I mentioned in my last blog that I was, in my current incarnation as exhausted armchair adrenalin junkie, doing another writing competition. One with another tight(-ish) deadline. And a brief. For someone who hates writing to brief, I seem to only pick competitions where I have to write to a sodding brief. I British. I likez whinging. You can read progeny, known as ‘The Center’, here. I had a whole American English vs ‘real’ English panic. Like the Civil War, the Yanks won. I would like to apologise to my language. Like the baby balloon who untied his own knot, I let myself down.

So while all sane people were enjoying the first burst of sun a couple of weeks ago in the UK, I was panicking because I’d managed to totally duff up the timeline for the awesome 13th Annual NYC Midnight Screenwriting Challenge (slash pyramid scheme – be warned, it’s a pay-to-play). It turns out if the rules say 12 pages in 7 days, it’s different from 12 pages in 12 days. Maths. Who knew?

So the brief was indeed brief:

 Romance

  Jealousy

  A call center employee

If you want to see the rest of this year’s assignments look no further than here. I got the one that’s basically a list of my cinematic nemeses. Romance. Yuck. Jealousy. Desperately trying to evict Glenn Close and a bunny from my mind palace. Call centre employee. Tele-fucking-phones?! No one has managed to make telephone dramatic. Ever. Not even ‘Phone Booth’.

Anyway, the rules allow some flex. You have to use all aspects of the brief explicitly, but not necessarily as the central motif. I largely ignored all the brief and wrote a dystopian sci-fi. In my defence, it’s set in a call centre and has two call centre workers. Everything else is probably a bit ‘meh’. And there’s a kiss. Two kisses in fact. That’s romantic, right?

You can read ‘The Center’ here.

It’s probably better than the alternative. A short film about a sex call centre worker who gets murdered by her husband, because he believes she is having an affair, when in fact, she was just earning some bucks as a sex call centre worker to pay for their sexy-time anniversary cruise. Yeah. Fortunately, that plot drowned in it’s own effluence.

If you have nothing better to do with your time, feel free to comment. I like feeding trolls. Just sayin.