The First Script You Ever Wrote

Last week, The Bitter Script Reader did a post related to a Go Into the Story post that asked, "What was the first script you wrote?"

"Hahahahahahaha!" was my response.

Because we all know full well that our first screenplay was a complete and terrifyingly disastrous attempt at telling a story that had no actual business being a story at all. Am I right,  guys? I mean, they all sucked. All of them. Sucked. They all - why do I get the feeling some of you are not agreeing with me? If you think your first outing was so great, just leave a description in the comments section and I will prove to you just how wrong you are about that!

Sorry. That was insecure, first-screenplay-me talking.

In all seriousness (which is my least favorite "in all"), every writer has at least two to three really shitty scripts in them. They're just in there, clawing their way out and until you let those buggers loose it will poison everything else you try to do. Well, I've let mine out, I can assure you. I'll prove it:

My First Ever Screenplay

After the death of her husband, a middle-aged woman (early thirties, because that was middle-aged when I was 19) embarks on a path of discovery that includes such exciting adventures as Bank Telling and Junior College and of course falling in love.

I remember thinking this was so good. "A movie about a young woman's path to discovering herself and falling in love - oh, how original!" And it had such great moments. Like the one where she's running because she's late for class, intercut with the roll call getting closer and closer to her name until she finally flings the door open just as her name is called and - uh oh - it's the wrong classroom!

Har. Har. Gets me every time.

Or the moment at the bank, when she pulls up to cash her final paycheck (I think she decided to move back in with her mom in Arkansas, or something really defeated like that) and she pulls up to the tube suction thing only to see that the bank teller is actually that guy she's been falling in love with this whole time and he professes his love for her (super eloquently; just great, unpredictable, super original dialogue happening there) and she goes to open her car door only to find that she's boxed in by the tube suction stations (I should really know what those are called). But not to be daunted, she rolls down her window and climbs out of her car to rush into her true love's arms.

SHE CLIMBS OUT THE CAR WINDOW, PEOPLE!

That's love.

What is this thing?

I remember there was a really pushy best friend and a dog, but other than that absolutely no supporting cast or discernible plot. And it was really fun to write. Because everything was so great; that first time, you have no idea how wrong it all is. It's just so pure and innocent and terrible and incredibly embarrassing.

But you keep doing it and after a while (think years) you may actually have something that you would willingly show another human being. And then you'll lie and tell that human being that this is your first screenplay and they'll go much easier on you. After that, you'll start to really get better until one day (think ten years) you'll look up from the page and go "I wrote that? But, but it's...not...nauseating." And that's when you know it's happening.