'I Love You' by Billie Eilish as the Soundtrack of My Debut Work ("Blackbird Whisper")

All stories have their own emotional blueprint engraved within them. Readers notice it in the style, tone, the narrator's voice, and the overall atmosphere of the novel. Viewers, on the other hand, perceive it through camera movement, especially lingering shots, color palette, actors' delivery, production design, and countless other creative choices.

An emotional blueprint is not always a reaction that comes after the story ends or an attachment that develops as the plot progresses and the characters gradually find their voices. Sometimes, or rather quite often, the emotion comes before even a single line of the story has been conceived.

Those are the stories where neither the plot nor the characters drive the narrative. What propels the story from page to page, from chapter to chapter, is the author's own emotion: their own response to their soul, their own attachment to that very response.

Blackbird Whisper.

With the title chosen, the soundtrack locked in, and the logline finalized, autumn 2019 arrived. Almost every evening, after my afternoon classes had finished, I would head to the coffee shop and fast-food area on the university campus, stay there until midnight, and continue writing my screenplay.

Yes, my apologies. I might have skipped over one point, or rather two, that deserve an explanation. The story I published today and the story I originally conceived differ both in language and in medium. Not in English, but in Russian. Not as a novel, but as a screenplay. That was the form Blackbird Whisper took during the autumn of 2019.

Looking back now, I think I was surprisingly easy to manipulate. Otherwise, I honestly cannot explain my unwavering loyalty to that campus café throughout the entire season.

It all started with a Gmail advertisement announcing that, after regular business hours, the café would close to the general public and remain open exclusively for students. The offer was simple: unlimited coffee and tea while studying.

I wanted to try it for just one evening. Instead of studying, however, I lost myself in a story that was beginning to take shape far more quickly than I had ever expected. Even on days when I told myself I would skip it, my legs seemed to carry me there without my own participation. Once inside, surrounded by students preparing for exams, projects, and presentations, I would quietly choose the table that made me the least visible, pour myself another cup of tea, and continue writing exactly where I had stopped the night before.

Originally, my main characters had Russian names. Pavel was the boy. Gregory was the old man. Today, the only names through which I can imagine them are Blake and Drake. Looking back, I realize just how long a journey these characters have taken with me. It has been around seven years.

From time to time, other students would approach me with questions. Occasionally, university friends would notice me sitting there. Yet none of those moments stayed with me as vividly as the evening when one of my professors briefly joined me at the table.

"What are you writing? I've noticed you've been passionately typing away for hours," he asked with genuine curiosity.

“A screenplay.”

"Oh, really?" His surprise sounded completely sincere. "Are you a freshman?"

"Sophomore, actually."

"Then you can take my course next semester. Or have you already completed your mandatory Writing and Communication requirement?"

"I'm already taking a Creative Writing course. That covers the mandatory writing requirement."

"Then you should take mine next semester." His smile grew even wider as he gathered his things. "A screenplay, huh? That's cool. Very cool." There was genuine admiration in the way he said it.

"It is in Russian. I can only write screenplays in Russian." I added that almost instinctively, hoping to avoid receiving praise I felt I had not earned.

"Still. That's still impressive." With that, he picked up his belongings and left.

It felt nice. After becoming so accustomed to writing in complete secrecy, it felt reassuring to be reminded by someone other than myself that writing screenplays, and writing in general, was not the waste of time that many people make it out to be.

Life continued moving forward. So did the seasons. Winter arrived first, followed by spring. Or perhaps the period we have now reached in this article was precisely when life, for many people, stopped moving altogether.

COVID. In March 2020, the university administration urgently instructed students to leave the dormitories and return to their hometowns. I returned to mine as well. That change disrupted many aspects of my life.

Something happened. Or rather, something changed. Back home, I tried to finish the Russian screenplay for Blackbird Whisper after abandoning draft after draft. Yet I could not write a single sentence. Not even a single word.

Around that time, I came across the concept of screenplay formatting rules through a textbook I found in our university's digital library. That was when the realization struck me. Ever since I had first imagined myself as a screenwriter at the age of fifteen, I had been writing screenplays incorrectly. The textbook was in English. The explanations were in English. The examples were in English. Those examples taught me that becoming a screenwriter meant more than writing your own scripts. It also meant reading the work of the very best. And I wasn't one of the best. Not yet.

The third thing I learned from that textbook was that dedicated screenwriting software already existed, complete with built-in professional formatting. When I first signed up for WriterDuet, it almost felt as though mercy and divine guidance had decided to intervene. I was offered a completely free one-year membership.

The primary reason I remained so determined to finish the Russian screenplay for Blackbird Whisper was that, at the time, several screenplay competitions in Russia accepted submissions written in Russian. No such opportunities existed for my own native country or my own mother tongue.

September 2020 felt different. It felt like the beginning of a new chapter. More importantly, it marked the first chapter of my writing career that transitioned, almost effortlessly, into a journey devoted entirely to the English language.

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