Story-telling | Revised 25 Word Pitch + Screenplay Details

I have received feedback on my screenplay pitch and have decided to make some amendments which I felt better.  From my feedback, I could see that I needed to change the 25-word pitch itself so that it was more relevant to the expectations of the story, because the original pitch suggests that Will is a more sinister character than he is, and that Nick will undergo some sort of trauma during his encounter with him, when in fact, their encounter will serve as an eye-opener to Nick with regard to his mother's alcoholism.

I have also decided to rename Will to 'Derek', and to make his persona less threatening one, and a more damaged and cynical character, in a similar way that 'The Hound' in Game of Thrones is.  I have also polished the character descriptions and extra information so they are a little clearer in relation to the story itself.

Here is the updated version of my pitch and details of the screenplay:


The Way

As a teenager is struggling with his mother's alcoholism, an encounter with an unlikely ally changes his view of the situation.

Genre:

The prominent genre of The Way will be drama, but it will also draw on themes of social realism, as does Soft, which I will take inspiration from in this regard.

Main Characters:

Nick

• Nick: An introverted sixteen year old boy who suffers from anxiety and only confides in his closest friends.  He has a distant and troublesome relationship with his mother after his father passed away, which led her to develop a drinking problem.  He is very wary of getting in trouble at school, hence why his school uniform is immaculate and he carries all his school books with him to avoid not having the right books on the right days.

Derek

• Derek: A scraggly homeless man, aged between 20 and 35, who suffers from alcoholism.  He is a lonely man, and he tends to keep to himself, but always tries to do the right thing, even if it means putting himself in danger.  He turned to drink after losing his wife in a car accident.  Now he lives on the streets as everything he loved is gone and he drinks to detach himself from the reality that he has nothing to live for.

Secondary Characters:

Angela

• Angela: Nick's mother.  Like Derek, she also suffers from alcoholism as the result of losing her spouse, Nick's father.  Again, similarly to Derek, she drinks to detach herself from reality, but deep down, she loves her son, but the alcohol prevents her from being able to express this, and instead, she comes across as a neglectful mother, and pays little attention to Nick.

  

  The Gang

• Gang: Local hoodlums with no regard for other people's well-being.

Locations:

• The Way will begin outside Nick's school, and we will see parts of the surrounding neighbourhood, but the main location will be the alleyway that Derek sleeps in, as their meeting will be the focal point of the screenplay.

Source Material:

• I was inspired to choose this subject matter from my own experiences from having to walk home in the dark from school some nights.
• The inspiration for the neglectful mother does not come from my own experiences thankfully, but the loss of a parent is something that has affected a number of people I know, each of them responding with differently.  Drinking can act as a way to cope with drastic changes such as this, so I felt I could explore this in The Way.

Extra Information:

• The meeting in The Way will be the meeting between Nick and Derek, which will lead to Nick sympathising with his mother's drink problem, as there is a parallel between Derek and Angela in the sense that the have both lost someone and they both drink to deal with it.
• Nick will initially be angry with his mother, but seeing and talking to Derek will allow him to see things from his mother's perspective.
• In one scene, Nick will be attacked - this will come from one of my own experiences in which I had a rock thrown at my head, then mud shoved in my face whilst waiting outside my school - this will lead to the introduction of Derek, who steps in to defend Nick.
• The screenplay will explore Nick's anxiety and his frustration toward his mother, which will change by the end of the screenplay.  We will also see the internal conflict of Derek and Angela through their issues with drinking.