I take a cinematic journey from childhood moviegoer’s dream to the creation of my first screenplay, ‘Doomer,’ inspired by classic detective writers, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

My first movie experience was at the Capitol Theatre in Yakima, Wash. My aunt took me to see Snow White and Seven Dwarfs. I was about seven years old. I’ve loved movies ever since, and as I got older, I often dreamed of making my own. Eventually, my family moved to Seattle, and at age 19, I enrolled in Bellevue Community College (now Bellevue College), which offered an introductory film course. Arguably, that was the beginning of my screenplay writing journey.

It was a false start. I got a “B” in the course, and for reasons that will always remain a mystery to me, I turned away from film as a potential career. Maybe I expected too much, or didn’t think I was worthy, or artistic enough. I wasn’t crazy about moving to L.A. I’d never been and knew no one. Too late now. However, I still tried writing science fiction. I wrote a terrible short story for an English class about a trip to Mars. That didn’t score well, either.

Years in journalism and software

Fast forward many years through a career in journalism and the software industry to 2008. By this time, I had twenty years of writing non-fiction under my belt, and it was time to try writing fiction again. The discipline of daily deadlines for newspapers and radio, as well as the sheer volume of output demanded of journalists, prepared me for the slog of novel-making. By 2020, I’d published seven scifi and fantasy novels. I’d also published more than 10 short stories.

Then, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the well went dry.

I never lost my love of movies, and I thought often of the cinematography course at BCC. The class didn’t touch screenplays, but by 2022, I felt ready to try. I read two books, Screenwriting 101: Mastering the Art of Story, by Angus Fletcher, and Save the Cat!, by Blake Snyder. I also listened to audio versions of the great detective writers, such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, because I wanted to try my hand at crime fiction.

The “University of YouTube”

I watched a lot of YouTube videos. Search on “screenwriting” and you’ll be overwhelmed, although the Film Courage channel has some of the best.

I’ve always learned by doing, and so I dived into researching, outlining, and composing my first screenplay, titled Doomer, featuring a millennial-generation detective modeled loosely on Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. (I’ve lately been working on a fourth version of the screenplay, which has evolved away from that original vision.)

More on my first steps toward my first screenplay later. If you’d like to follow my story, please subscribe to my blog and comment below.

Thumbnail image: Cacophony – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5