ONE PAGE: 2007




• INT. ACCESS CORRIDOR
  
• Parker watches, disapproving, as Goss flips up the black and yellow-striped control panel cover, revealing a big red button and a big green button.
  
• PARKER
  
• Rodeo rules?
  
• (CONTINUED)

We scribospherists blog an awful lot about writing, but rarely do we show that writing. Hence, the Red Right Hand One Page Challenge. Consider the 2007 gauntlet to have hit the hardwood. It is the opportunity to answer the peculiar question of "What does your voice look like?"

In previous versions of the challenge, it would go that I'd ask for a random page out of something you've written recently. My argument was that one page would not compromise your plot or concept or whatever and that one page pulled out at random wasn't even likely to make sense. At most it would be intriguing, prompting people to ask for more (that's a good thing). Nobody says you have to give it.

Some were not convinced. Others were told that they'd be crazy to participate. The only way I can see that would be true would be if if their writing sucked so hard that one page would make people vomit.

Some people don't get the point of it. Well, it's a bit of a community-building exercise in one sense. It's a bit of showing off in another. It's not there to be openly critiqued (unless you post that you want that). It's just a "here I am and this is what I write" moment.

This year, something different. Write one page. Just for this. Write a one page story, write the first page, last page or forty-second page of whatever, write a random page from a story that's floated in your head forever. Just write a page of something. It doesn't have to stand on it's own. It just has to be one thing. Your voice.

And being that it's your voice we all want to see, no existing series specs. Not this time.

One page is not an excessive outlay of effort, but if you like you can still pull a page you've previously written. There is NO RISK here (unless, as I say, you suck). I'd be really impressed to see a couple of the pro TV writers play this game. Especially ones that we've only seen work on other people's shows. Some of the coolest stuff has been when Javier Grillo-Marxuach and John August posted unsold pilot scripts. This is just a page.

There are three ways to post a page, upload a screenshot from your word processor, use John August's nifty CSS script format emulator template or just type it into your blog however you like.

When you have posted, come back here and put it in the comments, thus forming a central directory so we can all go look at each other's pages and marvel at how fucking awesome we all are.

So here's mine. Not from a script. Just a loose idea I had, so I wrote it for this post.




• CONTINUED:
  
  
• GOSS
  
• Means a hundred bucks a second after the first eight seconds. He hits the panic button before eight, he owes me eight hundred.
  
• PARKER
  
• Yeah. I know what rodeo rules means, I just can't believe you're actually doing it. What exactly do you win if he dies?
  
• Goss grins as presses the big red button.
  
  
• INT. THE LOCK
  
• The bulkhead slides upward, making a MACHINERY NOISE as it goes, and all the air WHOOSHES out of the room. Maddox expels his breath as it goes. Handcuffs on one handle and his grip on another are the only thing keeping him anchored. There's a big red and a big green button just under his cuffed hand.
  
  
• INT. ACCESS CORRIDOR
  
• Goss starts his stopwatch. Looks to Parker. She’s disgusted. Goss turns to look through a small porthole-like window.
  
• GOSS
  
• I hear the record is thirteen seconds.
  
• PARKER
  
• You know, that's his favorite view of the Mare.
  
• Goss looks back to Parker with slight alarm and back to the window again. It looks in on...
  
  
• INT. THE LOCK
  
• Maddox focuses his attention down on the floor. Frost forming on his face. The door stops. The machine noise stops. It’s fully open. No air. Maddox looks up, smiles. Smirks, even.
  
  
• MADDOX’S POV - OUTSIDE THE LOCK
  
• Open door. Outside, the desolate landscape of Mare Procellarum. The Ocean of Storms. On the moon. Earth hanging in the black sky.
  
• MADDOX (V.O.)
  
• If there were air in here, you’d hear me laughing my ass off.
  
  

C'mon. Hit the red button.