to be what she actually believed.
This ridiculous concept is what set the basis for writing the microwave script. How would a minimum wage worker react to having to deal with someone who's clearly missing a few screws (and not for the microwave)? The next step would be deciding what their dynamic would be. As someone who loves shows like Arrested Development and Ted (2024), one of my favorite comedy situations is when everyone in a setting is a moron or otherwise comically stupid, since it often leads to ridiculous situations that escalate in ways that probably wouldn't if the interaction involved a straight-man character. The character returning the microwave, Brooke, already seems to fit a pretty stupid character archetype, but I initially wanted Elliot (the cashier) to also be just as stupid as she was. Playing around with this "Dumb and Dumber" dynamic was really fun to write for, since I was able to write some insane bullshit for Brooke to spout at Elliot, and then have Elliot eagerly buy into it, which led to some pretty entertaining interactions.
However, after finishing my first draft with both characters being stupid, I realized that I wasn't quite satisfied with the state of the script. On paper, this idea seemed right up my alley: two stupid characters discussing microwave conspiracy theories was just the kind of dumb comedy I love watching! But there were two issues with this version of the script. First of all, Elliot seemed like a very... weak (?) character. He starts off as this bored worker, then becomes intrigued with the conspiracy, only to end up as a scared goody-two shoes that seemingly bought into Brooke's conspiracy more than she did. At first I thought this very rapid character development was sort of funny, as it indicated that Elliot isn't really the sharpest crayon in the drawer and that he adopts any beliefs that sound convincing enough to him, but after a few days of rereading and getting feedback from friends and family, I was less of a fan of having both characters feel so similar. The second issue was the ending. I knew off the bat that I wanted to end with the microwave breaking somehow, since it would resolve the issue of "what happens to the cancer microwave?" but in the first draft, it breaks in a rather uncreative fashion: it simply falls to the floor after Elliot and Brooke have a tug of war match with it. It felt lazy, forced, and I worried that even if the majority of the script was funny to me, the weak ending would annihilate my overall rating of the piece.
I ended up struggling with these issues for a couple of weeks, since I wasn't really sure how to fix everything without doing a major rewrite or going over the page limit. Eventually, I had to make the tough decision to pretty much rewrite the whole thing and kill off my "Dumb and Dumber" concept for this script. But oftentimes it is the decision to start over that provides a writer with the very solution they were searching for! For my rewrite of the script, I decided that I would have pretty much the exact same situation play out (Brooke wants a refund for her "cancer microwave") but with one key difference: Elliot is not an idiot. Or at least, he's less gullible than his previous incarnation. With this change I was able to structure the story into something that progressed much more smoothly than before: Brooke demands a refund, Elliot is skeptical of her excuse, which leads into her explanation of the Big Micro conspiracy, only this time, Elliot decides to play along with this concept out of boredom rather than genuine belief. With this change, the conflict between Elliot and Brooke developed much more naturally, since they are on opposing sides of belief in the conspiracy, rather than both believing in the conspiracy and having a moral conflict on what to do with the microwave.
Another cool aspect of this version of the script that I sort of discovered as I wrote the latter end of the script was the idea that Brooke might not actually believe in the microwave conspiracy as much as she initially lets on. This was an unintentional idea that was sort of hinted at in the first version of the script, since she decides to take the microwave back and sell it off to Goodwill or something instead of outright abandoning the "murder machine," which implies that her actual motive was receiving a refund rather than getting rid of the microwave. Realizing this halfway through my second draft of the script, I decided to have her lean more into that motive, allowing it to slowly reveal itself as her "true motive" as she gets more and more frustrated by Elliot, who is teasing her about her attempts to get a refund. Elliot doesn't really care about his job, nor does he necessarily buy into Brooke's bullshit conspiracies, so I figured that he was mostly motivated by boredom and his desire to stretch out this interaction with a crazy lady for as long as possible before returning to the monotony of his lonely desk job. I personally have been guilty of baiting crazy people into extended interactions merely because of how funny it was to me, so I feel like this experience informed my understanding of how Elliot works as a character and how he decides to deal with Brooke.
This left me with one final issue: the ending. However, interestingly enough, the answer to how to end this story in a funny and clever way was provided to me already in my own writing! After dozens of instances of rereading my script, I found myself practically skipping over the initial description of the scene. After all, I had a pretty clear picture in my mind about how the place looked like, and it's not like it was changing much with every reading. This was a mistake on my part. At one point, I recognized that I had been skimming the script rather than rereading it, and so I decided to thoughtfully read through everything I wrote, pausing on each line on the page and giving it individual attention, making sure that every single detail was intentional and served some sort of purpose for the story. It was only through changing my mindset when reading that the answer revealed itself to me: the door.
In the very first paragraph throughout every draft of this script was the detail of automatic doors that lagged slightly before opening. When I first wrote this detail, it was intended to serve the same purpose as the rest of the environmental details like the sickly white tinge of the lights or the droning sounds of the overhead lights. These were all meant to create the mental picture of a boring, lonely little shop that isn't in the best condition. However, the detail of the doors captured my attention- what if I could bring back a seemingly insignificant detail from the very start of the script, and make it crucial to resolving the conflict of the story? Under the new interpretation of the characters, it makes sense that Brooke walks away with the microwave after their argument, since Elliot doesn't really care about the microwave and she still wants to look for a way of making some money off of the microwave. So, I let Brooke have her triumphant "I'll take my business somewhere else!" moment and walk away from Elliot as a victory. However, after one last teasing comment from Elliot, she is reeled back into her frustration with him, distracting her from the fact that the doors are delayed by a few seconds before they open, which leads her to walking straight into the doors, crushing the microwave between them. I felt like this sort of accidental comeuppance fit perfectly into the script in a way that felt funny and realistic, and I had the added bonus of having the doors open a few seconds after she turns around to react to Elliot. The perfect ending!
At this point, I was pretty pleased with how the script turned out. The characters were defined, the conflict was clear, the jokes were funny, and it was all wrapped up nice with a unique ending! The only thing left to do was the aspect of writing stories that I hate most... naming it. I am infamously bad at titling my projects, often being left with their working title as a permanent title as I struggle to come up with something that sums up the story and sounds catchy. I genuinely did consider turning in this script under the title "MICROWAVE" but my paranoia on whether a bad title alone would disqualify my chances at FSU Film ended up steering me in a better direction. At the end of the day, I settled on the title "Murder Machine," since it was technically still referring to the microwave (as Brooke would) and it would be a funny title to subvert audience expectations. Readers expecting a story about someone returning a killer device would instead be treated to the conspiracy theorist rambling about microwaves, which would hopefully be a welcomed surprise and not disappointment.
Overall, writing this script was really fun, and the slow development of the writing process for this script ended up inspiring me to write a blog post as a record of how my brain works when I write, and how I encountered and solved problems within the story. I can't wait to write the next script and accompanying blog post!
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