States of Grace - Feature Film Screenplay

The following treatise will dissect the fictional narrative feature screenplay, States of Grace, that I completed under the supervision of Cindy McCreery and Stuart Kelban as my senior thesis project. First, I will give a brief description of the story's plot; then, I will describe my writing process in creating this screenplay over the past year. Following the writing process, I will delve into the strongest influences on characters, tone, humor, and other elements of my script, and then discuss the most important themes that the story focuses on. States of Grace tells the story of mothers and daughters. It centers around the lives of Grace, her mother Camille, and Camille's mother Lena, as they navigate the challenges of caretaking, grieving in the aftermath of loss, and forgiving one another. Grace is a senior social work major who, while desperately well-intentioned, is naive and selfish in ways that hurt the people around her; Camille is her loving but tired mother, whose years of grief and frustration have led to a short fuse; and Lena is Grace's grandmother, an optimistic-to-a-fault widow who is suffering from deteriorating physical health and can no longer live on her own. When Camille moves to have Lena put in an assisted living facility, Grace refuses to allow it, opting to take Lena in to live in her apartment in New York with her instead. Her ensuing experience caring for her grandma yields medical emergencies, threatened future plans, and life-altering revelations for all three women.