Danny Stack has revised his list of the most clichéd ways in which a script starts following the submission of 2000+ entries to the Red Planet screenplay competition (which, I hasten to add, I didn’t enter so this post is neither gloating or glum). It makes for interesting reading as well as being a little discouraging because I’m guilty of using rather a lot of them. In fact, I’ve realised that the first 10 pages of Revelation is made up entirely of some of these clichés.

My excuse, however, is that the script is inspired by the work of a particular author and that some of these scenes are based on stories that he wrote. What care I about being original?

When I wrote the first first draft, I had the basis of an idea but I constrained myself in far too many ways and nothing really tied together. I hated it. Well, I hated how it turned out. I was also unsure of how it all panned out because, well, it’s potentially not very marketable. Earlier this year, I started to find out more about an author who I’d heard of before and knew by reputation but had read none of his stories. I corrected that oversight and suddenly realised that there were elements of his stories that I had used in mine and that maybe I needed to come at the story from a different angle. So, without an ounce of shame or guilt, I plundered his works mercilessly.

My wife pointed out that this was probably plagiarism. It isn’t because, well, it just isn’t. Firstly, there’s no copyright on any of the author’s works. Secondly, the story is all my own. Thirdly, I’ve always admitted where the ideas came from and will no doubt add an “inspired by” credit to the film when it gets made. (Sheer optimism 4 teh win!)

It did occur to me that I could write a straightforward adaptation of one or more of his stories but I haven’t because I don’t want to lose the original concept that I started out with that hasn’t changed all that much since I started out. An adaptation also brings with it a lot of responsibility in terms of meeting peoples expectations. Even wonderful films like Blade Runner have been criticised by fans as being nothing like the original source material (even though, in my mind, the film is far superior to Dick’s book which was so very badly written, meandering and dull - a lot like this blog which is something else that Blade Runner is better than.)

All that being said, realising that I have included these clichés has made me question whether to carry on or scrap it and start again. The answer is to carry on: this is only a first draft and subsequent revisions will reveal whether these elements can be kept, amended or excised entirely. My hope is that while the device may not be original, my implementation of it will be different from those others which do the same and different enough to be interesting. An example? I open with a dream sequence: but rather than being a scene that seems like reality but turns out to be a dream (and much waking up screaming etc), I intend it to be seen as a dream from the outset and there aint gonna be no screaming.