STORYTELLING UNIT: SOURCE MATERIAL

My initial idea was a 'thriller' about a Father and Daughter finding a lost girl at the side of the road, driving her home and then discovering she's vanished and later we learn she's a ghost. This needed to be changed as it was too close to a Horror script so I changed it to a Father and Daughter driving home, they aren't at good terms after the Mother was taken due to a medical illness and they break down and end up having to sort out their differences since they're stuck in the middle of nowhere.

After my lectures with Steve I looked for how I could develop this story more and how I could find inspiration for the Father and Daughter. Referring to plots and stories Steve told us "Write about things that have happened to you" and from that I looked to the people who for years I've known to argue until they finally got put in a room together and sorted things... My Dad and Sister.

My sister, Kirsty, and my step-father, Dave, are closer than any Father and Daughter I've ever met. However, this wasn't the case for sometime.  When my sister was 16 she had a boyfriend that my dad didn't approve of because he didn't trust him. This caused a lot of issues in our family and at one point broke the family apart. They didn't speak and wouldn't sort anything out. Finally, my Mother and I put them together in a room and locked the door. Slightly extreme but they were in a room which they couldn't get out of and this finally got them to sort out their differences.
This scenario has been used in Film and TV for years. Put to characters together in a room they can't get out of and they will have to sort out their differences and work together to solve the issue. But instead of a room I chose to have them in the middle of nowhere and have no phone signal, same concept but different location and works well for the story. Looking deeper into my Father and Sisters relationship though, Dave told my sister that the reason he was so protective of her is because we didn't have our real dad and he wanted to protect her because she'd already lost so much. From this I saw a moment I could use! Steve told me "If you can't think of any moments, steal someones else's and make them your own" and this is a perfect one, discovering that Dave wasn't just being a grumpy and horrible old man (which was the thought for some time) but he was actually doing it out of love and compassion and looked and Kirsty as his actual Daughter. This is what brought them closer together and fixed their relationship.

Although this wasn't the story I wanted to tell originally, it is defiantly something that fits with my story perfectly and gives me a perfect ending for the script as well.