BSA231 W2 : Horror Idea

So I had an new idea this weekend, well its not exactly new, its a bit more of an evolution on an idea I've been working on, but it's gotten me excited and for the first time I've actually started writing - like a script, in script format! That's an achievement for me because script-writing is the one thing I most want to always do and procrastinate too much to actually ever get good at.

The idea started as a single scene that I could potentially make for my short format film, I intended to try just writing a couple of single scenes and seeing where that got me. Now it's a bit more complicated, so the original idea:

The original idea was very, very simple and its also very unoriginal, not just in what the concept is but actually also where from I shamelessly stole it. I started watching this Korean horror movie last week - and haven't watched any more of it since even though I intended to - called I Saw The Devil and I thought that I would have written the opening scene differently. Or at least I considered how it could have been done differently.

The movie opens with a girl stuck on the side of the road in a storm, waiting for a tow truck, she's talking to her boyfriend on the phone. He is on a job and can't talk for long but soon a car arrives and stops near her. It's a dodgy old man who offers help, but soon reveals much more sinister intentions. Long story short - and it is quite a short scene - he breaks her front window with a hammer and kidnaps her.

As is usual when watching films I was finding small things that could have been explored further or simply thought of things that I would like to see in a film like the one I'm watching but which aren't actually present.

In this particular scenario I thought that the killer being a bit more seemingly harmless, but subtly creepy and him being more manipulative in general would have been more interesting to see.

So I thought about how I would rewrite it and came up with a couple of things:

1) She needs to have a more interesting conversation with her boyfriend - he can be telling her about a scary story he's writing adding even more to the atmosphere being established.

2) The killer needs to slowly reveal his intentions, he can put his hand on the window when she lowers it to talk to him, and then remove it when she closes the window, he could also possibly get inside the car by offering to replace the punctured tire by getting into the boot.

As per usual I liked the scene in my head but found it to be a lot of effort to actually put down on paper - dialogue's hard and I hate having to play catch-up with myself (it's already so clear in my head why do I have to go through the laborious process of typing it all out?)

Still I thought of it more and was trying to solve the problem of her hanging up on her boyfriend. In the film the boyfriend is at work so he can't keep talking, but I wanted my version to be passionately telling her about his new book idea, so he'd have all the time in the world. In this scenario she also wouldn't let him hang up so easily, especially not after he's gotten her all wound up with ghost stories. And so I came up with something that I think is a lot more intriguing and a lot scarier.

The new idea is:

What if instead of breaking into the car, after she rejects his help and opts to keep waiting for the tow-truck, the stranger just keeps waiting outside the car, just standing there by her window?

This is interesting because it easily generates ideas - and a whole ton of questions. Why isn't he affected by the weather, what's his intentions, why doesn't he use force? What is she gonna do, we can easily put ourselves in her shoes - just moving would be a terrifying thought. What does the boyfriend do? What happens if the blizzard prevents the police from getting there? Are they gonna stay on the line, how many more people will get involved. What happens when she tries to drive away? What happens when the car starts fogging up from her breathing and she can't see him, if she uses the air conditioning she's wasting battery. It's a snowball that keeps going and I don't even know how long it should be.

I'm just gonna go with it, start writing and see where I end up. It's a very different situation for me to be in, because usually I have the whole plot and structure sussed before even thinking of writing, this feels much more like a Stephen King novel to me, simple but I don't know where its going.