Idea "Sins of the Father"

Better have a depressing and evil dark ending.
Something that makes you walk out to the car and vomit before staring listlessly on the drive home.

Make sure to include a little sodomy and animal torture, too.
But only a little though.

Are these ideas for short films or are you trying to write features??

I think it's a compelling idea...father/son relationships are full of potential. Add crime and punishment and you've loads to work with.

What do suppose the father and son would be physically doing while the nature of their relationship is revealed? How are they spending this last weekend together?

Semiazas said:

I'm aware I'm having a lot of ideas, I'll get to writing next week when I have six weeks off of school.
This one involves a couple of characters, a son and his father.
The father has just been found guilty of some form of crime and gets a chance to see his son one time before he goes to prison, what starts as the son pitying his father turns into the father expressing distaste for how his son has turned out and the son beginning to hate his father for the crime and all manner of other things that have happened between them in the past.

"BLOOD BOUND"
I have an idea.
It's about two brothers who meet up after several years apart. Naturally, all begins kindly but, of course, as things are mentioned (some real, some fictitious) about the things they have done in their time away from each other and their views on their family, it all gets quite venomous.
Just need a conclusion and a few things to use. Some most likely ridiculous and melodramatic fictitious creations for them to use against each other.

Thoughts?

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Sounds like you might merge these two. I might have the father show up at, say, the mother's funeral and have them work through the issues. Many dark endings are just cop outs. It can show the writer lacks the talent or the interest to handle their characters' emotional growth. It's easy to let things fall to chaos; the real challenge is picking up the pieces to create something meaningful. I used to think dark endings were 'cool' until an instructor challenged me. It doesn't mean the ending is happy flowery, but there is an emotional resolution with understanding and change.

Many dramas follow the lives of family members and the impact of events present and past had on them-- American Beauty, Ordinary People, etc. The endings are not always pleasant but there is a sense of growth and closure. As my instructor told me, "If you focused on the family then the family barn burns down, what do the family members do the next day? Any hack can write the burning, a good writer takes up with the next day." Hey, I thought I crafted a good burning! But writing the 'days after' really made me look at my characters, which led me to re-write the first part also. After the re-write I could end with the 'burning' because the characters now had a sense of their next steps without my needing to explain. It strengthened my writing by forcing me to really develop solid characters.

You have some powerful themes in your ideas. Just be sure to develop good character arcs that allow your characters to grow and come to closure as a result of their encounters.

Murdock said:

Are these ideas for short films or are you trying to write features??

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They'll be shorts, not features

Here's a pretty good father/son film; nowhere near as dark and depressing as your concept, but definitely a goody. BTW, Jackie Gleasons last film.



Nothing in Common

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091653/

Semiazas said:

They'll be shorts, not features

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You could also check out some Chekov, or just about any "classic" Russian author. Seems father son relationships played heavily in a lot of those stories. I say Chekov because he has a lot of short stories.

Semiazas said:

They'll be shorts, not features

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You cannot develop your characters for a father-son conflict in a short film. The conflict would have to be resolved at the end, but how could you make a resolution convincing? Your alternative might be to trivialize the conflict. Otherwise you end up with a self-mockery.

Charles Bukowsky wrote funny short stories about conflict situations, but this proves my point that personal human conflict in a short story usually becomes a comedy.

Having said that, I contradict myself. I have written a short story that is not comedy and that could be a short film, but it folds in a long time-span and a father-son conflict. There is only the son disapproving of the father, not the other way around. Although I did not include the father disapproving of the son, that might be possible to be incorporated. If the father also disapproves of the son, that introduces a revenge motive for the son.

The nature of the disapproval determines the main motivations of the characters which in turn determine how the conflict will be resolved.