For our first week in class, we did a writing exercise and was tasked to select one of the three stories to further develop and polish it. I came up with my story titled “Odyssey”.
Logline: A family is tossed into chaos when they realized they are not the only ones on earth.
Story pitch: Set in a dystopian Earth in 1989, the world has ended and only one family survives on the planet. Robert and Linda are parents to Jennifer, a 16 year-old girl and they reside in a self-sustaining pod that used to be a military submarine. Robert though loving, has always been the more paranoid one of the couple, making sure to protect both his wife and daughter and hence, never allowing Jennifer to step beyond the borders of their home. Linda, a gentle and loving wife and mother compliments by being the one who showers her all her love onto Jennifer and usually the peace maker between both the father and daughter.
Born into the world as the last baby on earth and potentially living near a radiation site, her parents have sworn never to open their doors to the world. On Jennifer’s 16th birthday, she wishes upon a comet flying by but soon realizes that it crashes when the impact of the comet destroys her house and she blacks out. After regaining consciousness, her parents are in a state of panic and chaos, worried that they might die from exposure to the radiation. While tussling as to what to do next, the 3 of them notice a figure approaching them chills run down their spine.
Detailed story: In the year 1989, one family survives on a post-war earth. Jennifer, a girl who was born at the end of the war, is turning 16. Residing in a washed up military submarine all her life, her parents, though loving, were always paranoid, reluctant and firm on not going beyond the doors because of the potential exposure to radiation left by the war. Growing curiouser each day, Jennifer longs for a life beyond the walls of the submarine. As Jennifer stays up on the eve of her birthday to wait for midnight, she sits by the window looking at the stars that fill the night sky, and cannot begin to imagine how life outside could be bad. She attempts to count the number of stars in the sky and notices one in particular beginning to move across the sky. It was something she had read in books but never actually seen before and so quickly shuts her eyes and makes a wish. As she fix her gaze on that moving star, she realizes that the star was getting closer and before she knew it, she sees it hit the ground a few kilometers away. The ground shakes and the last thing she remembers seeing is the dust cloud that hits her window and house. She blacks out.
She wakes up to the calling of her name and sees her parents’ worried faces. She looks up and sees the sky, the beautiful sky filled with the twinkling stars. She hears her parents’ voices and the state of panic in it and realizes that they are out in the open. Confusion and frustration enters their speech as they tussle and figure out what they should do. While they were arguing, Jennifer suddenly realizes a creature in unfamiliar attire creeping slowly towards the family. The family is speechless for a moment and Robert fends the creature off while Jennifer and Laura scramble to wear their protection suits. The creature attempts to communicate but ends up being misunderstood by the paranoid and heightened Robert who lunges at him, thinking that the creature was going to attack. In desperation, the creature links both its mind and Jennifer’s together by telepathy, revealing what had happened and its intentions. Jennifer yells for her father to stop upon seeing what had actually happened. Jennifer communicates to her parents that like them, it is the last one on its planet, cursed and bound to die but when Jennifer made that wish, his planet started recharging and charting a path to earth. Robert stops the tussling and releases the creature. Unsure of what to do next, he rests his head on Linda’s shoulders. Jennifer hugs the creature, giving it the comfort it deserves.
Looking around, Jennifer decides that the place that she grew up in all her life is no longer livable and what they need to do now is to move on. With a newfound friend, goal and renewed hope, Jennifer rallies them all together, in search of a new place they can call home. They gather everything that they need, and as they set off into the night with a million stars filling the sky, Jennifer thought about how lucky she was to be alive, even if earth was in ruins.
However, on top of that, we were tasked to pair up with someone in class and swop stories, to write the script for our partner’s story that has an argument. For this part of the task, I paired up with Najiha. The link to her story is in the link below.
So here is the script I did for her story.