COVID scripts

So how are you doing?

We’re living through difficult times. Some of you have kids at home 24-7, some of you live alone and see pretty much no one… and not just for days on end, or even weeks on end, but months on end.

Today is the end of January and tomorrow is the first day of February. Soon we’re heading into a second year of a lot of lockdown, a lot of sickness, and way too much death.

Has this virus touched you and your family in some way? Do you have a story to tell about it? Or has your writer’s imagination been spurred by what you see happening in the world because of this disease?

As a writer, it’s natural to write about events in your community and your world, to tell stories set in the times you’re living through, stories that are influenced by what you see.

I was in Manhattan on 9/11 and still remember, so vividly, everything I saw that day, everyone I spoke to, everything I did. I wanted to write about it. SO many stories were swimming around inside me and I wanted to get something on paper, tell stories about this horror we were living through. Within a few days I talked to my agents in L.A. about doing that and they advised me against it—“It will seem like you’re using the tragedy just to tell a story.”

I recall being disappointed because I had some—what I thought were insights about what was happening politically and emotionally in New York and I wanted to tell that story. But I figured, ‘Hey, they know the biz better than I do, they’re probably right,’ and I went back to working on a script that I was in the middle of just as 9/11 happened.

That’s a decision I regret. A year or so later, I looked at things other writers had written about that day and the days that followed and I kind of beat myself up for not following my first instincts and writing about 9/11.

Isn’t COVID something that falls into that category of life-changing events, destructive events that people have to deal with, harrowing events that bring about all kinds of stories? And stories are shared commodities. You might think that how you’re dealing with a death from COVID in your family, for example, is unique to you—but it’s universal. SO many families are going through the same thing.

Maybe you could write a story about that struggle, about these times… you certainly don’t have to use your own family, you can create something in another town, something totally fictional, but something that would speak to people of the universality of this experience we’re all living through.

I think it’s time. I think, as a writer, if you have a scenario you’ve been thinking about that’s set in this crazy time, you should think about writing it. Your story could be serious or comical, it could be moving or tragic… but it should come from your heart. And if it does, just imagine how many other hearts it could touch.

Copyright © Diane Lake

31Jan21

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com