First off, thank you to everyone who has read any of my book chapters
Second, I apologize that I'm slow at getting them completed
Three, if you're here then you may have read the first chapter of "Unwritten Rules", based on the screenplay “Rebekah Anne Bettencourt”.

Music influence: Aselin Debison “Sweet is the Melody”

The storyline has been changed five times now (which is two less than the changes made for “A Window to your heart”). UR is one-part auto-biography and two-parts morality play. “Unwritten Rules”is a kind of a “divine comedy” as it sort of glosses over Eric Stradlin’s senior year of high school and his self-imposed seven levels of hell. It all begins when he runs through the airport, a la an early 80’s movie, to stop his former girlfriend from leaving on a jetplane (sorry, that was not deliberate) and out of his life for forever. He fails and so begins the first level.

The names in the story are taken from musicians:
Eric Stradlin (Izzy Stradlin; Guns n Roses)
Rebekah Bettencourt (Numo Bettencourt; Extreme)

Some time ago, I was a part of the first running the screenplay competition “Project Greenlight”. I entered a script I had just written: “Rebekah Anne Bettencourt”…the first screenplay I ever wrote and I broke every single rule: tenses ran all over the place, too much exposition, and the use of music cues. The plot was basic: teen guy helps girl our of the “evil stepparents” situation but it did not end on a happy note as he was unable to save her in the end.

I tried to re-work it from “evil parents” to “weird parents” angle but there was a lot that wouldn’t work…and the characters were going down the road most traveled. Eight years later I went back and adjusted the main character’s back story and brought it to forefront to explain why he felt the way he did and how that past experience (the loss of his first “true” girlfriend) did some damage on his psyche.

So, what was originally a “Cinderella” type of story turns into something else that now has a more socially conscious plot with a lot of wires being crossed and some soul-crushing events occurring.