Before writing my debut novel, Control; Alt; Delete: Dr. Stundel’s Program To Reboot Your Dangerous Teen, I’d never envisioned myself ever being a novelist. No way. Not me. That was well beyond my perceived capabilities. So, how was it that I ended up here?
Simply put, it was a story that evolved. It began as one form that achieved greater heights than I ever expected, only to slip away into the silent void of just another pdf sitting on my hard drive. I could have just let it be, like the other stories that I’ve written over the years that lay in wait hoping to one day be resurrected or extinguished by the right click of an Empty Trash oblivion.
You might be asking yourself, what is Control; Alt; Delete: Dr. Stundel’s Program To Reboot Your Dangerous Teen, or why should I care about it or who wrote it and what he has to say about any of it? At least, that’s what I’m projecting onto you, the reader. But if you’re still with me, I hope that the story of how I turned my multiple award-winning screenplay, which never saw the light of day as a feature film, into a self-published book and the journey I’m about to embark on, will in someway pass along any insight and inspiration (and some obvious self-promotion), well, then it might just be worth the read.
Now that I got that out of the way.
After graduating from college with a film degree, and feeling that I had a calling for storytelling, I decided to focus on screenwriting. Eventually, my wife and I made it out to LA. When I wasn’t working my day job in duplication/post-production, I was writing. And as you probably guessed, most of these scripts were varying degrees of garbage––but even as I state this, the voice at the back of my head won’t fully admit to it––ah, the lies we tell ourselves.
Eventually, I got the nerve to send a few scripts into screenwriting contests. Only one script made it beyond the first round, where it stalled. As before, I convinced myself to believe I was good enough to continue, so I persevered. I read all the screenwriting books by Syd Field, Christopher Vogler, Linda Seger, John Truby, Michael Hauge, Blake Snyder, Robert McKee… I even read The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri–multiple times! I read screenplays, and had a subscription to Script magazine. I did all that shit with the hope I’d figure out how to crack the magic code on how to write a GREAT SCRIPT.
As I discovered, there is no magic code, just rules, that are more like malleable guidelines that can be bent or ignored if you have a good reason. So, with a general understanding of what I imagined a good(ish) script could be, I stumbled onto an idea I considered interesting. It’s been a while, so the details are a little foggy, but I recall watching an episode of The Maury Povich talk show (Yes! Before the dawn of social media), which featured topics like, “HELP, my TEENAGER is OUT OF CONTROL!” If you’re old enough to remember the show, it was a common shtick: angry young adults who defied authority and exhibited self-destructive, dangerous behavior.
I thought, “Hey, maybe there’s a story in that?” Like a sci-fi “The Stepford Wives” sort of thing. I went with that version of the premise and wrote a couple of drafts. It became about a teen named Eddie, who noticed how some of the more delinquent students at his high school were suddenly acting differently––transformed into the idealized version of what a parent would want their teenager to be.
I named it Control; Alt; Delete. It was to be a sci-fi, horror/thriller.
Or was it?
Wouldn’t you know, I scrapped that approach to it. Had I kept with it, who knows? Maybe things would have turned out a lot differently. That’s just it, you can’t try to get all Nostradamus with this stuff because you can’t predict the “logical” choice in this industry. In this case, I went with my gut, and my gut was telling me to lean less into it as a sci-fi thriller and more into it as a satire with a dash of Science Fiction (lowercase science fiction). Tonally, it would be as if Bong Joon Ho the director of Parasite was to take a swing at it––this was before I even knew who Bong Joon Ho was.
There was this “producer” who had read the earlier second draft and expressed an interest in seeing a “newer” draft. Instead of presenting him with a shinier and improved version, I unveiled the off-kilter creature with warts and all, to which he immediately passed.
That was a bummer, and I questioned if I had made a mistake. But as my gut was saying, I connected to this version, which touched on ideas like self-identity vs being defined by others, the fear of the unknown, groupthink, and expert bias. It was a collection of rather lofty concepts for what was essentially a John Hughes high school movie if it were a black comedy. Ground-breaking stuff that had never been done before––Oh, wait, there’s that movie Heathers with Winona Ryder and Christian Slater––that’s a high school black comedy. Okay, it was no reinvention of the wheel, but hopefully, you get my drift.
After committing to this take and doing a few more passes on the script, I was ready to have some reads on it. I discovered online that there were a few screenwriting competitions that provided notes from a professional reader. I concluded it couldn't hurt to get a professional read and see what did, or more importantly, didn’t work. I entered a few contests that provided feedback and some that didn’t, which included the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting––the film industry’s most esteemed competition for screenwriting.
I’m going to hit the fast-forward button on this because, frankly, I don’t recall with precise accuracy how all this went down. What I do remember was the UTTER SHOCK I felt when I got a notice from the Hollywood Nexus Screenwriting Competition that Control; Alt; Delete was the contest winner (I think this was the contest that offered notes). Of all the scripts submitted, I was NUMBER ONE! I couldn’t believe it.
It didn’t seem long after that I received news that Control; Alt; Delete was one of four grand prize winners of the Script P.I.M.P. Screenwriting Competition. I was already mind-boggled by one, but now two. Then I got a notice that Control; Alt; Delete made it into the Quarter Finals of The Nicholl Fellowships (that’s as far as it would go). That was recognition from 3 contests!
From that moment things seemed to move fast and furious. Through a connection that my boss at the time generously shared, I acquired an agent. And with this agent’s help, she landed me a manager. And from there, I quickly got meetings with production companies. Through the Nicholl Fellowships, I was reached out by a well-known producer who was interested in making Control; Alt; Delete.
It was a heady moment in my life. For all the years I questioned what I was doing, and doubted my path, it finally felt like it was all preordained. I was on my way. I broke through and there was no stopping me.
Well, I discovered there’s no “breaking through.” Not in a simplistic, plot-driven world where I control the narrative. Things didn’t turn out as I thought, imagined, or hoped. But there were lessons learned that led me down a different path.
Stay tuned for Part Two!
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