Veronica R. Tabares's Blog, page 2

Time Without Synopsis

Writing a synopsis is not my favorite thing to do. But I buckled down and wrote it this morning, so now I really am officially finished with the Time Without screenplay.

Synopsis

University students Vanessa and Tony play tag in a local park with their four quirky, charismatic daughters. But playtime must end, so the family heads back home.

Meanwhile, in Portland, Oregon, Philip, strangely dressed in a shiny tunic and pants, enters a neighborhood bar at Happy Hour. Feeling out of place, he’s relieved when Douglas Whitfield, a man sitting at the bar, offers to buy him a drink and a meal as a gesture of friendship. But Philip doesn’t drink alcohol, and he’s soon too sloshed to make the long trip back to Seattle. Feeling uncharacteristically guilty, Douglas takes pity on him and lets Philip sleep it off on his couch. A booklet with schematics to a time machine falls out of Philip’s pocket and Douglas realizes his fortune is made.

Vanessa awakes to a changed world. WWII lasted over 50 years, women have no rights, and Tony is in the hospital after a car wreck. And the doctors refuse to let her know how he’s doing since they will only talk to a man.

In the year 3027, Philip realizes something has gone wrong with the timeline. Not only is his city drastically changed, but there is no sign of his beloved wife, Annabel. As a matter of fact, there are no women, anywhere.

Back to Vanessa, where strange things are happening in her head. She sees her world with almost no technology, but she has rogue memories of another world with television and computers. Then she overhears a conversation between her daughters and realizes Audrey, her four-year-old, shares the rogue memories of this other world.

Before she can figure out what is going on, she receives news that Tony, her husband, has died from his injuries. She passes out in shock.

She awakes with all her memories restored. She remembers that she has traveled through time in the past, and realizes something has gone horribly wrong with the timeline. Luckily, she knows the people who control time travel and where to find them.

Vanessa and the girls make their way through the portal to the Department of Temporal Adjustment only to find that in the year 3027 women no longer exist, or children, and it has become the Department of Tropospheric Adjustment. The DTA controls the weather and know nothing about time travel or timelines.

Vanessa convinces Dr. Wilson, who is an avid historian and knows that women once existed, to help. He takes them to the History Room, a stable wormhole where time doesn’t exist, where they run into Erica, who had been Vanessa’s classmate several years before.

Erica joins Vanessa and her daughters, and when they spot Philip escaping through the portal they give chase. When they catch him, he admits that the whole mess was created when he did an unsanctioned jump and left behind blueprints to a time machine that was found by Douglas Whitfield, an unscrupulous man who has used the time machine to change the timeline in ways that guaranteed him wealth and fame.

When Philip finds out these four children are the Rossi sisters, the inventors of the time travel and ancestors to his beloved Annabel, he is mortified as well as in awe. And when the girls realize they can fix the whole mess with a trip to the 1920s, but it would require Philip to serve as bodyguard to the two pre-teen sisters, Becca and Maddie, he swallows his pride and goes.

The trip is a success. Everyone returns to their proper place and time, and the timeline is healed. Philip and Annabel start their family. Erica and Roderick Wilson enjoy their family. Tony and Vanessa watch their four girls build a human pyramid in the living room.

Which is when they find out the two youngest, Zoe and Audrey, now have the ability to fly.

Nominated for Best Comedy Screenplay!

Distracted by Murder

Distracted by Murder screenplay!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Time Without adaptation

Just finished adapting my novel, Time Without, into a screenplay!

Novels are much, much longer than screenplays, so at first I was worried I’d have to cut so much out that it wouldn’t make sense.

But now that I’ve finished the rewrites, I can see it works! I love it!

There’s a very happy smile on my face right now.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Aliens vs Ghosts wins!

Distracted by Murder named Semi Finalist

Department of Temporal Adjustment screenplay wins!

Adapting my Time Without novel

I had an epiphany about a month ago that it’s time to adapt my novel, Time Without, into a screenplay.

I’ve been working on it for about a week now, and I was extremely happy when I finally got the first 30 pages done.

Until it became glaringly obvious that I had a problem. If the conversion keeps at the same pace, the screenplay will end up being over 200 pages long.

Yikes, that won’t work at all!

Luckily, last night my sleeping brain got busy and came up with a solution. It realized that there is a whole section I can cut without damaging the main story.

Not that I want to cut that section. It has one character in it who appears nowhere else in the story, and it explains why everything is set in motion.

Even so, the section isn’t 100% necessary for the story, and leaving it out will get the story into the action much quicker.

I guess a writer must do what a writer must do. And this writer must cut twenty-six of the thirty pages I’ve adapted.

Unfortunately, I’m probably going to have to find twice that much more to cut to keep the screenplay from becoming a bloated mess.

But I’m not really complaining. I would much rather it be me that makes the decisions about what gets cut and what gets left in.

And it’s a great way to become reacquainted with the story.