My findings...

"As far as I know, we do not understand why gravity does what it does, (As in tht cause of it) however we understand, or belive we understand, what its effects are. "

http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-100334.html

http://www.universetoday.com/74015/what-causes-gravity/

I may need to expand on this conversation between Wendy and her Councelor, but what she says is fairly accurate.

Changes to third draft

I never had a real reason for Corryn being involved in the experiment other than to do something important, but today I realized that if Corryn's father is constantly making her feel like she's not good enough, it makes sense that she would try to find a way to pass on information so people won't feel stupid. However, not everyone comes to the same conclusions with information they have. This experiment can't work, at least not yet, because everyone's ability to understand what they know is different. Some people study, take tests, and then immediately forget what they studied. Some people don't need to study because learning comes naturally to them. Wendy has an ability to understand the information in her head because she already had a brain that could process information quickly. Whereas, Wyatt's brain did not possess this ability.

Movin' On Up

In my opinion, the second draft is MUCH better than the first. I think it explains the plot better. I think the characters are more well rounded and they have more struggles/changes in the arc. I think Wendy's overall arc from a lost orphan to sacrificing her life for her brother in the end is way more interesting and easy to sympathize with.

Problems I see right away...

Even though Wendy is supposed to be very intelligent, I still want to make her sound a little bit more her age, because right now I have dialogue for her that makes her sound like she's 20 or older, especially in the end.

I think Ardon should be more upset in the end. I can still do more with his character, maybe make him more of a villain type character. I don't think he should be so willing to help in the end or so easily persuaded. He's been trying to get this project going for 9 years, and after that much time, no one would want to give up without a very serious fight, especially now that he has proof it actually works!

I think the conflict between Corryn/Corryn's father/Wendy is solved a little to easily. Wendy sees how her brother's life is ruined, but she forgives Corryn right away. Corryn has been suffering from her father's brutality for years, but she forgives him right away. These conflicts can be stretched a little longer, without boring the audience, to give the characters time to adjust to the situation and make decisions.

More to come...

Script Becomes Paranormal!

Extra Extra, read all about it.

I'm one for taking chances in order to save ideas. The last one wasn't working. I know it. But there is a way to make it better, and that is to go back to the beginning. I had an idea, before I thought of this as a real experiment. I had an idea that Wendy was reincarnated, and she learned about her mother through those memories. Simple, right? In talking to people, that idea got lost and it became what I wrote in the first draft. I've decided for the sake of the script, to delve into the real world of science fiction and play around with paranormal ideas. My father told me a story. Back when Drexel was just the Institute of science and technology, there were scientists there who were studying reincarnation, and they were trying to figure out the science behind it. And now, so does Corryn and Ardon.

Corryn and Ardon know that if they can find a scientific answer from reincarnation, they can find a way to duplicate it manually. Since I don't have much time to save my script, I'm going to keep the old story about Corryn dying, and now she comes back through her daughter, Wendy. Now Wendy helps Ardon try to figure out how it happened. What Wendy is more concerned over, however, is Corryn's life. Wendy almost loses herself and allowing Corryn's past to consume her present, but eventually Wendy has to let go and move on.

Answer to a previous Problem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grZuwo_YlY0

I actually had it right in the first draft. I can't have Wendy not understand the information now in her head because the memories are attached, and those memories trigger answers. She understands the answers because she can remember how she got them through Corryn's memories.

But this brings us to another problem. I can't have this exist in the world as it is today. I can't have the audience believe that this is taking place now. For there to be some kind of hope that all of this is possible, I need to put the entire story far enough into the future (let's just say "somewhere in the near future" as Gattaga puts it) so the audience can't question what's happening because if it's in the future, who knows? Maybe it is possible if other things are made possible in that future.

Wendy doesn't have to struggle with not understanding because there is so much going on that she needs to deal with. She's not a normal child, she finds out that her mother did an experiment on her when she was a baby, her sister resents her, and a lot of other stuff i added in the new draft.

Deeper Meaning

I'm always trying to find amazing new concepts and incredibly deep meanings to put into my stories, but in taking a step back, I found something. My story I have right now isn't about the science. It isn't about getting the audience to understand memory and how it works.

It's about the love of parents and children. Wendy's mom sacrificed her for an experiment, and now all Wendy wants is to know that she loved her. Nikki is so concerned about Wendy that all Jenn wants to know is that she's loved too. That's the beauty of Jenn's character. She's not just there to be a bitch. She wants attention, because deep down, she's been living with an 8 year old genius and no matter what she does, she feels like she can't get Nikki's attention. AND furthermore, Corryn is even struggling with the parent acceptance. In her mind, her father is a bastard, but all she really wanted was to be loved. They say there's nothing stronger than a parent's love for their child. But what happens when children question that love? How far will they go to make sure it's there?

Corryn is alive in this draft. Wendy finds out in the midpoint, and her drive is to find out why Corryn did what she did. And because Jenn can sympathize with this intense need to find acceptance from a parent, Jenn comes around and helps her. Sadie is gone. Ardon is more so the bad guy who only had one passion...to finish the experiment. Corryn abandoned the experiment when she realized what she did, but Ardon kept going, and now that he has Wendy, there's hope again for him.

Short Film!

Just had an idea during the class to make my short film come together. Small town usually have those summer festivals with small competitions. Every year, all the competitions Eric joins, he wins 2nd place. This year, he gets yet another 2nd place trophy. So he comes up with the idea to lose the rest of the contests. The other townspeople find out, and they start losing. Now Eric is losing at losing. The final contest, Eric really tries to win for that 1st place ribbon. He gets 2nd place. His sister tells him he must have more 2nd place ribbons than anyone in the whole town. Eric has his revelation.

Eric will no longer be 18. This is too old I feel for a boy to be this dedicated to winning at festival games. I'm thinking now 15. He's not interested in driving or going to bars yet, so he still has a drive to win at festival games. I still don't think I want a love interests, even though 15 year old boys are most definitely interested in girls. For me, that's not the point of the story. Yeah, he can flirt with some of the girls in the town. Maybe they root for him to lose. But it's not about the girls. Having a wall of 2nd place ribbons, this is Eric's want: to be the best at something!

Whoa

This is the first time this term that I've felt overwhelmed about this project. I know there is so much good stuff here, but every good idea I have comes with a setback. I'm not discouraged, but I'm accepting the fact that the second draft will still not come close to what I expect of this project. By the third, or even the fourth draft, I believe I will finally see a very small light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

Some good news. I had my father read the script (a person who I can trust to tell me the truth, who appreciates sci-fi, and who is capable of giving me advice on the science in the script.) We both concluded that, even though Wendy has all of this information in her head, she would not understand it. It's like when a student studies for a test and crams information into her head, and then forgets it the day after. That is not understanding, that's memorizing. Wendy is in the same situation. She has all of this information crammed into her head that she cannot understand. THIS IS A HUGE STRUGGLE for her. This is why she needs Nikki and Ardon.

I also don't want Ardon to be as nice as he was in the first draft. I want to show his struggles too. After all, when Corryn died, he was on the verge of a major scientific breakthrough, and he knows he needs Wendy's help. If Wendy refuses to help him, wouldn't he grow mad? All these years of trying to find her, and now that he has her and she's not willing to help him, how far would he go to get the answers? AND Ardon may believe that because Wendy has all of Corryn's information in her head, she can make decisions like Corryn used to. But Wendy isn't Corryn, and might also be something Ardon has to deal with. Just because Wendy has this information doesn't mean she would come to the same conclusions as Corryn would.

Lots of ideas and so little time to execute them.

Errors

All spelling errors have been fixed, as there were many of them. Hopefully I caught everything. There are lots of problems with the script and this should not be one of them.

Missed Something

So I can't believe that I set up the exposition for Dark Energy in the very beginning and just didn't use it to explain the rest of the script! That's crazy, right?

Okay, so I did more research on this Dark Energy in the brain and scientists have found that inactivity in the brain is very high. When the brain is active, it only increases 5% from inactivity. This means that when we think our brain is at rest, it's actually still working very hard.

The article I found states: All the substances in the universe we can see and interact with—all this together makes up less than 5% of the universe, with dark energy and dark matter at 74% and 23% respectively. In the same way, all the brain activity we are aware of—conscious thought—makes up about 5% of our total brain activity. Just as background energy in the universe is predominent, so is background energy in our brains. Dark energy is thus a fitting term for this phenomenon.

The middle of the article goes further to asking questions about attention spans. How long do we pay attention before our minds start to wander off? What if the scientist saw 30 seconds ago that your DMN (default mode network) was shutting off your brain’s conscious area, thus telling me that you will lose focus soon—about right now?

These are a lot of questions that may not show up in my script. BUT I think it's important to try and figure out if there needs to be a trigger for Wendy to remember her mother OR...maybe Wendy's so smart that her mind is constantly wandering off. Maybe she gets bored when other people talk, so her mind goes somewhere else. The big question is, how much control does Wendy have on her memories? Yes, she can try to remember the same ways we real people try to remember things. But how about those memories that just pop into our minds? The ones we may not be able to suppress? The ones that are triggered? The ones that aren't?

My Week Off...

Stepping back from my senior project for the week, I'm putting all of my efforts into getting ready to shoot the teaser for a pilot I wrote, "You Could Be Me." The pilot revolves around the life of psychologist Anna Brown, who suffers from chronic bad luck. If a meteor hit the planet, Anna would be the target. She has no control over her own life, so she writes a self-help book titled You Could Be Me to give others hope that even though their lives might be bad, they aren't and will never be as bad as Anna's. Since I'm graduating in June, there won't be enough time to shoot all of it, so the first 4 or 5 minutes will have to do.

I have my film crew, most of my actors (auditions will be in two weeks), waiting on locations, and I'm directing and co-producing along side my amazing boyfriend who was able to make all of this possible. Very exciting!

Science Stuff

I'm going to have to send this script to a few people who know science better than I do. Even though I've been doing a lot of my own research, I'm worried that some things still won't make much sense.

Instead of creating another post for this comment, I'll just add it to this one. My minor characters need a lot of work (in addition to everything else). Nikki, Jenn, Ardon, and especially Sadie don't have enough to their characters. Jenn may be okay for now, and Nikki isn't that crucial of a character to the story, but Ardon needs more than just sitting around in the lab all day and Sadie needs more than just being there for the ride. These characters have a lot of potential, but right now their plot pushes. For the first draft, I was focusing more so on developing Wendy and Corryn's relationship, which I think I did pretty well. And now it's time to dig deeper.

See the Finish Line!

I thought of what I consider to be a great ending to my script (I thought of it a while ago but never blogged about it).

The confrontation has been about Wendy and Corryn the entire time, not Wendy and Jenn. So it makes sense that Wendy would need to confront the antagonist, the reason why Wendy is the way she is, the person she's been wanting to just love her. And since this is sci-fi, Wendy can confront Corryn in her mind and finally be at peace. We'll see how it goes. A scene like this could get very awkward/unbelievable, but if I can do it right, it would be the perfect ending to the script.

Goods and Bads of Directing

I'm taking the directing class now with Professor Kelly and so far it's interesting, but I cringe every time I have to edit the scripts. Cutting out large chunks of script directions just makes me more aware of the fact that this is going to be happening to my scripts. Once it's out of my hands, everyone else has the freedom to throw out and change whatever they want. And all the time I spend imagining what a scene should look like, how the characters should react, where in the script the scene takes place...my vision of the world only means something to one person: me.

Maybe I'll be a director one day...

Thanks Team!

One of my fringe sources sent me this article for my script.

Romantic Breakups Cause Real Pain.

Rejection quite literally hurts — the experience and the memory of getting dumped by a loved one trigger brain regions linked with physical sensations of pain, scientists find.

Why is this significant? Because if Corryn has this disease, and feels the physical pain of it, and Wendy remembers this pain, it could cause Wendy to feel the physical pain as well caused my the memories of the pain Corryn felt. I already added this idea to the script in the second act.

This is why talking helps

I brought up my script idea to my fraternity brother, Chris, and he asked how old Wendy was when she underwent the experiment. I said one or two, very young. I assumed that a baby's ability to take in information was far better at an early age. Turns out, I was right, but for a different reason.

Up until the age of three or four, babies can create multiple synapses in their brains, which allows them to take in and remember much more information. Then as they grow, the ability to create synapses decreases. So if Wendy took in all of this information as a child, she still would have room in her small brain for more information because these synapses would do it. The fact that we still don't know how much brain power we use or what goes on with the rest of it....this could definitely be a working theory.

http://main.uab.edu/show.asp?durki=60790%20

Planning

It's time to reoutline. So much has changed from the original, and to keep myself on track this new beat sheet is crucial. That's the plan for tonight. Tomorrow, the writing continues...

Swing the Bat Often

If anyone reads this blog other than Professor Kaufhold, this may be good advice for you (just read it in my "Buzzmarketing" book while studying for my final).

Swing the Bat Often.

The best "big" ideas don't come in the beginning. In the book, the author gives an example that Henry Kissinger once sent back a paper to his senior writer 5 times with a note, "it can be better" without reading the paper. Kissinger knew that rewrites were needed because it takes time to make anything really good. If you keep throwing out ideas, eventually you'll think of the big one.

Moral of the story, I'm not getting discouraged by my senior project, and no one else should either if they are really putting in the effort. All first drafts are shitty. Take a look at some of the best movie scripts and see how they are different from the films, because they are. Even though this concept is repeated over and over, I still hear from students that they're bummed about their first draft. No matter how bad mine is, I'm still very proud of it, because I know I'm completely out of my comfort zone with this script and that's a good thing for me. Lots of writers are encouraged to write what they know, but nothing is more challenging, more fulfilling, and more FUN than using the imagination.

Minor stuff

Thinking of changing Harvard to Princeton. I want to actually walk on one of these campuses to get a feel for them, and since Princeton is closer, and also has a neuroscience program, it won't be a difficult change to make in the script. It's just hard to write about buildings I've never seen before.

Suggestions?

Even though Wendy is a child prodigy, I'm wondering how mature her speech should be? She is seven-years-old after all. I might need to make her sound younger than she does right now, but it may not be necessary. Thoughts?

Could Be a Good Idea

Sometimes what we remember isn't exactly what actually happened.

Corryn suffers from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), that makes it difficult for her to breath. The medication she takes is called Prednisone, and one of the side effects is mood swings. So...sometimes Corryn gets mad for no reason, especially at her parents.

When Wendy remembers Corryn's memories of her parents, some of them are really bad, but when Wendy meets her grandparents, she learns that they weren't really horrible people after all. This also makes Wendy think that Corryn's memories aren't very reliable, which makes it more difficult to learn about her mother.

New Direction

Even though most of my decisions can be justified, like sending a seven year old Wendy to college, it just doesn't work. So...here are some of my plans for fixing the problem.

The journey is about Wendy getting to know her mother through her mother's memories, so I want the journey to take Wendy everywhere Corryn has been, so the locations and people trigger the memories. Now, the Act 1 decision will be Wendy's decision to leave her home (run away) and find out who the woman is she keeps thinking about.

The journey first takes Wendy to Harvard, where Wendy meets her companion, Sadi, a neuroscience major. Sadi takes Wendy to Ardon's office, and Ardon explains to Wendy that the woman she remembers is dead. He also tells her about the experiment. Ardon wants to run a series of tests on Wendy to see how the experiment worked and how to make it even better. Wendy wants to go home now that she knows her mother is dead and there's nothing to look for, but then Wendy has a vision about when her mother first decided to work on the experiment, because she was dying and she didn't want her life to end without purpose. Wendy decides to continue the journey, learn more about her mother and the experiment, and eventually contribute to the purpose of her mother's life.

Act 2 will end with the new situation: Wendy knows Corryn is her mother and that Corryn experimented on her, but she still doesn't know it's the reason she was born (this will come later when Wendy begins to love her mother...and then BOOM, she discovers Corryn had her because she needed someone to conduct the experiment on, even though there will several risks involved).

Deeper Meaning

Scripts are written and movies are made for a number of reasons: entertainment is probably the most important/essential, but they are also written to educate, to inspire, to scare, to make the audience laugh, cry, think, and feel.

As much as I enjoy a good laugh and sitting on the edge of my seat, tense and rooting for the hero, I don't ever want to write a script that doesn't have a deeper purpose. The science fiction script I'm writing now isn't just about a young girl who has to live with her mother's memories in her head and must ultimately decide what to do with those memories. I want it also to be about something an audience can relate to. We watch movies, read books, write our own stories and we often feel like we're living different lives vicariously through those characters. But what we know in our minds and what we actually experience in our own lives are two different things. Wendy thinks she understands the world by remembering her mother's past life, but she really has no idea because she's never personally experienced those events. In Star Trek Episode Three, Dr. McCoy asks Spock what its like to die. Spock answers that he cannot have the conversation with the doctor because he has never died, and so he couldn't possibly know what its like based off of Spock's experience.

Then again, if something real comes from something fantastical, what of that? At the end of the script, in her mind, Wendy and Corryn have their first conversation. Corryn doesn't say much, but Wendy tells her that she forgives her. Wendy experiences closure in her mind, and even though the situation never really happened, Wendy is able to move on. In the Matrix, Morpheus claims, "The mind makes it real." I want readers to ask, is this true? Can our mind really make things real? Wendy's answer would be yes, while Jenn would say no. One thing is for sure. Scientists still don't know what the mind is completely capable of. I watched a video about quantum mechanics where the scientist said if we focus our mind on something strong enough, we can make it happen. This is only a theory, but perhaps one day, we will know just how powerful the mind can be.

Long Road Ahead

My big problem, now that I've done most of the research and tackled the technical issues, is getting the story to flow correctly. I'm completely against flashbacks, so I'm trying my best to have a parallel story between Corryn's past life and Wendy's life now, especially since a lot of Corryn's past is being mixed in and confusing Wendy's present. I'm also trying to create suspense in the beginning and up to the end of the first act, but I'm wondering if I'm giving too much (or not enough) information away. Therefore, I feel like this first draft is going to be messy. But as long as I get it written, I'm confident that the rewrites will bring the story together and enhance the character development.

Forgetting is Important

I was thinking about Wendy's problem in the middle of the script where she begins to forget her mother's memories. I started doing research on forgetting, and theories show that it's just as important as remembering for our brains.

What would life be like if we didn't forget? There a book called "The Woman Who Can't Forget," and her brian couldn't handle all of the information. She would constantly get headaches. She would always be stressed out. The mind creates room by storing information in long term memory and losing information that isn't relevant over time.

These are the youtube videos I found on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbiTuDSHa2M and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbiTuDSHa2M. The second youtube video uses a quote, "The strength of your mind dictates the size of your reality." The quote refers to the movie, Momento.

As I've written before, most of our memories are recalled by remembering the process in which we stored these memories into our brains. (That's confusing, let me try again.) If I'm taking a test and I'm trying to remember what I studied, I first remember that I was sitting at my desk, searching through my book, looking up a certain passage, and finally I remember what was inside the book. Through our experiences, we can remember information. WELL, since Wendy was given this information and she didn't actually learn it or experience it HERSELF, then I believe it's plausible for her to forget the memories of her mother and the information attached to those memories because they aren't hers. As Wendy goes through her own experiences, her mind has to create room, and so the more she learns through her own eyes, the less she remembers about her mother. (Now I have an explanation, though it's probably not the best one.)

Even More Changes

I love talking to people about idea. It's so much nicer than debating with myself.

After a discussion with my dad, aka Arthur C. Clark (you'd get the reference if you read an earlier post of mine), I think I answered the big question...how the hell would an experiment like this work? The answer, as my dad pointed out (I didn't even recognize it), is that humans learn and remember information much easier when they are children, which is why learning a language is much easier at an early age rather an adult attempting to learn a language. It also came to my attention that genetics are involved in an experiment like this. The trick is to make information instinct.

Here's another interesting thing. What if Corryn HAD to transfer this information because she's already dying? Corryn has no other choice but to do the experiment on her own daughter (she hasn't gotten clearance yet to do it on anything else but lab rats). After Wendy is born, she's about four years old, Corryn does the experiment. A year later, Corryn dies. Nikki raises Wendy and Wendy starts showing genius signs at five years old. At age 7, she's ready for college.

And now I'm finally ready to start writing.

Research

These are a few websites I found to help me figure some things out.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=211017

This website deals with asking what if it's possible to connect two brains together and what would happen. It isn't exactly dealing with the experiment I'm using for my script, but it discusses NEUROPHYSICS. This is the type of science Dr. Berke in my script should know a lot about in order to be able to put together an experiment that sends information from one brain to another.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=211017

This website discusses how our memory works, how the brain keeps our memories separate, and how we are able to access our memories. One of my questions is, if Corryn wants to send information she has stored in her memory, is it possible to do this WITHOUT sending her personal memories as well? If our brain keeps these memories separate, would she be able to choose which memories to send? This message board talks about a neuron sends information to another neuron, but it goes through branches of neurons before it hits it's target neuron that is supposed to receive the information. It also says, "Wasn't there some research that came out not long ago (maybe a year or two max) that showed that we don't "read" memories, we recall them by the brain recreating thoughts, feelings, emotions, smells etc we had at the time--And so in this way isn't analogous to "reading" a hard drive like a computer does?" If this is true, then maybe Corryn HAS to send her personal memories, because the way in which she remembers information could be the same way Wendy can then access it...by remembering how Corryn recalled information. Website goes into more depth on this idea on page 2...when we remember, we don't read the memories, we "do" them, meaning we relive them.

Something else I thought about today. She would have had to test this experiment many times before putting her daughter in the chair. I'm wondering how these past experiments have gone and what she learned. You can't ask a rat if it remembers personal experiences of another rat. You just transfer the information (a rat determines how to get from one part of the maze to another) to another rat that has never done the maze before (and this rat knows exactly how to get to the end of the maze in one shot).

Simple is Better

After the third time trying to explain to someone my script idea and getting the same confused reaction, I realized there's too much going on in this script. A sci-fi mixed with a sad dramatic drama isn't going to work. So here's how it's looking now.

I thought about what kind of person would use their daughter for an experiment with dangerous consequences. This person would have to be crazy, a mad scientist, which could actually work. I've been focusing so much on the story that I'm not paying enough attention to the characters, who could make or break this idea. I decided tell the story in a way that is more about the characters and less about the whole mind uploading process.

Research shows that long term memory (memories about the past and information we can remember) can all be found in the hippocampus), so the simple part of the story is that Corryn transfers her long term member to her daughter. As her daughter grows up, things begin to trigger these memories. When Wendy realizes her mother conducted the experiment, she becomes resentful, BUT there's more to the story than the experiment.

This story is really going to be about understanding. We think we know people all the time from our observations, but actually seeing what they see can change our opinions dramatically. Wendy is given this gift of seeing and feeling what Corryn saw and felt. Wendy can actually remember the emotional trauma Corryn underwent when her parents told her she was an embarrassment and weird. She learns why Corryn has no morals and why she pushes people away. This doesn't make Corryn a good person, but it allows Wendy to understand why she was the way she was by seeing life as Corryn saw it. This allows Wendy to make the decision to continue her mother's work, and when Wendy realizes Corryn's memories have completely taken over her mind, she stops everything and let's the experiment die. Wendy learns why Corryn has no morals, but that doesn't mean Wendy has to forget her own morals.

This experiment gives Wendy the chance to know her mom, and it has an emotional impact on Wendy when the memories begin to fade (in the same way a person forgets the image of their parents who have been dead for many years). In this version of the story, Wendy doesn't die. It's about learning and letting go without the added drama. Plain and simple, in a sci-fi way.

Fringe Team

I now have a team of biology/neuroscience/engineer majors on call for any questions I might have during the writing process. They've already been helpful with the outlining. They've been warned that I'm going to throw some pretty absurd questions their way, but they are prepared and excited to assist.

Changes

When I was thinking of how to answer the questions I asked earlier on this blog, I thought of something that would make things easier...and hopefully better.

If Dr. Corryn needed someone to transfer her information to, what if she used her daughter, Wendy, when she was maybe five-years-old. At a young age, Wendy wouldn't remember that the experiment happened (unless she really tried, I'm doing a lot of research on Memory). After Corryn dies from the experiment, her lab partner Ardon, who was against the idea but couldn't stop Corryn, gave Wendy to another family to take care of her. She grew up never knowing what happened to her, and no one knew that, even though it killed Corryn, the experiment actually worked...with some problems. Not only did Corryn transfer the knowlege in her brain, but she also transfered her memories. Now Wendy is fifteen. She has dreams about Corryn, Corryn's life and sometimes sees glimpses of the experiment. She has no idea why she's seeing these things and starts to believe she has the ability to see her past life. That doesn't explain, however, why she is so smart. Wendy has enough knowlege in her head to be the youngest physicist known to man. She's so intelligent that she makes her teachers at school look pathetic. Her teachers send her to Harvard because they believe she will receive an adequate education, and she meets 60 year old Ardon. Ardon looks familiar to her. And the mysteries unravel.

Now I just need to unfold the story in a way that is interesting and makes sense. I like having Corryn and Wendy's stories told simutaneously because it shows how both character end up on the same path towards one thing...the mind uploading experiment. Corryn decides to go ahead with the experiment at any cost, even putting her own daughter's life at risk. Wendy needs to make the same choice, but she has completely different motives. There's another way I can tell this story though. Kind of like Bourne Identity, where she can remember things as they happen and use the flashbacks of Corryn's life to mirror Wendy's life (Wendy walks into a familiar room and the flashback shows Corryn in that room conducting an experiment). I like the first idea better, but the second is still an option.

One of the things I need to think about now is...do I want the stakes to be even higher and have Wendy start to die? I have to do more research on the brain, but my explanation now would be that I don't think a person's brain could handle processing information from someone else's brain. Too much information at once. Problem: I want maybe 5-10 years between the time of the experiment and Wendy's life now, before the results of the experiment start to kill her. But if her brain could handle it at 5 years old and she's been able to grow up without a problem (besides maybe some headaches) then why would it all of a sudden start killing her now? Was she dying all this time? Why didn't it kill her instantly like it did with Corryn? I need some answers...or a different way to tell the story so it makes sense. Contemplate on this, I shall.

Remember (New Script)

I really have to think of a better title because "Remember" is just horrible. But there are more pressing things to think about, so a brilliant title will just have to wait.

I'm super excited to have finally thought of a decent science fiction idea that's possible to write (all of my other ideas will probably take years to build the worlds and research). However, I'm well aware that my idea for this script will not be easy. Some of the thoughts in my head now that I'm debating with are...

1. How does the scientist, Corryn, choose who she is going to "send" the information in her brain to, and how does it eventually end up in Wendy's brain?

2. How old should Wendy be at the beginning of the script? When does she start seeing these images of what she believes to be her past life? Does it happen all at once (Phenomenon) or has she been able to remember since she was a young child?

3. Is there a love interest? If Wendy can remember everything about Corryn's past, does she also feel a strong connection to Corryn's lover?

4. Does Wendy die in the script? I was thinking that if an experiment like this took place and everything from one brain was transferred to another, would Wendy's brain be able to handle it? Wendy now has the brain power to continue with the experiment, and maybe she can make it better. If it's killing her, she doesn't have a lot of time to do this. What if she successfully accomplishes what Corryn did but with the same results...killing someone else. Is it moral if it's done in the name of science? Corryn was the scientist, so her answer probably would have been yes, but Wendy is not a scientist. Does she still have that obligation to continue? Will all of Corryn's hard work be in vain and without purpose if Wendy dies without doing anything to further the experiment?

These are all of the questions I'm in the process of answering. I like that this story asks a question that many people still ask today. How far is too far? With stem cell research, is it moral to conduct an experiment in the name of science. Should morality even be an issue? If we didn't cut open dead bodies when people thought it was morally wrong to do so, none of our medical advances would have been possible. But this story also shows the history of these two girls. One chose her path, and the other has to live with it inside her head, literally. Wendy did not choose to have everything in Corryn's brain transfered into her own, and she certainly did not choose to die so young, but she does have decisions to make, and she has to make them very quickly.