Coming Up / Going Down

I've been working on an idea for Coming Up since mid-May, when I first heard about this year's competition.

For quite a while now, I've had a notion to write a modern version of one of my favourite dark fairy tales, and decided that the Coming Up competition was the place to pursue this. I came up with another story to layer on top of this, which made use of the Coming Up requirements for minimum cast, locations and shooting time, and which I was confident could be told within 30 pages.

It was all going great guns, even more so when the deadline for Coming Up was extended to 28 July. Then at the weekend, as I was trying to finish and polish my two page outline, it hit me.

It's not a 30 page piece - it's a feature.

I know, a lot of people will instinctively disagree with that. They may well be right, and it's not something I normally feel about projects. I do believe that a skilled writer can made a good feature into a short, a book into a feature, a short into a concept that can spiral into a series. Whatever the medium, I think the core of a story can often be told.*

That said, this just felt wrong. I was already coming in to the story as late as possible (two weeks into the 'action'). I had so much backstory that it was going to be hard to avoid blatant exposition. Worse than that, though, I just felt like I was rushing the story, skipping out bits, and not drawing out the horror or the joy that I wanted to display.

In this instance, though, I just wasn't telling the whole story that I wanted to. When I'm writing a piece for myself, for my portfolio, I need to follow my gut and be selfish.

So instead of making this a 30 minute, it's turned into a feature. On the minus side, this means I have not entered Coming Up this year, despite having an idea.

On the plus side, I have a new proposal ready for a steampunk, futuristic, fairy-tale which requires minimal locations and a small cast.

Steampunk is so hot right now, isn't it? Isn't it?


*I don't think it can always be done. That's experience of reading scripts which have tried to change the format talking, so it may well come down to the writing.