The excellent new ABC series "FlashForward" has creator David S. Goyer in the news, and while searching through some old writing I didn't know I still had, I found this.
In July 1998 (back when everyone was still saying "the World Wide Web" and I was writing in WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS), TNT and New Line held a contest entitled the Rough Cut Screenplay Challenge. Goyer wrote the first few pages of a science-fiction spec script that would introduce characters and his world, then anyone could continue the story by submitting the next 10 pages of what happens next.
Judges picked the best one to post, and it continued until the end (100-120 pages), when Goyer would wrap up the entire story with a final 5 pages.
I never read the final script (roughcut.com doesn't seem to exist anymore, auto-forwarding to TNT), but I do remember a chance to win a laptop and, even better, collaborate with Goyer.
I was (and still am) a big fan of Goyer because he wrote one of my favorite movies,
Dark City. This was right before
Blade, which came out during the contest.
Reading through my submission, I vaguely remember writing it. I recall the themes I was trying to introduce, along with a trippy twist at the end for the next writer to pick up on. Science fiction was (and is) completely out of my element, which was another reason for wanting to compete.
It wasn't picked by the judges, but I still thought it was pretty good. Certainly better than anything I'm writing now.
Five months after the contest, I began -- but never finished -- my first science fiction script, which incorporated some of the same elements of what I'd introduced (though no time travel).
1998 was a time of prolific writing for me. It was also when I transitioned away from screenplays and into plays, when I'd actually see my stuff produced. If that great time- and moneysuck of gambling and Vegas and poker hadn't overtaken my life, I imagine I would've had a very different life.
Or I'd have a bunch more scripts stuffed in a drawer.
My great return to writing fizzled today, with my missing the deadline for the play workshop contest. So my penance is to convert my old sci-fi script into Final Draft and see if I can remember where I was going with it, and if it's salvageable enough to finish it.
So as I continue my trip down a writerly memory lane (i.e., procrastinating), here's a PDF of
The Blade of Damascus, Goyer's opening combined with my unedited continuation (which begins at page 5). It may seem disconnected because I picked up after someone else's posted pages, which I no longer have.
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