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Show 242 Kyle Davis "The first draft of anything is shit." -Ernest Hemingway In 2011 I finished my first screenplay. It's the story of a gay Nazi, who, after being caught in a homosexual act, sneaks into a concentration camp to save his own life. I had a premise, charac-ters, and a meticulously researched environment (the camp, Vanguards), so I basically closed my eyes and floored it. 106 pages later, I reflected on what I had written. Hemingway was right. Yeah, I had scenes, a story, and character interaction, but it didn't fully come together. My advisor, Paul Larsen, pretty much echoed my fears. Cohesiveness, meaning, and plot/character development can't be done on the fly. One must vomit it all on the canvas before sorting out the bile. So that's what I did. I went through the story from my protagonist's perspective, kept reminding myself that this is his story. The second act is always the hardest, and when I didn't know how to show my character developing, and through him, the plot, I let periphery characters (includ-ing the camp itself ) take center stage. Paul recommended I read "On Death and Dying" by Dr. Kübler-Ross. Not because he'd given up hope, but rather to understand how a character changes. Kübler-Ross, through hundreds of interviews with terminally ill patients, noted "Five Stages of Dy-ing," through which humans cope with death: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and finally, Acceptance. While my protagonist, Julian, wasn't coping with a terminal illness, putting him through these stages of comprehending his situation not only gave him depth as a character, it also nicely progressed the central theme of the story: Atonement is sacrifice. While my research was focused on the craft of creative writing, I gained an understanding on both Nazi history and how human acceptance mimics, and complements, character development. VANGUARDS REWRITE Kyle Davis (Paul Larsen) Department of Film University of Utah honors college spring 2012 Paul Larsen |