Screenwriter Backstory
Hi. I’m Jeff Goldstein, and welcome to Screenwriter’s Backstory.
Sometimes a screenplay starts with an actual story.
The Vampire Russell didn’t.
In 2015, I went on a screenwriting retreat in Costa Rica, and one of the exercises was to write scenes exploring mood and tone.
So I wrote several completely unrelated scenes.
One was a dusty, deserted gas station in Alabama in the 1970s with a heroin addict shooting up.
Another involved children at a 1930s dance marathon in Ohio.
I wrote about a boy from the wrong side of the tracks who was fascinated by a little pageant princess.
I wrote a scene in a high-society café in London during the Blitz.
And another was pure 1950s New York film noir—a private detective searching for someone.
The scenes were a success, and filed away.
Years later, I looked at all these scenes and thought: How do I put any of this together?
That’s when the story started revealing itself.
The man at the gas station became Brandon, someone who had spent his entire life searching for his lost love named Molly.
The private detective also became Brandon, trying to find her.
And then I thought about a vampire character I had seen on television and said, “I want a vampire in this story.”
That vampire became Russell.
Russell finds Brandon at the gas station and makes him a bargain: let me drink your blood, and by sunrise I’ll tell you what happened to Molly.
That gave me the narrative question: Well Brandon ever find Molly?
Th separate scenes I had written years apart in time and place, became flashbacks.
And then I found the central mystery:
Why had Russell been following Brandon all these years?/ What did he have against him?
How did Brandon loose Molly?
Once I answered those questions, the screenplay stopped being just a vampire story.
It became a story about obsession, revenge, lost love, family, and the things people carry with them for a lifetime.
And that taught me something I still believe about writing:
Sometimes a screenplay doesn’t begin with a story… it begins with pieces. And the writer’s job is to discover how those pieces belong together.
Jeff Goldstein
Award-Winning Screenwriter
Next Week on Screenwriter Backstory...
NEXT WEEK:
Episode 4 — The Scene That Changed Everything
The screenplay was finished. It was good. But something was missing.
One conversation made me realize the stakes weren’t big enough.
Next week, I’ll tell you how one change turned a personal choice into a battle for the fate of the universe.
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I’d love to hear your thoughts. If this article sparked an idea or reminded you of one of your own, leave a comment. I read every one.