“How can you not like a name because it’s French?” Ollie asked.
“Because it doesn’t mean anything. Her name is specifically French. Why? We never discuss it anywhere. Is she French-Canadian? Was her mother French and she spent her summers with her maternal grandmother in France?” He turned to Victoria. “You gave her a typically French name. Why?”
“Because it’s fun to type.”
Most of the critique group laughed. Freddy shook his head. “You need a better answer than that. You’ve put a rifle up above the mantel. You gonna shoot it or not?”
Victoria held in a groan at the mention of the old writing adage. If a writer described a rifle on the wall, then by the end of the story, it needed to be shot by someone, and better still if it killed its owner.
Ella verbally stepped in. “Thank you, Freddy. Sometimes a name is just a name. It’s always good to think about why you chose it, Victoria, but it’s up to you whether it will make sense to share that on the screen. But I think there’s a bigger issue with this scene.”
Victoria did her best not to hunch down in her seat as several people nodded in agreement.
“You’re still pulling back emotionally,” Ollie said, her voice sympathetic.
“I’m not.” The defensive words were automatic. Victoria immediately held up her hand. “Sorry. But I rewrote the scene.” Three times, but why mention that? “She cries and everything.”
“You give the stage direction, but I can’t feel it.” Ollie leanedforward, her expression earnest. “I’m not crying with her. She’s being dumped in public, getting her heart broken, and I should be sobbing. I love her and Jake together. They’re a great couple. This is a terrible moment, and yet I’m watching, not participating.”
“She’s right,” Ella said. “There’s no emotion on the page.”
Victoria glanced longingly toward the door, then looked back at Ella. “Can it be fixed?”
“Of course. You’re an amazing writer. You plot well, you have a way with dialogue, and you make your action scenes come alive.”
Which all sounded great, only there was a bigbutcoming.
“You aren’t comfortable making your characters vulnerable.”
“It’s the autobiographical thing,” Freddy added. “You can’t separate Margarite from you.”
“We’re not the same person,” she protested. “We have nothing in common. And this isn’t autobiographical.”
Nearly everyone chuckled.
Freddy grinned at her. “Right. You just happen to be writing about a stuntwoman who falls in love with an actor while filming a movie on an island. It’s all pure fiction.”
She squirmed in her seat. “It’s not autobiographical,” she repeated, knowing she was lying and everyone knew it. “Not exactly. I changed a few details.”
Ollie smiled at her. “Not enough, but that’s okay. When the movie comes out and is a big success, it’ll be a giantfuck-youto whoever the guy is. Success is the best revenge and all that.”
“Back to the scene,” Ella said, looking at her. “You have to let your character bleed on the page, Victoria. We have to see it, and we have to feel it. Given how close the plotline is to real life, I get that you don’t want to be that exposed, but there’s no other way to make the story work. If you won’t take the chance, you’re not going to sell the screenplay, and that would be a shame.”
Later, in her car, Victoria tossed her tote bag on the passenger seat.
“Stupid critique group,” she muttered. “They don’t know anything.”
Only she said the words without a lot of feeling because deep down she knew they were right about all of it. She didn’t like feeling vulnerable, she never had. She went out of her way to always be strong and in control of every situation. Prescott dumping her in baggage claim had been both humiliating and devastating. She’d allowed herself to believe in him, in their relationship, and everything about their time together had been a lie. He’d played her to get easy, regular sex. Oh, she was sure he’d enjoyed her company—she was a fun date—but he’d never been in love with her.
When she thought about their time together, which was something she did her best not to do, she always wondered if he’d meant anything he’d said. Even the good memories were tainted by how things had ended because she couldn’t know if any of it had been real.
She glanced at her tote bag and the computer tucked inside. Obviously she had one more rewrite to do. Maybe more. Because she wanted to nail the scene, even if doing that meant she had to, as Ella had so vividly put it,bleed on the page.
“I’d rather be strong,” she said aloud as she started the engine. It was a much more comfortable state of being.
As she drove out of the parking lot, she had the thought that her mother was also strong. Ava had her flaws, but the woman was a rock. So, had Victoria inherited her strength from some unknown biological relative, or had she learned it from watching her mother? She wasn’t sure, but something in her gut told her that figuring out the answer to that question might matter a whole lot more than she knew.
22
