Write What You Don't Know

I'm in the midst of clearing my hard drive of clutter, choosing five or ten minutes of downtime to move out duplicate files and random items I'd saved thinking I'd need them. One of the folders I came across was marked 'PGL reads'.

PGL. Project Greenlight.

Now, everyone out there in the Scribosphere must have their own PGL story. I had heard of PGL in a magazine before looking at the website, and by the time I did, the deadline had passed. I was close to submitting the second time, but the script I was tailoring for it had problems and I buried it. Why write a script specifically for the contest? Well, I must have been one of the few that read the damn guidelines. They were looking for a flick they could budget at a million, and the work I had ready to go would be out of that budget range. I was being realistic.

The third contest, I was ready. Brother's Keeper could be done for a million, easy. Half a mil even. Non-specific location. Most of the story takes place in a hospital, so existing sets for another production could be used (one of the great sadnesses marking my past as a lazy screenwriter was not sending this script to a producer I'd been tipped was outright looking for a script set in a hospital to defray costs from another production the sets were being built for). Some SFX, but enough gore, action and sex to offset budget woes. I submitted to PGL and downloaded the required reads.

I don't know what I would have thought of the winning script, although after having watched the show, I'd love to see the movie, even after having to wait a year for Bob and Harvey to release it. I would have selected it to read had it popped up for me, but I must not have been quick enough on the draw. You only got to choose from the scripts that had the lowest number of readers, and judging by the loglines, I wasn't surprised. There were a lot of loglines that started off with "A young screenwriter...", a bunch that concerned groups of high-school or college friends and a more than a few that claimed to be inspired by a true story.

In other words, people who took the adage "Write what you know" too damn literally.

I tried my best to avoid these when they popped up, but one day I had "A college writing instructor..." and two stinkers in all caps to choose from, so I clicked on the obvious autobiographical logline. Boy, do I hope I'm wrong when I think this is some guy's story. The logline termed the story as a thriller, but the thriller portion is limited to a few pages toward the end where someone suddenly has a gun and someone else pretending all along to be good turns out to be bad. The rest is about a college professor who has been taking advantage of his female students who inexplicably gets assigned to teach a high-school class. His first order of business is to check out the girls in class. Just when he thinks he'll be able to control himself:

"...in walks, quite simply, the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.

He is stunned. He is flummoxed. This is, as the Sicilians say, the thunderbolt. He attempts to maintain his cool against all hope."

Shortly after reading this page, I couldn't keep myself from Googling the title of the script. I got a hit. The writer is---you guessed it---a college writing instructor.

I finished this clunker, reviewed it and moved on, but I still have it saved on my drive as a reminder to myself not to think too literally about writing what I know (and also because I keep thinking I could offer it as evidence when this moron gets sued for harassment).

I find myself tonight thinking again about the project I'm being considered for. The producer gave me some info on the story, the characters, the milieu, and the thing that kept striking me was how much I don't know about the specifics of the protagonist and her life. I won't get into details here, but to get the details of setting and story right, I'll have to do some good amount of research.

But during our conversation, the producer asked me about my background, what has led me to this point in my life, and I spoke to her about where I am in my writing career, the desire to break out of my eggshell and get started. She paused and said that's what this story is about, breaking the shell.

So, if I get it, I guess I'll write what I know after all.