Ending

As much as I think about the ending, and as much as I'd love to have it end happily, I don't think I'm keeping it this way.

For a child to be dead, that's kind of extreme to not have a punishment for Limits in the end, even if he was bullied. And btw I'm going to make the bullying much worse. I realize after reading over the script that I can make it much worse for him so that I can get the jury's sympathy. I'm going to have the jury's verdict come out as innocent, but then have the judge overrule it. What's the punishment going to be? Stay tuned...

Second Draft

I just read over Professor Kaufhold's notes (spelling and grammar are clearly not my strong points when I'm writing quickly). I made some notes on my copy. Instead of fixing the ending, I'm going to hold off on that and just work on character development. Now that I have images on paper of what I want my characters to be like, I definitely have to work on a few things, Kate and Jeff's relationship for one.

First Rough Draft

So I finished the entire script last night...and it's super long. But the good thing is, now everything is on paper and I have a basis for the story.

Because so much information comes out throughout the script, I need to eliminate things that are repeated over and over. I don't want too much coming out before the trial begins, but I also think certain things need to be saved for the trial. There are also a few things I'd like to add that builds on the characters. Right now I feel like there are very dry, so that's the first thing I'm going to tackle.

Also, about the verdict. There are two ways I saw this going when I was writing it last night. I chose the sappy yay Limits wins and all is right with the world ending, but an alternate ending I thought of was having Limits found guilty, he serves some time in prison (going for more of a realistic conclusion) and show a scene where Jayden transfers to a different school, he gives geek his "watch out" look, and the cylce continues because he has yet to be stopped. I happen to like leaving the movie theatre with a giddy feeling that everything worked out for the best, but I'm still on the fense about this one.

court

As I was writing the actual court part of the script, I had the sudden idea that maybe instead of Kate arguing Limits is innocent (since he clearly killed someone and injured two other people) I would have her change the plea that Aubrey kept telling her to take and get Aubrey to accept a plea of guilty by self defense. This would be the big turning point that leads to Act 3. Kate would argue that Limits asked for help and didn't receive none, he thought he was in danger and protected himself. She's would argue that mental abuse is just as harmful as physical abuse.

I'd have to research if whether or not this is plausible in terms of how to change a plea, when, and all the details of the self defense plea, but it's just something I've been thinking about...and this would take place before the trial starts (the day Kate gives her opening statement) depending on if that's actually legally how it's done.