Pages

Monday, April 4, 2011

[Witty Title Here]

FADE IN:

INT. OLIVIA'S HOUSE - NIGHT
OLIVIA, mid-teens, sits cross-legged on a leather sofa, a dog curled up beside her. On the floor lies a small stack of notebooks and screenwriting manuals. This is obviously a girl in procrastination.

She hunches over to stare at the laptop resting on her thighs. The blank white screen reflects on her glasses.

ON THE MONITOR

The cursor blinks ominously in the empty Blogger "compose" tab, pausing briefly as the draft is autosaved. It resumes blinking, slowly, tauntingly.

BACK TO OLIVIA

Olivia sighs, scratches her nose, blows a wisp of hair from her eyes, drums her fingers absently against the computer. Suddenly, she perks up. Her fingers begin THUNDERING ON THE KEYBOARD.

ON THE MONITOR

The beginnings of several different sentences appear on the screen but are mercilessly hacked away by the POUNDING BACKSPACE KEY each time. THE TYPING STOPS.

BACK TO OLIVIA

Olivia heaves a sigh and leans back, moaning.

Then a sly smile creeps across her face. She leans forward and TYPES SLOWLY, carefully.

ON THE MONITOR

First the words:

"INT. OLIVIA'S HOUSE - NIGHT"


And then, one by one, the rest of the words from this script begin appearing in the text box.

BACK TO OLIVIA

Olivia grins and nods in satisfaction. What she is writing pleases her.

Then she HITS THE TAB KEY. A look of horror crosses her face.

ON THE MONITOR

Olivia's post, now lengthy enough to require a scrolling bar thing on the right of the text box, is scrolled up to the very top. She scrolls back down to the bottom.

BACK TO OLIVIA

Again, she HITS THE TAB KEY.

ON THE MONITOR

Again, the scrolling bar thing has reached its climax.

Olivia repeats the process several times, PRESSING A VARIETY OF OTHER KEYS along with tab, to no avail. Every time, rather than tabbing over, the tab key brings her to the top of her post. She panics.

OLIVIA
What do I do?! I can't format the dialogue properly! This is a crime against screenwriting! Blogger is prejudiced! How dare they?

Looking at what she's just typed, Olivia is horrified and disgusted at the formatting. She TYPES MADLY for several minutes, trying to solve the problem, but her frustration only increases.

EXT. OLIVIA'S HOUSE - NIGHT
A SMALL HOUSE, illumined by a dim security light. A CHORUS OF NIGHTTIME INSECTS CHIRPS, and a pair of ROCKING CHAIRS on the front porch blow in the wind, CREAKING softly.

Suddenly, a CRASH from inside shatters the stillness.

INT. OLIVIA'S HOUSE - NIGHT
COMPUTER PARTS are strewn across the living room. The dog cowers in the corner. Olivia disappears. After a moment, she reenters the room, book in hand. She ignores the stack of notebooks and screenwriting manuals.

Curling up in a comfy chair, she reads.

FADE OUT.

(Yeah, it's really late and I have nothing to post. In the morning I'll see this post and be horrified that I published it for the whole word to see.

And does anyone happen to know if there are HTML tags or something to get it to tab over?)

2 comments:

  1. That was so funny!!! I laughed out loud!!

    On The Phantom of the Opera: I not sure about whether or not it is musical or, I suppose it is both, most of the singing is classical, but it is mordern,I think it has a class of its own.

    All other musicals I have seen have been jazzy singing. I'm not really an expert though.

    Beth
    P.S I'm glad you like Opera

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm glad someone found my late night insanity amusing. =P

    I agree, The Phantom of the Opera is in a class of its own. :D

    ReplyDelete

A blog without comments is a lonely place.