GET OUT YOUR POPCORN: Film-Ettes on Fridays Returns!

Okay, writing friends, you've spent enough Fridays planning gift lists, scrounging around your sofa cushions for money, buying gifts, wrapping gifts, smiling woodenly while opening gifts, returning gifts, and hiding unopened bank statements unbalanced by gifts in either your sock drawer or your trash folder. It's time to get back to film-ettes on Fridays!

I often say in my classes that story subjects are infinitely malleable, and that every story "seed" can be adapted to virtually every genre. Picture an old house, to name just one obvious example; it could become the heart of a romance (hmmm....my own "Harper's Moon"), a psychological thriller ("Psycho"), a slapstick comedy ("The Money Pit")...and the list goes on. In other words, as writers we have almost umlimited options to shape our material as we like.

Today's little offering, a fiendishly clever little effort by Chris Rule, illustrates the point. As it suggests, mysterious women appearing unasked and out of nowhere to control the lives of your kids are sort of creepy, aren't they?