If I want to write a year-end summary, I will probably tell you about the history of my blood and tears in my screenwriting class this semester. Overall, this is the sixth draft I've written for my five-minute short film for next year's school year. I already felt the urge to crash headfirst in front of the professor's desk, and I was expecting a fire in my home as an excuse not to go to class.

The first draft goes like this: One day, a little boy saw a beautiful bird outside the window, and when he met his parents, friends, and teachers, he tried several times to mention it and his feelings: "I saw it...", but no one listened to him. At last he went to bed alone, turned off the light, and whispered to himself: I saw a beautiful bird.

I think back now that this was probably the loneliness, emptiness and coldness of the fabled Bergmanian middle class, and no one in the room thought it was a story (I hate you all, thank you). The professor said that there are no mood swings in your story, and there is no change in the characters, why would the audience want to watch this story?

I thought yes, bastard, but I went back and changed the second draft.

The second draft added new characters, in order to create character changes and create emotional fluctuations. The story goes like this, the little boy got up early and saw a beautiful bird, but his mother was busy with work and didn't listen to him, he came to school, and his classmates looked down on him and didn't play with him, he was caught by the teacher when he drew a bird in class, and the teacher asked him to go out and stand for punishment, and when he was punished for standing down, he found the little girl in the next class, Ellie, who was also punished for drawing in class. The two of them gestured to each other across the corridor and became friends, but the happy time was short-lived. The teacher came out, and the little boy reluctantly left, but his life had been lit up.

The professor didn't think the story was twisty enough. Why is it that when an unhappy child is happy, the story ends?

The third draft turns into a Hollywood story in which a little boy gets up early and sees a bird, but his single mother, who is busy with work, doesn't have time to listen to him, he comes to school and is ostracized by his rich classmates, he draws the bird in class and is kicked out of the classroom by the teacher. He met Elle and became friends, but when he came home happy to find his mother crying—she had gone to great lengths to send him to high school, and he didn't cherish it. So the boy cried and hugged his mother and apologized. In the evening, Elle came to play with him, and stood by the windowsill where he had seen the birds in the morning, and he closed the window.

I think there is a stereotype of Asians in this story. And the class asked me why the story had a bad ending. But the professor said he liked the version. Looks like I'm going to be done with a little more effort.

I had my head smashed on the door during the Thanksgiving holiday, thinking that my opinion was more important than the end of the class, and I thought that this tiger mother story made me uncomfortable, so I revised the fourth draft.

There is no single-parent family in the fourth draft, it is just an ordinary family busy with work, the little boy sees the bird, his mother has no time to pay attention to him, and his father sends him to school and he is afraid to talk to his father. When it all happens at school, he is kicked out of the classroom to draw and befriends Ellie. But while they were chatting, the teacher appeared like a monster, took their drawings, and drove them back to their respective parents. The little boy returned home dejected and took out the crumpled drawing: he found that it was not his, it was Ellie's, and the teacher had taken it wrong. The atmosphere in the house was still cold and no one paid attention to him, but he became happy, and he placed the painting on the windowsill where the bird was found.

After reading the script, the professor came in a harshly worded email scolding me, saying that my adaptation grossly ignored everyone's opinions, which was shocking and disappointing.

So I wrote the fifth draft. Struggled to maintain the core of the story that I had almost forgotten: the loneliness that people feel in their lives. The fifth draft is a little girl living in a crowded building, her parents are busy taking care of the baby, and her sister is too lazy to take care of him. She saw the description of the nightingale in the book, and she longed for it, and one day she saw a bird flying over the sky in front of the narrow staircase, and she thought it was the nightingale, but no one believed it, and no one listened to her. She ran out of the door crying and found a weeping little girl next to her. The apartment was filled with noisy voices and shouts, and two little girls sat on the stairs and snuggled up to each other to finish the nightingale's story.

Everyone thought I was going back on the wrong path. I talked to the professor and said I wanted to quit, no, I said I really didn't know how to change it, and he advised me to open up to other people's opinions.

I handed in the sixth draft of the messy wind in the early hours of this morning. The mother has a successful but very busy career, and the little boy is interested in natural science and wants a nightingale, and she says that she wants to give the little boy a nightingale as a birthday present, but when the little boy asks her for it on his birthday, she doesn't even know what a nightingale is. The little boy ran out of the door crying and found the little girl Ellie, who knew what a nightingale was, and they became friends. When the little boy came home, he found that his mother had bought him a nightingale as compensation. He takes Nightingale to find Ellie, who is gone. Day after day, Elle never showed up again. One morning, the little boy went to the window and opened the cage. Mom put down her work and looked at him in surprise: Isn't this what you want?

The little boy shook his head. He let the nightingale out of the window and watched her fly away.

It's over, and in the process of retelling this story to you, I can feel that this draft can't be passed. I'm done.