Adam’s explosion. Jenny thinks the TV helicopter has returns, looks up, but it’s an Army helicopter. BUT DON’T EXPLAIN WHAT THE CHOPPER IS DOING. Maybe she just sees the soldiers lug something out of the chopper, and it lands with a big thud on the helipad and cracks the cement and then the chopper pulls quickly away. - but no explosion yet.
PAUL: Scene with Shanna in the parking lot seeing the 1st (Adam) explosion and talking with creepy Dr. Driscoll. I’d like it to end with her seeing the helicopter going up to the hospital (as she’s being dragged toward quarantine — but are we sure about this because how will Mort reach her in quarantine? What if Driscoll gives her a choice: Quarantine for 24 hours or a painful test (I’ll let you figure out the details, Paul) which will tell instantly if she’s infected. I like the idea that this infection is already very much on the Army’s radar) and asking are they rescuing more people? One of the soldiers, or maybe Driscoll smirks and says, “Not exactly.”
JOE: Super short, like two or three sentence scene where Jenny approaches the big gray sphere of metal that has landed on the helipad.
PAUL: Clayton fuckin’ Theel’s death. Goes back down for his Tauras, instead of running out to safety when he could’ve made it) and big, big boom.
PAUL: We see the hospital blow from Shanna’s POV, and then…
six hours later - dawn
SHANNA: the hospital a smoking pile of rubble…Shanna still in shock. Clayton hasn’t come out. She knows. The army is done with her but she can’t make herself leave. Place is still crawling with media and army and law enforcement. She sees a young, attractive man (younger than she is) in scrubs, his face blackened, holding a little baby. This pulls her out of her heartbreak, briefly. She approaches him…I think we know where this is going…
Blake
• • •
Nice work, Blake.
I like everything, but I’m still not sure why Clay has to die. I still like a final scene where he crawls out of the rubble, his Taurus in his hand.
Or at least make it ambiguous if he died or not, so we could use him again if needed.
Everything else I’m 100% with.
Joe
• • •
I think you’ve got a point…Clayton might be my favorite character of the bunch. A helluvalotta fun. Paul, how strongly do you feel about killing him?
Blake
September 17, 2010
I like the symmetry of him dying with his beloved Taurus. But we can sort of have that cake and eat it too with a coda showing one of those search dogs sniffing out a survivor in the rubble who manages to say he’s deputy Clayton R. Theel.
Paul
• • •
As they start to pull the rubble off him, he hands them the Taurus. “Here. Take her first.”
Paul
• • •
That’s a problem we need to address. Even though we came at them independently, the couple dynamics of both relationships are too similar. We need to change that. The couple scenes strike me as repetitious.
Shanna and Clay have known each other only 6 weeks. It makes more sense for the physical part of their relationship to take a front seat. Clay is no dummy, but he has a very narrow range of interests. Shanna cares for Clay but doesn’t love him enough to marry him.
Randall and Jenny, OTOH, were married for years, and presumably had a courtship before the nuptials. They had a deeper relationship than sex before things went sour. Her cracks about his intelligence are a defense mechanism, a way to vent her anger at him for letting her down.
Jenny should be more focused on (and attracted/intrigued by) Randall’s return to the sweet guy she married. She loved him, he broke her heart by becoming a drunk, but now he’s pulled himself up by his bootstraps. At first she’s afraid to give into it, but she’s learning to love him even more. They had good sex, but that’s not what they were about, not what she misses — she misses the emotional attachment. She LOVES this guy.
So in other words, Randall and Jenny have a history and an arc. Clay and Shanna have neither.
Won’t take much - a little shading of the dialogue, a few extra lines of internal monologue here and there. I’m willing to go in and make the two couples more distinct.
Paul
• • •
Clay: “I might have a way to make it
Paul
• • •
I noticed that too, Paul. The funny thing was, we were writing similar dynamics independent of one another.
My original “fix” was to at once point have Jenny meet up with Shanna and explain that “Love means you gotta put up with them acting like cretins. All men are cretins. But if you can find one you love, you have to stick with it. I should have.”
That would’ve turned the Jenny/Randall relationship into an example/object lesson for Shanna. But Shanna and Jenny were separated too early and never reached that point.
If you want to go in and tweak it to make them more distinct, I’m all for it. But we should keep in mind that all relationships deal with issues like these.
As for Clay being found by rescue dogs, I really like that idea. Maria just read what we have so far, and expressed some strong opinions about who she wants to survive, which is pretty much “everybody.” Considering we’re killing off the majority of our main characters, having a few live might make this more palatable to the reading majority…
Joe
• • •
I think if you carry the Jenny/Randall dynamic I outlined into their final scene — she got the guy she loved back and now she’s losing him for good — it could tug at the heart strings.
While this is in my head, I’ll go into DRACULAS 2.8 now and turn it into 2.9
As for survivors, this is a horror novel - we’ve gotta have casualties. Lots of them.
Paul
• • •
Explain that to my wife when she cuts off the nookie. She’s a petty, vindictive reader who holds grudges against the artist.
I’m all for killing everybody, but I also want to have sex again.
Blake and I discussed your Dr. Driscoll, and we’re for it. It certainly sets up the sequel. But would Driscoll want the dracula bodies disposed of, or quickly packed in ice and whisked away to some undisclosed laboratory location?
I’m also fine with them putting Shanna into quarantine. Drag her off and experiment on her. Then, if Clay lives (perhaps now with an artificial leg where he stores ordnance) he can track her down and rescue her.
Joe
• • •
Driscoll would need only one body…and there’s the dead state cops right there in the parking lot.
Paul
• • •
If we’re talking full conspiracy theory here, they wouldn’t risk burning bodies and leaving either potential evidence or the chance for a foreign power to obtain DNA samples.
