A behind-the-scenes look (otherwise known as Author Insights) at some of the author’s favorite moments.

OUCH
Author: Sometimes things don’t go the way you hope they will. My foray into motherhood was one of those times.  I wanted to rejoice in my opportunity to become a mother. Instead, it felt like I had fallen from a cliff. The scene below is how I envisioned what it felt like to experience the tragic “interruptions” in my life. Over and over again, I kept returning to this imagery. I couldn’t shake that feeling of helplessly falling toward an inevitable collision with the hard, unforgiving ground below. Kind of like when you trip on the sidewalk while your arms are full of groceries. I knew that moment of impact was coming, but there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

 My Movie Memoir Screenplay Novel, by Betts Keating
Chapter 3 – Ouch

OPEN: NYC APARTMENT/BEDROOM

CAMERA HOLDS on young woman asleep.

SLOW DISSOLVE TO DREAM SEQUENCE
(in woman’s imagination – exaggerated)

YOUNG WOMAN standing on the edge of a cliff. Before her stretches amazing open space. In the distance she sees a NY city scape blended together with an expanse of Blue Ridge Mountains (weird combo of both “homes”). Backdrop contains gorgeous blue sky with white puffy clouds. It’s breath taking. She is smiling. She stands there for a while enjoying her view. Her foot slips. She regains her balance.

VOICE-OVER/YOUNG WOMAN
(gasp) That was close.

Suddenly what was once a perfect dream quickly turns into a nightmare. Her foot slips a second time and this time she can’t regain her balance. She starts falling, plummeting down towards the ground at an incredible speed. She is going so fast everything in the background is one giant blur. Her clothes and hair are flying upwards from the force of the wind. Her arms and legs are flailing in all directions reaching out for anything that will stop this ride. She is falling, falling, falling. Suspense builds and builds. Suddenly, she hits the ground with a giant SMACK! It replays over and over again three, four, five times. Smack! Smack! Smack!

CUT TO: View from above as if looking down from sky. Camera moves back slowly in a spiral away from the woman left lifeless on the ground. Her body is sprawled in all kinds of weird directions. She is obviously in great pain, but not dead. Oh, no, not dead.

VOICE-OVER/YOUNG WOMAN
Ouch.

After five utopian years in NYC, I hit bottom and I hit it hard. It felt like I had fallen from the top of a cliff. This first obstacle for me, this first measure of brokenness, came at what was supposed to be a time of joy. I was about to give birth to my first child, a daughter. It should have been wonderful. It should have been full of shiny light, and angels singing, and mother earth opening up her arms to welcome me. It should have been a lot of things, but it wasn’t…

©2016 Betts Keating. All rights reserved.

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Read more of Betts Keating’s story in her memoir, My Movie Memoir Screenplay Novel, available for purchase at amazon.com.

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