You’re a writer, right?
At least you’re in some way intrigued by the movie industry or else you wouldn’t be here.
So, you’ve got imagination.
Now, dig if you will this picture…
EXT. TUMBLEDOWN HOUSE – DAY
Two police cars scream into view, shattering the rural silence.
FRONT STEPS / FRONT DOOR
A small, elderly lady on the wrong side of 90, opens the door. She is sweetness and light personified complete with neatly pressed baby blue shirt and khaki skirt. Her cotton-white hair is swept back.
This is JEAN STEVENS -- she doesn’t seem surprised by her visitors. In fact, she’s been expecting them.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY
JEAN offers her guests a slice of pie. They decline.
JEAN
You’re afraid I’ll poison you.
Jean puts the pie down beside a framed black and white photo of her in her early 20s. She smiles wide beside a man in an Army uniform.
JEAN
(almost to herself)
We were married for 60 years.
EXT. GARAGE – DAY
A slowly decomposing human being -- dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and blue knitted tie -- lies on a couch.
JEAN
It’s been 10 years. But I still talk to Jimmy. See him, look at him. Even touch him.
JEAN pushes some dust off another framed snapshot -- a colour image of a woman who looks just like her -- this is Jean’s twin sister, JUNE.
INT. SPARE ROOM – DAY
A decomposing female body sits on a chair wearing a pair of glasses.
JEAN
When I put the glasses on, it makes all the difference in the world. (beat) I make sure she wears her best housecoat.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY
JEAN
Now, some people say, ‘Why do you want to look at a dead person? Oh my gracious! Well, I feel differently about death.
A SERIES OF SHOTS:
– Jean smooths out June’s hair.
– Jean spraying June with Chanel No. 5
– Jean wiping her sister’s limbs with a dry cloth
JEAN (V.O.)
Death is hard to take. But this way, the people I love most in the world don’t need to spend an eternity in a casket -- that’s suffocation. When you put them in the ground it’s goodbye, goodbye. This way... I can touch my sister’s face, look at her and talk to her. I know what people must think of me. But I worry that after death, there’s... nothing.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY
Jean pushes back a delicate white lace curtain slowly turning yellow.
JEAN
I’m not alone out here... not really, long as I can visit Jimmy and June.
FADE OUT
Dear fellow story lovers…
If you think you’ve just read a manufactured tale, think again.
This story is true. Nothing has been changed – not names, plot, dialogue, not even the fashion. Jean Stevens is a real, rather ghoulish grandmother-type person, but she is alive in the world today.
And, since 1999, this unassuming nonagenarian kept the embalmed bodies of her husband and sister in her house.
This was one of those true stories I stumbled on in my daily cyber-pilgrimage to the Sydney Morning Herald website. And it was one of those moments when I said to myself,
You can’t write this stuff.
Everything in this story was movie-tastic. Even the setting was positively David Lynchian – Endless Mountains, Pennysylvania.
You can’t write this stuff.
And if the definition of ‘write’ in this case is dream up fanciful notions, scenarios and mysterious set-ups that involve a sweet little old lady who digs up her family’s corpses for a good ol’ chin wag well, wow – you’ve struck scribe gold.
But the truth is, you cannot possibly write this stuff – if you’ve done your job, this sort of narrative magic should ‘write itself’.
In other words you can’t always contrive fabulously quirky characters and hope they’ll enact nuts things for you in the course of your story without the results looking staged. Why?
Well, if your characters are as flimsy as the paper you write on, you won’t be able to conjure up some true storytelling magic – the kind that makes writers say, you can’t write that stuff.
The story only starts with you.
When you create a solid story populated with memorable, mutli-faceted characters, the quirks, the realities of these human beings seem to write themselves.
You just the start the ball rolling – sorry I can’t be more romantic about the writer’s mysterious craft here. But sometimes there ain’t no mystery, just precision thinking and a little clever contrivance.
So, the moral of the story?
Research your characters. Know them inside out, back to front, enjoy their backstories, relish in their evil, angelic natures. Fall in love with them, ask them questions. Welcome them into your family.
Do all of this and there’s every chance you’ll write a Jean Stevens-esque story that’ll make corpses staying for tea read like an impotent fairytale.
-Phyllis Foundis
Writer, producer, presenter Phyllis Foundis has written and bellydanced her way to the tender age of 39-ish. She’s been writing stories, ads, one-woman shows and to-do lists forever. Not so much a budding screenwriter than a scribe that’s bloomin’ ready to see her stories up on the silver screen. Phyllis loves her boys and big, feelgood movies – that appeal to people not funding bodies.
Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.
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