DANNY STURROCK
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 PictureANNY STURROCK
Where do you live (City, State, or Country)?
Dundee, Scotland.

Your script stood out among hundreds of others. What was the inspiration for your story and why did you write a script instead of a short story or a novel?
The Palimpsest started life as a novel. I wrote a chapter or two before realising the material wasn't going to come alive in prose. Every time I thought about it, I could see it, and it became obvious quite quickly that it needed to be a screenplay. The idea itself arrived the way ideas often do - as a half-baked flash that would have disappeared if I hadn't immediately written it down. I knew I wanted to bring a successful man back to his hometown and force him to face the consequences of the life he'd carefully curated.
A school reunion turned out to be the perfect mechanism for that - a single evening where every version he'd tried to bury could confront him. Another idea arrived alongside it - the contrast between New York and Scotland. The concrete claustrophobia and straight lines of the city versus the rolling hills and weather of the countryside. One where he feels safe to perform. The other where that safety is stripped away. The story and themes began to fall into place when I held those two ideas together.

How long did it take you to write your script...and what is your writing process? Do you outline...use index cards...white board...or just start with FADE IN?
The Palimpsest was the first screenplay I completed, and the first draft took me twelve weeks. Another twelve to get it to a standard I was happy to submit. I outline extensively. I find I'm at my most creative when I know the destination and can experiment on the way. Knowing where a scene must land frees me up to be playful about how it gets there. Before I write a word, I’ll have a full beat sheet, a bible of references, and detailed biographies for each character. Most of that history never reaches the page, but it changes how I write them. The writing itself then becomes about voice and the specific texture of each scene rather than about figuring out what happens.

What is your ultimate ambition as a writer?
I want to make films that people argue about. That split opinion. That make people uncomfortable. Those are the films that have interested me since I saw The Shining when I was ten.

Was your entry at The Wiki Screenplay Contest a full script or “the first ten pages”? Why did you make that choice?
Full script. I wanted feedback on the whole machine, not just its entrance. The Palimpsest is a film whose meaning only lives in the full picture. Sending only the opening would have been throwing a hook without bait. That said, for a script with a strong, self-contained premise, the ten-page option makes sense. It's a question of what kind of script you’ve written.

What’s your all-time favorite movie or television show...and why?
Paris, Texas. Wim Wenders made a film about American loneliness that no American could have made. It really is a sum of its collaborators, and every one of them was operating at genius level. The inherent melancholy of Sam Shepard’s script. The emotional storytelling of Robby Müller’s photography. Ry Cooder's slide guitar as a character of its own. Oh, and Claire Denis was the AD.
The peep-show scene at the end, with Stanton and Kinski, is one of the most devastating things ever put on screen. It hollows me out every time. It's the film that taught me what restraint, and the colour green, can do.

What advice do you have for writers hoping to win a contest or place as a finalist as you have?
I thought writing a first draft was it. It turned out to be about a quarter of the work. Research, diagnosis, and the edit are just as important, and not always possible to do through force of will alone. Sometimes time really is the best healer. Sometimes you need to separate yourself from the work to make the best decisions. Reader feedback is information, not a verdict. When you get coverage that hurts, the work is
figuring out which notes are correctly diagnosing your script and which are reading it as a different film. Both happen, and both look decisive on the page. My script improved when I was able to identify the difference and act on it.

What else are you working on that the world needs to know about?
I have a second completed script, Clara, for a While, that has started placing in competitions. An anti-romance, coming-of-age film about passive obsession set against the backdrop of 90s Glasgow – when industry was collapsing and culture was becoming the city’s biggest export.
I’m now working on a third. A comic crime-tragedy about family and institutional indifference in a post-lockdown Edinburgh under rising economic pressure. Three Scottish films in varying registers. I’m interested in shining a light on this country and its complex and beautiful people.