BSA 104 (Scriptwriting) Week 9 : Step Outline

STEP OUTLINE:

- Working document
- Fleshed out story beats
- Fluent Paragraphs

We open in the year 1990. We see three boys on bikes, they are all around the age of 13. The boys decide to go into a place that they've obviously been told they can't. It's an old abandoned house, the boys think its abandoned. They find out that there is an old woman living there and make the mistake of being rude, all three of them are cursed to die in a specific way, our main character (David) is cursed to die on his happiest day alive.

We see a montage going through his years and we see him growing up. At first he doesn't pay any attention to the curse, but soon his first friend dies in the way predicted and he becomes paranoid. We see his greatest achievements and then we see him starting to decline good things in his life as he fears dying. He gets a dog, and gives it away. He gets a promotion, and declines it. He leaves his home town and family. Eventually he ends up in Invercargill and we enter his everyday life.

Now 27 years of age, David, lives a very normal life, he is content with a life where there are no significant personal attachments or the ambition to do something great. He works in a cafe, there he works with a girl called Hannah. His friend and others around him urge him to go out with her, but he refuses to make the first move.

Their boss forces David and Hannah to work together in the back room for extended periods of time, finally they start talking more deeply than surface level. She asks him about the curse, this is obviously common knowledge in the local community, and he tells her.

We get a montage of them working together as they slowly fall in love.

They are now a couple, two events of importance to occur during this period : 1) The girl teaches him to be consistently happy and 2) he shows her, on a bad day she's having, how to enjoy happiness in small bursts.

David gets a tip of where the witch that cursed him is, he decides to take a day of work and ask her to remove it. She's sick and dying, he asks her to reverse it, but she's weak and even though she wants to (been living in regret about her past actions for years now) she is incapable of doing so.

He breaks up with Hannah, he doesn't want to hurt her and returns to normal life.

We see both of them back in their normal lives, both unhappier than they were originally.

He realizes that he doesn't have much to live for anyway and chases her (maybe before she leaves for some place).

He declares his love and explains that if she accepts, he will be with her until the moment of his death, a moment that will probably be spent in her company. He's not afraid of dying and he will do so a happy man.

She accepts his offer and we have ourselves a bit of a bitter sweet ending, where we learn to appreciate what we have when we still have it and live in the moment.