Ahh, Italia!

I recently had the opportunity to go to Europe for a vacation/research trip, and wow... I now have a lifetime of material to draw from.  There's a great little town called Padova (Padua) just outside of Venice that is the setting for two things: my spec script The Daughter of Rappaccini, and a future script that is currently unannounced.  

Until now, I had only visited the town online so there were exclamations of "Hey, I've seen that!" and "Whoa, that looks nothing like I pictured!" around every corner.  It was excellent.  The sounds and smells of common yet somehow foreign things like laughter and thin-crust pizza... and the moments of creative clarity in the midst of a guided tour in a strange yet somehow familiar language... they're all a part of my writer's vocabulary now.

Of course lots of things in Rappaccini now require a rewrite, but that's why I wanted to go there.  For a writer, there's nothing like being IN a place to help you put your characters there too.  For example, when I wrote the scenes where Giovanni talks to his new friends in the Cafe Pedrocchi, I had no idea what to picture... but now I can see the frescoes and the huge sculpted lions guarding both entrances.  Originally, I could only write what others had already written about Padova... but now I can say with honesty and originality that it IS possible for an entire town to have a sense of humor.  From the annual hazing of its university graduates to its cackling gargoyles and its silly street performers, Padova is nothing less than the court jester of all Italian cities.

Although many of the details I observed in Padova won't make it onto the pages of any script, every one of them will actually be there because the sum of these details... the sum of my Padovian experience will somehow find a home in the subtext of my stories.  Subtext... depth... things that, for a writer, are worth their weight in delicious thin-crust pizza.