Captain Zim
Copyright© 2025 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 26
Coming of Age Sex Story: Chapter 26 - David Zimmerman is your average high school junior, a bookish sort with average everything — except athletic ability. He can't throw or hit, swims like a turtle and has wimpy muscles. He was chosen last for every sport in elementary school — when he was chosen at all. His life changed when he kicked a field goal squarely between the uprights, then it changed again the next time he was in a ball game
Caution: This Coming of Age Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including mt/ft Consensual Fiction
I was sitting on our balcony, pretending to read a book, my mind filled with the events of the last week. Sensory overload!
Mom came out. “Ian is here. He says you’re expecting him.” I saw the puzzle in her eyes.
I went into the living room, and Ian had a small cart from the hotel, piled high with envelopes; at least a three-foot stack.
He grinned at me. “One of the things about being a production assistant is that you assist producers. I called up one of them. She hopped a plane a little before lunch, got in this afternoon. Dropped these off for me at the desk and headed back home. A day’s worth of mail, Zim.”
I looked at the stack in disbelief. “These are all movie scripts?”
He nodded.
“And you want me to read these?”
“What I want to do first is teach you how to read them. In fact, odds are there aren’t one of these that either of us will read from start to finish. About one a week; that’s what gets bumped up to the executive from each PA.”
There was a knock on the door, and a bellman was there. “I brought the trash can for you, sir.” The young man said, holding a shiny galvanized garbage can.
“Thanks, I’ll call down when it’ll need to be emptied.” And handed the guy a $20 bill.
“First off, Zim, I want to tell you something about how this works.” He waved at the pile of large envelopes. “I can’t look at these. I’m going to tell you what to look for, but you have to do the looking. If you find something interesting, one of my regular PA’s will look at it in two weeks, when I get back to the office.
“I’ll talk about the why and wherefor of that later. Right now, we start simple.” He picked up a letter, opened it, then a manila envelope, and handed both to me.
I opened it and took out a stapled set of about six pages.
“Read the first paragraph to yourself,” he told me.
I did.
“Does it look like a screenplay or a synopsis?” He asked.
“I think I know what a screenplay looks like, a little like a play, right?”
“As in very little, yes.” He confirmed.
“That’s what this is.”
“Pitch it. Fails page count.” He waved at the can, and I dropped it in.
He found an exceptionally thick envelope and handed it to me. “Screenplay, I hope,” he said with a laugh.
I nodded, hefting it.
“Look on the last page,” he told me.
I did. “498 pages,” I replied.
He waved at the trash can.
He rifled down a few more, handed me an envelope. I swear to God, whoever had written the address had done it in crayon. “Look at the script.” I pulled it out; it was handwritten on yellow notepad paper.
“Can it,” he said.
I pitched it.
“A script has a particular format. Margins just so, arranged just so. Always the same. If someone sends in something different, that’s not an automatic down check, but very close to it. A few years ago, a colleague got a set of what we call storyboards, laying out the story. They were gorgeous, in color, and just wonderfully done. Knockout story, too. That project’s almost ready to start filming. Rumor has it that the story had been shopped to twenty different production companies before he saw it. I’m fairly sure one of my PA’s passed on it.” He shrugged.
“Still, format is everything. I’ll explain more about that too, in good time.”
He picked up another envelope, and I opened it. It didn’t seem too large or too small, so I looked at the last page. “One hundred twenty-one pages,” I told him.
“Okay, look at the cover sheet.”
I did, saw the name of the script, the writer’s name. “What’s a WGA registry number?”
Ian smiled. “It shows that the author is smarter than about 90 percent of the rest.”
“Now look at the first page of the script itself.”
I flipped the page and looked. “Anything unusual strike your eye? Misspellings, bad grammar?”
It was a simple thing; I almost didn’t catch it. The author wasn’t exactly misspelling but was confused about the proper use of theirs and there’s, you’re, and your. I explained that to Ian.
“Okay, another test. Flip to the middle of the script, then hold it up.”
I did, and he looked at it.
“Elements of a script. We have character names, centered.” He pointed to one, and I nodded. “We have scenes, INT for interior, EXT for exterior, where, the time of day, anything else of interest, like if it’s a flashback or something like that.” He put his finger on a block of text after a scene line. “And this, this is called the action block. A text description of something visual happening on the screen, but not verbal, not dialog.”
I nodded. I understood that.
“So, what have on this page?”
“Two scene lines.” I told him, “Two lines of the action. The rest is dialog.”
“Flip through the pages rapidly, tell me if there are more like this one.”
I did and found that they mostly were.
“I produce two primary genres.” Ian told me. “Action-adventure and romantic comedy; why such varied types? Because they both almost always make money.”
That was easy enough, and I nodded again. “Sometimes in action movies, you have a lot of action blocks, very sparse dialog. Imagine explaining a car chase scene.”
I nodded.
“Rule one of screenwriting: if it’s not on the page, it doesn’t get made. If you were to read, say, the script for the movie The Fast and the Furious, you will find the racing and chase scenes spelled out in considerable detail. And of course, not much dialog during them.”
“I see,” I said.
“Good, then pitch this one in the can. Movies are visual storytelling. We use dialog to move the action, not dialog to describe it. Rule one is ‘Show, don’t tell.’”
“That’s not what you said rule one was before.” I told him.
“Just checking if you’re awake, Zim,” he said with a laugh. “The rules I’m telling you about are all equally important. In case of a tie, all get the same rank.”
I smiled; that was good.
“Next.” He waved at the stack, and I pulled the one off the top.
I checked the page count, 102. The format looked okay. There was another WGA registration number. I glanced at the first page. I didn’t see anything glaring.
“The only thing I see that’s different than before is that it’s a western,” I told him.
He waved at the can. “It is the duty of a screenwriter to do his or her homework. My production company makes two kinds of film. Never a western, no sci-fi, no horror. A detective or mystery story with some action in it ... maybe.”
An hour later, the cart was empty, the can was full.
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