THE FRACKEN isn’t my first screenplay. It’s my second.
That first screenplay was me experimenting with the form using a sequel (plotted but never written) to an earlier novel (that I never intended to write a sequel for). I was asking two questions with that project:
- Could I write a screenplay?
- Could I write it in The Journal?
The answer to both questions: “Yes, with caveats.”
That was 2015. Only one other person has ever read that screenplay. I doubt there will be others.
In late 2025, as my wife and I were watching some Truly Bad SF/Horror films from the 50s-60s on YouTube, I had the thought: I should write a bad horror movie.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But I’ve come to believe that there is, in fact, a skill (or at least a knack) to writing even a bad movie. You watch those old films, like THE GAMMA PEOPLE (1956), and you think (or at least I thought), I could do that.
I wasn’t 100% wrong. 🙂
I used THE GAMMA PEOPLE as a template and came up with a variation on the concept I thought would fit the modern era. I constructed an outline with an eye to hitting 90-100 minutes, and got started.
While there are, I think, a few cool scenes and ideas, when I went to actually write the screenplay (and later, a short story) based on the outline, I realized it wasn’t that great an outline (or story). I mean, I could write it, and I think the end result would be readable, maybe even somewhat enjoyable, but … it felt off. The story wasn’t working.
So I set that idea aside.
I have complete confidence in my ability to write. At pretty much any length you want: flash fiction, short story, novella, short novel, long novel. (Side note: Not so much the modern doorstop, pet-crushing, fantasy tome, tho. My word counts tend to weigh in below 150K. Merely the thought of writing 200K+ on a single story makes me tired.)
What I don’t have anywhere near complete confidence in is my ability to design a story.
I’ve approached story construction intuitively over the years. I would like to think my intuitions have improved with decades of practice, but the improvements have been, at best, incremental. And I worried they had plateaued.
Going back to my knock-off of THE GAMMA PEOPLE, I could see that my outline wasn’t the most satisfying story from start to finish. Characters weren’t especially sympathetic. Motivations seemed less-than-great. And so on. In my defense, the original movie is pretty crap when it comes to story and characters and motivations, as well. But while I could see there were problems, I didn’t know how to fix those problems. Or how to prevent them.
Or rather: I couldn’t see a way to improve the story I was building without throwing it out and starting over. And then doing that over and over and over until maybe something started to click. Just the thought of that is enough to bring on furrowed brows, tired frowns, and extended procrastination. (Side note: As a career computer programmer/software engineer, I have a huge aversion to throwing away anything I’ve written. I love re-using code. Write once, use forever. It’s hard to give that up when writing fiction.)
So I decided to make an effort to up my story game–but also to continue with the “write a movie” angle. Which brings us to SAVE THE CAT by Blake Snyder.
I’ve owned a copy of SAVE THE CAT for a long time, and I had read it at least once. But what I had never done was follow Snyder’s prescribed method. That’s what I decided to do. I would save that effing cat, start to finish.
I started with a log line, ran it past friends and family for feedback. I decided on a story type, I followed the beats–I even found an old bulletin board and pinned index cards to it. (Side note: I gave up on the index cards. I just don’t think that way. But they looked really cool on my wall.)
Ultimately, I “enhanced” (and/or bastardized) the SAVE THE CAT method with what’s known as the “8 Sequences Method.” So while I didn’t say every syllable exactly, I said the damn words.
I made the outline. Re-arranged things, expanded this, shrank that, and eventually started writing. (Side note: In (beat) software.).
And now I have a screenplay: THE FRACKEN
It will not win an Oscar. It will almost certainly never get made. But if it did get made, I would watch it. THE FRACKEN is, after all, a movie I would love to see: A kaiju attacks Tulsa. That’s the kind of storytelling I want more of.
I will now embark on another screenplay-writing adventure, another exercise/experiment in creating a story. This one will be based on a different structure, somewhat less hand-wavy than SAVE THE CAT.
I don’t know what this next movie is going to be about yet, but I’m looking forward to finding out.
-David