first screenplay

At a Houston bookstore Carma studied the spines of how-to books filling more than one shelf, searching for the perfect one that would guide her on how to write a movie script. There is so much more to it than mimicking the standard format. Too many experts in the field had a book for sale on that topic. How to choose? 

Carma saw a title that captured the essence of what she knew she needed. 

SCREENWRITING

THE ART, CRAFT AND BUSINESS OF FILM AND TELEVISION WRITING

She read the back cover, some of the front pages, read about the author... impressive, a screenwriting professor at UCLA Film School. 

His style of communicating suited her. It was crisp, concise, entertaining, down-to-earth, and yet at its core it was all about the business of it.  The realities of being a writer whether you wanted to be or not. He was a kindred spirit. 

It was as if she had been asleep her whole life. Yes, she was aware she had been writing since the age of twelve. Yes, she submitted queries to agents and publishers, and short stories to magazines, and she had finished and copyrighted two science fiction novels--still, she didn't know she was writer until she read his words about what it is really like to be a writer. She thought it was something people become when their work is published or they get paid to write. 

She recalled her love affair with the library in elementary school and the books consumed as a young reader. "Carma is the smart one," her family would say to others, and she had no idea why. She was a good student, but she was not what you would call academic or obsessive about studying and learning. She was more interested in playing outdoors. She was completely unaware of how much of her life had been spent daydreaming. They did not say she was the smart one because she had learned to speak and read early. She had always been strangely perceptive. She was born curiouser and curiouser. She was innately abstract, intuitive, and hardwired to fall in love with words and playing with words. She was a natural born scribe, Professor Walter would say. She was born that way. 

At age sixteen, adults would often say to her, "You think too much." She soon learned this was shorthand for, "Shut up, you're making my head explode." She had ideas, questions, and loved to talk about all sorts of things that were tirelessly interesting to her--not so much to most people. She would also hear, "You should write a book." More shorthand for "Shut up and let me watch television." She soon shut up, kept most thoughts to herself and was quietly amused much of the time, and sometimes sad. She had an exceptional capacity for empathy. She could sympathize with almost anyone. She could at least understand people, no matter how great the harm they did to others. She did not justify or rationalize it, only grasped how one could become that way.

She bought Professor Walter's book, read it thoroughly in a matter of days (working full-time as a secretary at a software company that performed services for NASA and other notable clients), and promptly began typing a script based on her first novel, The Ills of Saardu. It was April 1991. She finished the script in two weeks. Easy enough, when the story is already written--that took a year, not counting the unwitting research that had spilled into it from non fiction books she had in the years preceding the first draft. 

She wrote a letter to the professor and mailed it to him at UCLA, telling him how much as she honestly enjoyed reading his book and how it had helped her achieve her goal of writing a movie script based on her science fiction novel. Would he be willing to take a look at it?

The kind professor did her the courtesy of a reply and much to her delight he agreed to look at it--if, and only if, she promised to be patient. He explained that he had obligations first to his students and it would probably take about six months for him to get around to it. She wrote, thanking him profusely and promised to be patient. She honored her word, never bugging him, and in October that year, another letter from the professor arrived.

She will never forget these words...

Dear Carma,

Congratulations! You have succeeded in writing a story that is original, refreshing, inventive and highly marketable!

There was more. He had specific notes about some tidying up that should be done where there were lengthy monologues and other improvements he recommended. All in all, she had done a terrific job. 

The next thing to do was the rewrite.