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First Screenplay

Hello,

I am new to this field of work and have always wanted to write a screenplay. Within a year's time I have been able to work towards a nice DSLR camera and have begun to make short comedy sketches for my SnapChat stories for others to enjoy.
Here's a recent one about the shittiness of post-production in Hollywood: https://youtu.be/stj-vs7YS00

I want to start writing a drama screenplay with mixed comedy elements that involve the following themes:
-Dissociative Disorder
-The conflict between happiness and wealth
-Logic vs. Heart

I hope to integrate these into a story of a young man in college struggling with the intense field of aerospace engineering and the process of finding internships and jobs and questioning his future goals. He has many talents in music, art, photography and discovers his love for acting.

He has faced a traumatic break-up experience early on in college and since then has drove him to disconnect emotionally from the world. He has strange thoughts and practices manipulating others with false charms and acts that he puts on to represent himself differently to others. He plays off of his own ego and pretends to have a sense of vanity and self-obsession to differentiate himself from the robotic-like personalities he faces in the engineering field. He considers them drones for him to toy with.

As a self-help and out of his own amusement he stumbles upon acting classes being taught downtown weekly and decides to attend. He discovers his derealization from the world provides him with a rather good acting talent and decides to continue with these classes. (Note: the instructor mentions frequently that acting is a great way for people reconnect with their feelings and give them practice in expressing their emotions where bottling feelings is a dangerous way of living. This intrigues the character where he sees it as a beacon of hope for being able to genuinely feeling again).

The emphasis of the themes will mostly be on:
Engineering / Acting
The wealthy girl of his dreams he lost his emotions to / a new simple hippy girl who doesnt want a wealthy future but happiness instead
Choosing his final work place offer (low pay short hours or high pay extensive hours)
His hobbies in the arts as an escape from the engineering world
Self questioning of mental health


I need help deciding how to go about this project, such as what major and minor events to include as the character's low-points and climax and what sort of ending to include. Not sure if this can be a simple 30-minute short film or what length... I'd appreciate any input, and I can share other ideas I had, thanks!
 
These are very solid elements to build a story around. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise - there's a good movie in there.

Thematically, given the elements you laid out, I really just see one thing as the beating heart of a story like this: tackling the question of what it means to create a good life. Overcoming the dissociative disorder becomes the arc of your main character's transformation; it's that transformation that allows him move forward to the "happy ending" (the good life). Each of the other elements (job, love, art, happiness, wealth) create the conflicts that propel the transformation.

If I were writing this I would cling tightly to the story of a person struggling and triumphing in (once again) connecting to people. That is a universal tale of the human condition. Let the rest be optional, or at least flexible (i.e. engineering vs art, wealthy girl vs hippie girl, etc).

This doesn't answer your questions about the the major plot points, climax, ending etc., but you may be putting the cart before the horse at this point. If you focus on the transformation then your guy can actually take the job or not, be an actor or an engineer, end up with either girl, or neither girl (maybe the most interesting result), or a mix of all these and you'll still have a solid story.

All that said, there's no right way to go about it. There are as many ways to get to the destination as there are people taking the journey. Good luck.
 
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