The short story, Tommy, has undergone a massive amount of changes since the first draft. When I started to write Tommy, I wanted it to reflect on the unseen hatred between a parent and their child. Obviously, to make a story out of it I made an extreme scenario and had the development to it make the finale seem obvious. In short, the ending wasn't as shocking as I wanted it to be. I had relied on the gruesome details, rather than the actual idea. I completely rewrote the story, only keeping small metaphors and ideologies which relate to the attitude against disability like. An example of this is the fathers opinion of Thomas the Tank Engine, it was indirectly hinting towards the attitude some people have towards down syndrome people (The disability that Tommy is visably effected by)  When writing, I set out the scenes like that of an avant-garde movie, using obvious binary oppositions like the emotion of the father and the colours of Tommy’s room to create an irony between them. I decided that I needed to mark the passage of time with a simple statement of the age. This way it seemed more like a crime report.Each ‘scene’ (Marked by Tommy’s age change) focuses on a different development in Tommy's brain, although it wasn't in an analog way. For example, the first stage is the obvious development stage in a child's life, not too abnormal. I needed to slowly wean the audience into seeing there was something wrong with Tommy without blatantly explaining "Tommy has down syndrome". To do this, I had the first scene have a slightly offset tone to it. It focused on developing the hatred the father bears (Something I make more and more intense as the story goes on) and showing the audience that something is wrong. This scene drew its main inspiration from Lionel Shriver's 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' scene where Kevin is ignoring his mothers pleas to throw her the ball back. I like the unexplained but obvious thought path Kevin's mother, Eva, has going on inside her brain. This helped quickly move Kevin into more interesting scenes. Creating the mother on the other hand, was something I struggled with. It seemed that in the first draft she influenced the story too much and drew attention away from the final scene. I had her become the conventional innocent female bystander as it would reinforce the despicable nature of the final act. By having her walk in on the apex of her husbands hatred, it made the scene more tragic as you are imagining a mother watch something bad happen to their child. When writing I tried to make her seem like a present parent. To do this I wrote her in as someone who just looks over what her child does and regrets previous decisions; an enabler. She is not seen in any of the scenes actually doing anything to combat Tommy's behavior, and is not even present for the last scene. She doesn't tell Tommy that hitting himself is wrong. By not having her only present in one scene I showed to the audience in the shortest and most indirect way possible that the father has to bear the brunt of Tommy's actions. It was a definite that this piece would take place in first person. I didn't use my normal writing style until the last scene because before hand it needed to be as mundane as possible. The fathers perception of the world is dulled and not very insightful "I pour the coffee into two plastic cups, red and blue" No art is in his description at all, he is exhausted. The final scene was set out like that of an old western movie. It's a standoff between Tommy and his father. At the pinnacle of the scene, time freezes, leaving a past tense, hindsight to it. By making it past tense I allow the audience to read it carefully because making it present tense would have forced the audience to read on.

"Close Encounters" Is an extract and the first chapter from a larger piece of writing I have been planning. My aim when writing was to set a abstract, yet believable, setting for the story to take place. I tried to make the encounters become more and more weird as the story progressed, representing the drugged up perception of the world this group of teenagers is experience. A technique I used when writing was refraining from explaining what resided outside of the little space the group occupied at a time. For example, when the main character, Pete, is walking around trying to find food, nothing is explained apart from the actual destination in question. I let the audience have there own view of the journey. By not describing the outside world, I create a very dreamy feel to the destinations, like set pieces on a stage without anything residing on the outside.
"Close Encounters" takes direct inspiration from the screenplay writing of Martin McDonagh, who uses awkward pauses and dry wit to form a multi layered conversation. The way Martin creates such masterful dialogues is by using ironic displays that directly take into account previous scenes. For example, the Burger Shack scene in my extract uses the irony of the place not selling burgers to make the undertone of the scene weird in itself. This layed the foundation for the exchange between Pete and "Fat ACDC man". Something I tried to achieve in the dialogue was tense pauses. I looked into how Martin Mcdonagh does this and added it into my writing style. If you see this exchange from "The Pillowman".
Tupolski: Mr Katurian. This is detective Ariel, i'm detective Tupolski... Who left that on you?
Katurian: What? (Tupolski takes the blindfold off)
Tupolski: Who left this on you?
He uses the obvious as as way differing from the norm.

I was inspired also by the incredibly weird looking people I see every time I walk through Bedminster. It was my aim to capture the way that it isn't like they are actively trying to be different, or doing anything that's out of the ordinary, but just that they don't have the common customs that a fully functioning person does.
I tried, over the course of the story, to create a disconnection between the group of "friends"