Not Your Protagonist

One of my writing niches is mental health and its impact on individuals, meaning my works tend to end up depressing. I fall into deep rabbit holes on different mental health conditions, their impact, and how individuals deal with it, in order to write my characters struggle and journey accurately. However, I wanted to challenge myself by writing something that didn’t end up sad for once. A story that was lighthearted and fun throughout while still having the typical bumps of a hero’s journey. The actual writing of the script wasn’t as hard as I was worried it was going to be, which was a huge surprise to me. 

The logline for my script is as follows: A self aware hero fights against her creator in order to escape the cycle of storytelling she’s stuck in. It sounds a wee bit depressing but bear with me! The characters are meant to represent ones we've seen in a story: the leader, the goofy sidekick, the brains, playing into the “story” of the play while still having their own flair. One thing I wanted my script to do was push the boundaries of the audience. You’re used to being bystanders of the story, simply watching it unfold with characters unaware of your existence, but I wanted you to become a part of the story in a way. Blend the world of the stage play and the real world a little bit. 

I didn’t have a clue who my audience was when I was writing this script, and I didn’t have any questions that I wanted to guide the audience to think about while reading, because I was mainly writing it for my own enjoyment. The whole script includes my terrible humor that I laughed at while I was writing. It’s a script that I’ve had the idea of since summer that went from being a short story, to a book, to finally a script. I wanted to play with the rules of theatre with a non-typical story that was a fun experience, while including the themes of identity and independence. 

A large inspiration of this script are movies from my childhood, like Beauty and the Beast, and fourth wall breaking media, like Fleabag. Another thing of inspiration was my favorite childhood video game, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, which I based the story’s worldbuilding around. These three things together caused a chaotic script that pushed me as a writer to think outside the box. Think deeper about the world, characters, and relationships without my typical mental health lens. This script changed me as a writer as it unlocked my creativity, and allowed me to make mistakes and learn from them in order to grow.