First off, I am very sorry for the lateness of this blog entry.
And now that is out of the way, I’d like to get something else off of my chest. It has become recently clear to me that while delving into my childlike state in order to write an enjoyable flick for my own personal satisfaction I have found myself loosing sense of the writing skills we had originally learned.
Let’s use an example, such as my latest development of a mix between a Western and a Paranormal Horror (I accept that some of you may want to disown me). Now this story revolves around a town called Hell’s Deep (Yes it’s a rip off but give it a chance). It is about a frequency of paranormal goings on in the town and the oblivious towns peoples helplessness to save themselves.
We have Gordon Yates the town sheriff who has been investigating the strange goings on in the farms en circling the isolated town. The farmers have either been going missing, have been found dead due to mysterious circumstances or have become enraged and have committed murder themselves.
When we have established that there is more to this than just a crazed murderer, Yates gathers a posse to protect the town, but one night all hell breaks loose and the thing that has been haunting the countryside suddenly releases its full outrage on the town.
I like this story purely because I have no idea of any previous stories that have attempted the same kind of genre. I would not only like to call it a western because it is set in the wild west, I would also like to mix in the way a western would be shot with the incidents of a horror film. No gore whatsoever though!
For example I would like to mix the suspense of a stand off with that of a gunmen waiting in the middle of the high street, hand on gun, but knowing what is about to come around the corner to face him. Is it another man? Is it a demon from hell? Who knows?
So this is all fine and dandy is you don’t know a thing about writing and your in school or something like that but not for me.
I suddenly became quickly aware that I had not followed any structure whatsoever and had just portrayed some slack jawed movie where Jean Claude Van Dam plays a gunman in the Wild West?
We need a character, that I have, our hero Gordon Yates. But he needs a past. A motive, something he needs but he doesn’t know it yet. Now after my realization I started to think about these things, and one thing I couldn’t get off my mind was that he was a soldier in the civil war, fighting for the North. While at war, his family were caught up in a different battle and were killed by the Confederates. Ever since then Yates has found a sudden urge to keep what he thinks is rightfully is by force. Now although a very violent man, he also a very intelligent man and knows not to do any wrong by his own kind. So he became a sheriff of some desolate town where there are more just like him, sufferers of war but not many soldiers. It will occur to Yates nearer the end of the film that he has the urge to keep his land, using any means necessary, even if it isn’t rightfully his.
Now the way he realizes this is; the spirits that are attacking the town are actually ghosts of the dead natives that owned the land long ago and now refuse to have anyone move in over their cold dead bodies. And so during the final battle in the centre of the town against the possessed townspeople, Yates lets himself go and lets his spirit be taken by the natives in order to pay them for the land and so that the other residents of the town who have survived may live.
And so the true colours of this story are starting to prevail, but now it seems a bit ridiculous, wouldn’t you say?
Just a tad.
