Introduce Yourself : Retiree on a journey to making his lifelong dream come true by Christopher Neal Fisher

Hi there, folks! Christopher Neal Fisher here. Some of you might recognize the name, but that's because I've been here for three years now, as of this April. I'm 61, live in Madison, WI, and have been married to the same woman for almost 35 years now. No kids of our own, but I have 2 stepdaughters, six step-grandkids, and two step-great-grandkids. Retired (not by choice) from a 32 year career with the State of Wisconsin Department of Transportation in 2016. However, that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as I had tried many times over the years to set out on a screenwriting career while working full time, and discovered I just couldn't do it; the job, plus family/home responsibilities, just took too much time and energy away from any attempt to come up with coherent storylines and good dialogue. So now my time has been made free to work on my first love, which is writing screenplays and teleplays.

My current main project (in fact the only one, as I've chosen to focus all my energies on it) is a nighttime/prime time soap in the Southern Gothic genre entitled Bayou Noir. The nutshell I use for it is "Dark Shadows meets The Sopranos in the middle of Louisiana's famed 'Cajun Country'". Set in a fictional Louisiana town of the same name, it centers on the Delacroix family, descendants of the French "Seigneur" (like a semi-feudal landlord) who founded the town 300 years earlier. They're wealthy, influential,, and of course, dysfunctional; a real Williamsian/Faulknerian bunch. I've experimented with several loglines, trying to find one that best describes my show idea in a reasonable number of words, and this is currently what I'm considering using:

"An 'old line' Louisiana French family with legitimate businesses and illegal dealings must contend with both enemies human and supernatural and internal conflicts in order to ensure its future and that of its 'empire'".

So, 34 words. To be honest, though, I just don't seem to be able to accurately and meaningfully describe it in 12 words or less.

The pilot episode script, entitled "Made in Louisiana", was written in August of 2020, and was a semi-finalist in the Page Turner Screenplays Feature and TV Pilot 100 Contest in December 2020, and a finalist in the 6th Annual Stage 32 TV Writers' Contest in March 2021. Unfortunately, this hasn't translated into further success as of yet; I've tried to pitch it unsuccessfully to about a dozen people, about a third of whom really liked my pitch, but still passed on it in the end. (My pitch is a written one, but it's very hard to do a good one in two pages, let alone five minutes, though this might be because I'm so intimately familiar with my work that I find it hard to "boil it down" to the essentials, I guess because I see everything in it as an "essential"! lol). I've cut back on both entering contests and trying to pitch, as I regroup and assess my "game plan".

While I still intend on trying to get it before various production-type folks, one option I'm considering looking into, and that I think might work best for promoting my idea in the long run, is trying to see about doing a Proof-of-Concept or Sizzle reel for it, perhaps 12-15 min. in length. I actually have a draft of one, consisting of some scenes from early on in the pilot, but am thinking of reworking that so that it becomes a mini-set up for the intended A story arc. Of course, as a writer, and one with only a very basic knowledge of the other things that go into putting anything from a movie or show to a Proof-of-Concept reel together, I would probably need to find people who have "behind the camera" experience, and think my concept is worthwhile, and would like to see it become a reality as much as I do. And then there's the cost, as I have no idea about what something like that would cost.

So anyway, that's who I am, and where I am with any of the projects I'm currently working on. I have a lot of thinking and rethinking about future strategies with regard to getting my series idea turned from idea to reality. All I know is that I'll never give up -- not until they put me in that box and lower it six feet under.