A Beast Is Born!

By Jim Vines

A Beast Is Born! chronicles a writer's arduous eleven-year journey to develop his short horror script Susie's Beast from nascent idea to award-winning film. Compiled from emails, text messages, phone conversations, and personal journal entries, A Beast Is Born! demonstrates just how dogged perseverance and sheer determination are the screenwriter's truest allies when searching for a filmmaker who can transform words on a page into a captivating cinematic entertainment. A Beast Is Born! is an absolute must-read for any screenwriter who believes their stories were meant for the big—or small—screen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Vines
• Release date: Oct 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386546269

Jim Vines

Jim Vines is a working screenwriter and script consultant.   He lives in Los Angeles.   Visit his two popular blogs: www.theworkingscreenwriter.blogspot.com and www.theworkingscreenwriter2.blogspot.com.

Book preview

Screenwriting is a funny thing. You come up with what you hope is a great idea, and then you spend months and months plotting out the story and populating it with unique characters, memorable dialogue, intriguing situations and breathtaking settings. Finally, when you absolutely know that your 100 pages of bound screenplay is finally ready to be seen by the filmmaking powers-that-be, you send it out into the world with fingers crossed. Chances are heartbreakingly high your screenplay will never go much further than some low-level reader or development executive’s desk. But, hey, you never know.

I’ve been more fortunate than some. I’ve managed to have a couple of feature-length scripts produced. One of them, The Perfect Tenant, did quite well (domestically and globally) on the cable TV/DVD circuit; the other, which actually won a Best Writing award at Shockfest a few years ago, is still sitting on the shelf awaiting release (though to be honest it’s doubtful that’ll ever happen). I’ve had several scripts optioned, been hired to develop or translate concepts into scripts, and been assigned numerous rewrite gigs by producers all over North America. I also created and wrote a web series, which was produced in 2009. I’ve made a few bucks, met some cool and creative people, and I’ve had a lot of fun. For the most part, all the hard work and all the frustration has been worth it.

But getting back to the funny thing about screenwriting: It’s not exactly the most desirable route to take if you have great stories you want to share with the world. The fact is, screenwriting is mostly about jumping through hoops—it’s about getting a bunch of people into alignment and having all of them saying yes. It’s a bit of a miracle when any script actually gets purchased, developed, and produced. It’s an even bigger miracle when that film becomes financially and/or critically successful. Screenwriting is definitely not an easy gig and not for the faint of heart.

Mid-2007, I realized that it had been seven years since anything I’d written had been produced. Sure, I was meeting with producers, I had a couple of things optioned, and I scored some fun rewrite/doctoring assignments, but nothing had gone in front of a camera.

This is when I made the decision to write a short film script. It was going to be something that wouldn’t take too terribly long to write (i.e., weeks rather than months) and it would be something that, given its length, I could have some fun with and not stress over too much. I’d write something that was very easy to produce, perhaps by a filmmaker looking to bolster his or her reel. I wouldn’t pen this script for money because, face it, the likelihood of making any real money from a short script is...well, pretty low. No, I’d write this short script simply for the joy of writing something quick and fun, something I could see get made by a talented filmmaker, something that could quite possibly hit the festival circuit.

That’s really all there was to it. So, on a gloriously sunny Southern California afternoon in June 2007, I sat down and began plotting out my short film script.

As I mentioned, this script had to be Something that was very easy to produce. That meant, obviously, there would be no helicopters, no car chases, no exotic locations, no large cast. Instead, it would have to be one, maybe two locations, and just a few characters. I already knew it would be a horror or thriller story (since, at that time, I was having the most success with that genre), so the script needed to rely primarily on atmosphere, chills, and suspense.

The first thought that popped into my mind was of a rural house out in the middle of nowhere. My second thought was that it would all take place on a gloomy, somewhat stormy night. Sure, none of this was particularly original—but hey, it works. OK, so I’ve got my setting—but who are my characters?

Well, I figured this was a house on a sizable plot of land out in some serene locale far from the clutter and chaos of the big city. I wanted to have a couple living there, a husband and wife. Were they a young couple or an older couple? I went with younger, in their late 20s to early 30s. This meant they’d probably have a child, a young one.

OK, I had my setting and my characters. Now, what about the story?

I obviously could have gone many different ways. For instance, it could start with a dark, brooding stranger who knocks on this family’s door. He claims to have been in a car wreck on a nearby road and asks for help. Or maybe Dad, an engineer for the local water and power department, gets called away on a job, leaving Mom and daughter (or son) all alone and—well, as I said, the story could’ve gone many different ways.

But being a screenwriter means you have to make decisions, and you have to make those decisions based on the type of story you want to tell. This was to involve a minimal number of elements, including cast and set-ups, but deliver a maximum of chills. I slept on it. The following day I decided that Mom and Dad would be gone for much of the story, leaving their young daughter, whom I named Susie, in the care of a young babysitter, whom I named Lizzie. So there—I had my setting, my minimal cast of four characters, and the start of my story.

I knew almost immediately where the story was going from that point onward. It would be a dark, windy night with Lizzie and little Susie all alone in that house. At first, it would be fun and games (quite literally) but then it would all take an abrupt 180 degree turn when Susie, that silly little dickens, claims "There’s a monster