Page 10 of All That Glitters

Chapter seven

Boot Camp for Flaky Writers

The official Tony Harding Screenwriting Boot Camp began that morning with self-appointed Drill Instructor Debbie Campbell establishing the ground rules over coffee and gas station donuts.

“Okay, listen up, recruit,” she said, pulling out a small notebook and clicking her pen. “Here’s how this is going to work. You will write every day. Every. Day. Weekends, holidays, hangover days; I don’t care if you’re struck by the plague. You write. I have ten bucks riding on this.”

“What if I’m literally dying?” Tony asked, taking a bite of his chocolate glazed donut.

“You can die after you finish the script. I’ll even write a nice obituary: ‘Here lies Tony Harding, who finally finished something.’” She made a note in her book.

“Rule number two: I am your shadow. Where you go, I go. If you’re writing, I’m watching.

Think of me as your exceptionally cute, very persistent guardian angel. ”

“Guardian angel or warden?” He grinned.

“Both,” she said cheerfully. “Rule number three: No excuses will be accepted unless they involve actual bloodshed. Your own bloodshed. Other people’s blood doesn’t count.”

“What about—”

“Nope. No what-abouts. The beauty of this system is its simplicity.” She tapped her pen against her lips thoughtfully. “Oh, and rule number four: for every page you write, you get one Tony Point. For every day you skip writing, you lose five Tony Points.”

“What do Tony Points get me?”

She leaned back in her chair, a mischievous smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “That’s to be determined. But trust me, you’re going to want them.”

Their primary training ground became the beach.

Tony would sit with his back against the sea wall, scrawling as fast as he could on his yellow legal pad.

Debbie would lie on a towel a few feet away, a book resting on her stomach and sunglasses on.

She might have looked like she was relaxing, but Tony quickly learned she was a watchdog, ever ready to pounce on any perceived slacking.

“This scene needs some action,” Tony muttered to himself one afternoon, tapping his pen against his teeth. “Maybe Marcus bites someone. But not in a gross-out way. Make it in a sexy, vampire-y way that makes teenage girls swoon...”

He trailed off, his gaze drifting down the beach to where a heated women’s volleyball game was in full swing. The players were college-aged, bronzed and athletic, and way more interesting than anything on his legal pad. He watched for a moment, a small smile creeping across his face.

“HARDING!”

His head snapped back around like he’d been electrocuted. Debbie was sitting up, peering at him over the top of her sunglasses, her expression stern enough to make a Marine drill instructor cower.

“Eyes on the page. You can watch sweaty girls jump around on your own time.”

“I was just looking for inspiration!” he protested. “Maybe I could have my vampires play volleyball.”

“Is your main female character a five-foot-ten blonde with a killer spike and legs for days?”

Tony glanced back at the game, then at his notes. “Not yet. But that’s a great idea.”

“It’s a horrible idea.” She lay back down. “Now back to writing, recruit.”

Twenty minutes later, inspiration struck like lightning. Tony suddenly bolted upright, nearly knocking over his water bottle in his excitement.

“Oh! Oh, what if—” He started scribbling frantically, his handwriting becoming increasingly illegible as the ideas poured out.

“What if the initiation isn’t just about being turned?

What if they have to complete these increasingly ridiculous challenges?

Like, the first one is drinking a beer without using their hands to open the can.

They have to use their fangs. And make the last challenge something outrageously epic and vampire-y. ”

Debbie peered over her book, watching him with the exasperation of someone watching an energetic puppy discover its own tail. She thought about it for a moment. “That’s actually not terrible.”

“I think I’ll use it.”

“Good. Then, write. Write, write, write.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he grinned, turning back to his legal pad.

Their office often moved to the Ocean View Pub, the dive bar with the sun-drenched deck that had become their unofficial headquarters.

The place had character, meaning its planks and benches smelled like spilled beer and sand, tracked in by surfers over the decades.

Tony would camp out at a sticky table in the corner, his yellow legal pad surrounded by beer-soaked coasters and fried calamari crumbs.

Debbie would sit opposite him, nursing an iced tea and supposedly reading a magazine, but her eyes would track his every move like a secret service agent watching for threats.

A pretty waitress came by one afternoon to drop off a basket of fries, her smile lingering on Tony just a beat longer than strictly professional. Tony’s eyes followed her as she walked away.

“Ahem.”

He looked back to find Debbie tapping her finger on the cover of her magazine, the look in her eyes suggesting imminent bodily harm.

“Something interesting over there?” she asked, her voice deceptively sweet, like honey with a razor blade hidden inside.

He nodded towards the roof of the shack-like pub. “Just checking out the roof.”

Debbie didn’t buy it for a second. “Is the ‘roof’ and her short shorts going to write your script?”

“Probably not.”

“Then write, Harding. “Your vampires aren’t going to decapitate themselves.”

He turned back to his legal pad, but not before she caught the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

The truth was, he was starting to enjoy their little routine.

Having Debbie there, keeping him accountable, making him laugh, catching him when his attention wandered, it was like having a personal cheerleader and drill instructor rolled into one.

Twenty minutes later, she leaned over his shoulder to read what he’d written, her hair brushing his shoulder as she peered at the screen.

The faint, fresh scent of her shampoo and suntan lotion filled his senses, making him forget for a moment what century he was living in, much less what he was writing about.

“This is really good,” she said, pointing at a particular exchange between two of his characters. “I like the way the dialog pops. It feels natural, but in an interesting way.”

“So, keep popping the dialog?”

She nodded. “And stop watching the roof’s legs.”

They did the coffee shop circuit around town, Tony fueled by caffeine and a pathological fear of disappointing his drill instructor.

He’d discovered that different venues inspired different aspects of his story.

The hipster coffee place with the exposed brick walls was perfect for writing the dramatic tension between the vampire brothers.

The sunny café near the beach worked best for romantic scenes.

And the 24-hour donut shop was ideal for comedy, probably because everything seemed funnier on a sugar high.

One day at Grind Coffee, Tony was writing furiously, lost in his supernatural world of frat parties and bloodlust. The familiar sounds of espresso machines and indie music faded into the background as he fell deeper into the story.

Then he hit a wall with a plot point he hadn’t considered earlier.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling tiles, waiting for inspiration to strike.

After thirty seconds of stillness, a single, perfectly aimed sugar packet bounced off his forehead. He looked across the table to find Debbie grinning at him, another sugar packet in her hand ready to throw in case he didn’t get the message from the first one.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he said.

Her grin broadened. “Immensely.”

A second later, he was busy scribbling away at his script.

One crisp morning, Tony and Debbie were jogging on the boardwalk, the sunrise painting the sky in shades of pink and gold that made everything look like a postcard.

Despite Debbie’s initial grumbling over being dragged out of bed at dawn, these early morning runs had become a fun routine.

And Tony enjoyed getting to play drill instructor for a change.

“So I’m thinking,” he said between breaths, “what if the rival fraternity isn’t just a bunch of jerks? What if they’re... I don’t know, something supernatural too?”

“Like what?” Debbie asked, her ponytail bouncing as she kept pace beside him.

“I haven’t figured that out yet. Werewolves seem too obvious. What else is there?”

“Mummies? Frankenstein’s monster?” she offered.

They jogged a little further, then Tony came to a sudden stop. “I got it,” he said, fishing the small notepad he now carried everywhere from his shorts pocket. “Zombies.”

“Zombies?” Debbie said, coming to a stop beside him. “Isn’t that a lot of dead people for one campus?”

He shook his head. “No. It’s perfect. They’ll blend right in with the rest of the students, you know, with their blank, soulless stares. The professors will just think they’re hungover students and ignore them.”

Debbie smiled. “So, now we have The Walking Dead meets Twilight meets Revenge of the Nerds.”

Tony looked at her. “That’s actually perfect. I’m using that as my logline.”

“I was kidding,” she said, but he was already writing it down.

The boot camp often ended back at Tony’s duplex, which had undergone a dramatic transformation over the past month.

The place was still a mess, but now the pizza boxes and empty soda cans shared space with stacks of script pages, character notes taped to the walls, and a whiteboard covered with plot diagrams.

Debbie had claimed the lumpy couch as her reading station, where she would curl up with her bare feet tucked under her, a red pen in one hand and Tony’s latest pages in the other. She’d appointed herself not just his taskmaster, but his first reader, his sounding board, his in-house script doctor.