The Story Of 'Amelioration' (Part I)

From when I first came up with the concept for the screenplay, the story has gone through a vast amount of changes. It's more of an evolution, I realized what I did want by knowing what I didn't want. In time the story and characters revealed themselves and I let that guide my writing to what would make the storytelling work. But above all I needed to be happy with what I was writing and the world I created. It's been almost five years of developing and until this day I've stayed on course because I loved what I created- the story and its characters. I never knew it would take this long, but it is common for screenwriters, and this being my first, is no exception.
The unofficial synopsis without giving anything away yet is as follows:
'A mythical story set in a 19th century style era between two young women who discover later in their lives that everything they lived for and believed was a lie told by those they trusted most in order to protect a disturbing truth about them. The two must fight the various emotions consuming them, while choosing between what is right and what is easy.'
Before this screenplay I've never written anything in my life, not even a short story. I took a screenwriting class in college but it was a partial work to teach us how to approach sript writing. But I never finished it, nor did I know what I was doing, so I won't count that. 'Amelioration' is the first story I've ever written, and now and in the coming months I'll be turning it into the screenplay format. I'll be focusing primarily on dialogue and polishing.
Going back 4 1/2 years, I came up with the concept while riding a bus. I told myself to write a story, and suddenly all these characters and the compexity of storytelling entered my mind all at once. I wanted something epic at first but I was afraid of creating a story that grand because I didn't think I could do it. So I narrowed it down- focus on two characters only, a conflict between them, and let everything else emerge out of that.
From there, new characters came out as well as the plot and locations. I took it one step at a time based on what these characters would go through and the choices they would make. I explored the conflict and from there I was lead to discovering what the entire story would ultimately be about and how it would unfold. I could've never done it if I didn't sit down and write. I thought only that I had an idea and I wanted it turned into a screenplay, but alot of time and work was required to achieve that.
In the second part of this blog I'll talk about how the story changed and evolved in the past 4 1/2 years of developing and why I made those choices.