[JULIA MENDENHALL]

Is today, Saturday, August 5, our last zoom class meeting? I apologize for the dumb question, but I don’t want to miss the last class of this Rewrite class, which has been greatly helpful to me and I’ve learned so much!

Thank you for all,

Julia Mendenhall

[JULIA MENDENHALL]

What I learned doing this assignment is I am already seeing the project in whole new way, loving this rewriting, and feeling less overwhelmed.

PITCH:

A. genre: drama

B. title: THE WELL OF LONELINESS

C. HIGH CONCEPT: This limited series is based on the first LGBTQ novel written in English, which was banned as obscene in a famous 1928 trial, whereupon all copies of the novel were ordered to be confiscated and “burned in the King’s furnace.”

D. main conflict: The main character, Lady Stephen Gordon, is a young, butch lesbian in the deeply homophobic early twentieth century, trying to be understood, accepted, and loved for who she is.

E. her transformational journey: from suicidal self-hatred to self-compassion, self-acceptance, and living happily ever after.

F. opposition/main antagonists: early 20th century homophobia; her mother; newspaper editor James Douglas’s crusade to get this novel banned; the trial Judge; and Stephen Gordon herself, her own internalized homophobia, her alcoholism, and her fear of being herself.

a rough logline: When a young woman writer, Lady Stephen Gordon, is exiled from her English manor home by her homophobic mother for having an affair with a married woman, she is on the brink of suicide, and realizes that she must write the first English novel about love between women in order to stem the condemnation and persecution of homosexuals in the early 20<sup style=”background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;”>th</sup> century. This limited series is based on Radclyffe Hall’s notorious novel, and the true story of its infamous trial, where the novel was ruled to be obscene, and all copies were ordered to be confiscated and “burned in the King’s furnace.”

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by  JULIA MENDENHALL.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by  JULIA MENDENHALL.

[JULIA MENDENHALL]

AGREE, in which case, you Reply to this topic and include three things at the top of the page:

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[JULIA MENDENHALL]

I grew up in Washington DC, and its diverse suburb, Rockville, Maryland, and fell in love with writing and stories early on in life. Although I wrote fiction prolifically throughout my teen years and was the award-winning editor and film critic of my high school newspaper, I didn’t go to college at the traditional age because we had no money. Instead, I worked (over many years) as a waitress, a balloon delivery person, a Wall Street trader, an academic writing tutor, and a chef, caterer, and restaurant mgr/owner to pay my way through college. After earning my BA in English, I pursued a PhD in English Literature and taught First-Year Writing, English Lit, Women’s Studies, and Film Studies classes at Temple University, in Philadelphia, for seventeen years. Although I loved teaching and analyzing films, I had an intense yearning to tell stories about female misfits seeking self-actualization. I have completed one screenplay but have many ideas for more…and I am excited to get writing for this class, the first that I’ve taken with ScreenwritingU!! I am attracted to this class because it seems to have the Anne Lamott method of “shitty first drafts”–just write, it doesn’t matter if it’s bad. I also use that technique and I embrace it wholeheartedly–so if you read my assignments–they are going to be really “shitty.” That might be what’s really unusual about me. Thanks for reading!