This blog post will help you respond to the following Spellbinder Instagram post:
Write a script about a family summer holiday/road trip. You can go down the comedy route and have lots of absurdly annoying things happening. You could also have a thriller/horror twist at some point in your script, after of course tricking your reader’s that everything’s peachy.
Family holidays or road trips are often considered a classic element of the summer. Plenty of films and TV shows have created stories based around them and with this prompt you have the chance to add your own. Here are a few tips which might help you to get started with this prompt.
Consider all the various things that might be involved in a road trip. If you are writing a comedy script, consider all the different things that could go wrong or allow potential for amusement. If you’re going down the horror/thriller twist, consider which of these different elements you could use to introduce your twist. Here are some of my ideas:
- The vehicle that your characters are travelling in.
- The journey they are taking – where are they going to/from?
- Hotels/motels/campsites.
- Packing – what will your characters include in their suitcase? What might they forget?
- Reading the road map/getting lost.
- Staying entertained on a long journey!
- What is the reason for the holiday?
This is by no means an exhaustive list and I am sure that you can think of other parts of a family road trip or holiday to add to my own ideas. Think about all the different directions in which your script could take these ideas – there is plenty of potential for comedy, thrills and horror!
Also think about character – is your script based around a family? If so, what is the family dynamic? Do the family get on well? Do they argue a lot? Is there sibling rivalry? Think about how you could use the relationships between characters to introduce your chosen theme. Even if your script is not based around a family, the same principle still applies. Think about how your characters link to the comedic, thriller or horror themes that you want to introduce into your script.
Hopefully these tips have provided a useful platform for you to create your Summer Prompt-inspired script. As always, let us know how you get on!
Ned Vessey, Blog Co-Ordinator
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.