Movie Script For Lost Betrayal

Posted on July 16, 2017 Updated on October 23, 2017

It’s been three years since my western romance, Lost Betrayal, was released by Solstice Publishing. Since then my paranormal short story, Winds On Indian Mound, and my children’s picture book, Francine The Workin’ Stock Cowgirl, came out last year.

The next project that I was working on since 2015 was The Searching Place. It’s a romance about a best-selling romance author and cowgirl that’s down on her luck when she meets a farrier with a bit of a past in a small town. That project, however, has been put on hold.

I’ve always wanted to write stories for Lifetime and Hallmark, and have always thought Lost Betrayal would make the perfect movie for them or RFD-TV. With a disaster, a budding cowboy romance, and a lost horse how can it not be the perfect story line for a great movie?

When the opportunity came up to write the script for Lost Betrayal, I jumped at the chance even though I had never tackled writing a movie script. After all, I know the story better than anyone!

I’m currently a little over ten thousand words in and I have to say it’s a totally different experience than writing a book. In some aspects, it’s a lot more labor intensive in that you have to think out all the logistics for the props.

For instance, if a male character is wearing a cowboy hat you can’t just list “Cowboy Hat” or your hero might be wearing one of those crunched up little wannabe beach cowboy hats. Lord knows, we can’t have that! No, you have to specifically state, “10x Resistol black felt” cowboy hat, or “Bangora straw cowboy hat with a cattleman crease”. Every real cowgirl knows the hat and crease better be authentic or the whole story is ruined!

Another thing I’m learning is that dialogue is center stage. That’s what drives each scene, if you think about it. With a book, while you do want to show instead of tell, you’re not always relying as heavily on dialogue to tell the story. With a movie, you are.

One thing I do like about script writing is the characters. You have to have great details for age and appearance for the people that line up the actors for the movies. For me, I’m visually imagining the actor that’s playing the part in order to do that and it makes those characters in the story come to life even more.

It’s been a challenge being out of my comfort zone but I’ve enjoyed it tremendously. Screen writing is definitely something I want to try more of and I hope I get the opportunity to do so. In the meantime, I’ll be working on finishing the script and then rounds of edits.

After the movie script, I plan on self publishing some short stories and seeing how that goes. Stay tuned!

UPDATE OCTOBER 23RD — Only 2 more scenes to write before editing begins! Also, my newest children’s book, Pedro’s Problemo about a Chihuahua thqt has to ride a horse to prove he’s royalty from Mexico, is releasing with Dingbat Publishing next month!