Writing the Tableplay

With my head full of action films and group project I have been struggling to get into the right headspace for writing.

I didn't have many different concepts for the Tableplay but the idea that stuck with me was about a young guy meeting his girlfriends mother for the first time, and the awkwardness that could ensue.

I thought about what you might do to pass the time in that situation and the obvious answer was to play a game.  I wanted my protagonist to be suitably intimidated during this encounter.  So while the obvious, overused 'dramatic games' (which are usually strategy games like chess or poker) came to mind I decided to go with something simple but intense.  Snap!

There were a few things I struggled with while writing this script.  I could see the start of this encounter in my head clearly from the start, but then struggled about where to go with it and how to turn the tables in the protagonists favour for my status changes.

I had set my main character up on such a backfoot that I was struggling to figure out how to pull him out of it.  There were plenty of ways to get him into more trouble- perhaps the mother was allergic to the flowers he brought etc etc.  But to give him an advantage?  Some ideas I had during the early stages developing my idea were that perhaps his family were high status and that they had membership to an exclusive club or something similar that the mother wanted into.  Or perhaps she had made a mistake that could give him something over her- she had run over his cat?

Eventually I figured out more where I wanted to go with the script but I was out of time to figure out how to get there.