Containing, Transforming, Transcending the Story: Notes from a Scriptwriter’s Journey

What is an unfilmatized film story? How and where does it exist? What does it imply for a scriptwriter to live and work with an increasing amount of untold stories? I reflected upon this during a period when I had a broken leg. I spent more time than usual at home and took on the task of sorting old scripts. Why was it that my unrealized scripts were so much more vivid in my mind than filmatized ones? Some characters were as intimate as close relatives, only that nobody (but me) knew about them. I realized I felt sorrow and guilt for having failed at "giving birth" to them, even though the reasons often were beyond my control. Facing these feelings, my curiosity awakened. If I am not mad, why do the stories persist? Could it be the Zeigarnik effect that says unfinished tasks are more easily remembered than completed ones? Did fictive characters form attachments to their author, and the author develop parental love towards them? Rejection then - a form of traumatic loss? The questions that intrigued me most though, were: Where do the untold stories exist? How can they enter reality? Brooding over stacks of old scripts, I began to see them as organic material: paper, once trees, now mouldering like fallen leaves in (wooden) drawers; compost… A new view took form, and a new project, created as a game into which I invited a stage art researcher and a photographer. An artistic project itself became a process of regaining faith in the creative process.

Keywords: Creative failure ; Creative practice ; Creative process ; Scriptwriting ; Unmade film ; Unrealised scripts