Writing A Script About Spiders... (Not Really Either)
The prompt goes as follows: A two-page non-dialogue scene about a person trying to kill a spider in his/her home.
Immediately, my instinct with this piece is to lean comedic. After all, the first thing that comes to mind when I read the prompt is the mental image of one of the Three Stooges trying to kill a spider in a kitchen or something, resulting in much physical comedy and gags where the person gets hurt and the spider gets out without a scratch. And as fun as writing a Three Stooges sketch sounds, I have to assume that if it was my first thought, it was also everyone else's first thought. So I'm ditching that comedic tone for something that will set me apart from other applicants.
The other thing I kept in mind was advice from people at the film school. Apparently, this prompt is one that everyone deals with, whether they are BFA or MFA, in Production or Writing. So the admissions committee must be pretty inundated with similar sounding scripts. Whenever I would mention this writing prompt to my friends in the BFA and MFA program, the number one piece of advice I received was: don't burn down the house. Luckily for me, I wasn't really planning for the house to go up in flames as a big dramatic ending, but it was good to keep in mind that there are tropes I should avoid when writing this script.
I ended up deciding to adopt a story tone that would emphasize tension, but not necessarily through drama or action. There's no way to mention this without sounding pretentious, but it made me think about how Alfred Hitchcock talked about utilizing tension in his stories. Essentially, the idea of providing the audience with the existence of a ticking time bomb that exists in the background of a story while the main action is centered around something inconsequential, like a conversation about baseball. I didn't want to necessarily lean too into any specific genre like comedy or horror, but instead use this as an exercise in tension and stress. Sure, the killing of the spider occurs in the foreground, but there must be something happening simultaneously that is vastly more important that my protagonist isn't aware of.
This led me into my next question: who am I writing about? I've already used young adults in the Murder Machine script, and I explored the complex relationship between father and son in the Sirens script. So what kind of person do I want to write for? Something that came to mind was how out of the two pieces I wrote so far for the application, neither one was from a female perspective. Sure, I had Brooke in the first script I wrote, but that was more of an antagonistic role (and not really a positive representation of women). So I knew I would have a female protagonist, and maybe it's just because I spent so much time working on the Sirens story, but I was drawn to the idea of writing a story revolving around an older woman!
You'd think I'd immediately now shift gears to thinking about how she's going to try to kill the spider, but my mind was elsewhere. The ghost of Hitchcock kept mumbling about time bombs in my ear as I was thinking, so I decided to settle on what the source of tension would be before locking in on the spider situation. What sort of tension could I build with an old lady? Probably some sort of health issue? Then I suddenly remembered the whole point of this prompt: it's supposed to be non-dialogue. How the hell do I communicate this tension nonverbally??
I think I was having lunch with Wade at the Rincon Latino when the answer finally hit me. Wade and I go to this local Hispanic restaurant every weekend to have a reminder for the food our parents would make for us since we both come from a Hispanic background. He always gets a Pollo Arepa and I always order three Empanadas Argentinas... but that's not the point. I was talking to him about my idea for this prompt and how I was still trying to figure out the extra oomph factor when I found myself getting distracted and losing my train of thought from all the beeping of the machinery in the kitchen of the restaurant. That's when I realized, I need some sort of beeping machinery that punctuates the script, constantly reminding the audience of the background buildup of tension.
You'd think that I would set the story in a kitchen since that's what inspired me, but I actually decided to opt for a bathroom. Like I mentioned earlier, an inferno burning down the house is a big no-no for this prompt, so I steered clear of it and ended up in the bathroom. Why? Because the beeping device is going to be.... a heart rate monitor!
It seems obvious in retrospect, but the heart rate monitor solves almost all of my problems. It provides tension concerning the old lady's (whom I decided to name Gertrude) health issues and it allows for a nonverbal indicator of rising stakes. I figured that if Gertrude has a high heart rate issue, it's likely linked to her anxiety. So, to remedy a naturally high heart rate, she draws herself a nice, relaxing bath complete with candles, bubble soap, rose petals... the whole nine yards! As she settles into the warm bath, the beeping slows, mirroring her eased mood... Until suddenly, she notices a big, fat spider floating inches from her face on one of the candles. Immediately, she splashes around, sending water everywhere, extinguishing candles, but most importantly sending her heart rate monitor into a beeping frenzy. As she scrambles around on the floor, soaking wet, nervous, and in the nude, the beeping persists as she hunts down the spider. Just as she corners the spider, preparing to smite it with her full 87 year-old vengeance, the door slams open to her bathroom, which was a result of her monitor reaching such high levels that it called her caretakers to the room immediately, who are now faced with an angry naked grandma on the floor.
I wasn't trying to lean comedically, but the ending really does naturally lead to a funny resolution. It made me think of the one Family Feud clip where a contestant blurts out "NAKED GRAMMA!" as an answer, which I feel is a good omen. But then I had a darker thought... what if her spiking heart rate led to Gertrude having a heart attack in her attempt to kill the spider? My immediate reaction was negative to this idea, since I've grown to quite like Gertrude in my mind, but it was an interesting enough change in the story that I decided I would write two scripts: both based on the same idea, but having drastically different endings. That way I would be able to explore both tonally, and get feedback from friends and family on which ending they prefer to be the "canon" ending.
There was just one issue: I got busy! Like, really busy. Having to juggle classes, internships, Kudzu, and a new job at Starbucks meant that I suddenly had a lot less free time to work on this script, and any desire to be productive would be extinguished by the time I got home from my busy days. This actually resulted in me taking a two-month break from working on this script, which added to my anxiety about meeting my deadline (before Thanksgiving Break) but also allowed for me to take some time and space away from the story, which gave me a fresh perspective when I was finally able to return to my writing work.
The first thing I decided when revisiting the script was to completely cut the possibility of killing Gertrude. I had written a very rough draft of this version of the story, but not only did I not like the idea anymore, but everyone else I had pitched the idea of killing a grandma hated it. It felt too rushed to include a death in only two pages, and antagonizing this poor grandmother felt so evil that I no longer entertained the possibility. The other thing I had to change was the ending— that two-page limit suddenly felt a lot more restrictive than I had realized. The comedic "naked grandma" ending no longer felt fitting for a story that played with stress and tension like this one, nor did I have the space to write in more stuff happening after the killing of the spider. So I ditched that idea. Instead, I have Gertrude slowly calm down back to a normal resting heart rate after killing the spider, which may not be as flashy and interesting as my other ideas, but it feels like a more apt resolution to this script. After all, this is meant to be considered the opening to a larger narrative, and health issues aren't a conflict that can be meaningfully resolved in two pages.
When Wade gave the first draft a read, he voiced a worry about how the conflict happens a little too late into the story, since the spider only makes its appearance at the start of the second page (halfway through). However, in a very rare circumstance, I had to disagree with Wade's reading of the story. Yes, the conflict with the spider is introduced pretty late into the script, but I don't consider that the main conflict. I had known from the start of working on this script that the main conflict was Gertrude's health issues, which is represented by the beeping heart rate monitor. On a first read, people might assume that the spider is the conflict of the story, but that's really only because more action happens surrounding this conflict visually. However, the real conflict (which is what drives the story forward) is Gertrude's anxiety/heart rate, which is represented with an auditory device (the beeping monitor). I wanted to experiment with more nontraditional ways of telling a story for this piece, and I thought it was a good fit for my nondialogue submission!
In a way, it feels a little bittersweet to know this is the last script I will be writing for my MFA application. Hopefully this leads to me being able to write plenty of MFA scripts for FSUFilm in the future, but even if that opportunity doesn't pan out, I am very proud of the work I have accomplished in pursuit of that goal. It's very easy to get caught up in the business of life and my final year in my undergraduate career, but because of this application, I was forced to make time for writing, I was forced to more closely analyze the flaws and technique I used in my writing. I really, really hope that I get accepted into the MFA Writing program, but I can also recognize how much more I've grown and developed as a writer through this process, through repeated, consistent effort that challenged me every step of the way. All that remains is the writing of my personal statement, and then I will be closing the door on this chapter of my life. I can only hope that the closing of one door opens another in the future.
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