Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner – Extended Cut

Thank you!

Hey folks! Jes2G, your highly excitable author, here 🙂 Before I even get to the point, I cannot miss the opportunity to say thanks to all of YOU! I just can’t say it enough! It is SUCH a joy to come home at night and craft these stories for you. True…I haven’t done much else in three months (lol), but who cares. I can be a bit of a loner anyway. My friends who don’t know this game don’t understand and think it’s a waste of time. But, as a writer, this is important to me! Anyway, enough about them…this is about you. Welcome to all of you who are just now joining the party! I’m soo glad you have joined us. And to all my faithful readers, and especially those who have subscribed, I love you guys!!

Ok…love fest over 🙂

I’m not a movie buff, but I enjoy movies. I think about everything in terms of movies and how they are constructed. I’m a bit of a geek 🙂 I began to learn video editing a few years ago, and it affects everything I do. I want everything to look good from my selfies to my eLearning courses I create at work to the pictures I take for these stories. I even tend to speak in movie terms sometimes. So, if this post were a movie, this would be on the second disk in the “special features” section 🙂

Behind the Scenes

I took a lot of pictures yesterday, but I actually only used half of them. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, I actually left out two whole scenes! Some of you know how I come to write these stories, but for everyone else, I will explain. When I start playing, I only know two things: what I previously wrote and what kinda needs to happen for the story to progress. That’s it! So, as I’m playing, I wait and watch for things to happen, interesting facial expressions, etc. that would make for a good story. Most of the time when I see something and snap the picture, I hear the dialogue in my head surrounding that one picture, and that is where the story begins to take shape. I’ve been blessed with an incredible memory, so I don’t write anything down–it all comes back when I begin to write several hours later. Anyway, so that is how these two deleted scenes came about. However, because I do not know what I’m going to write until I write it, sometimes things change and what I had in mind originally gets changed or doesn’t make it. Most of the time I am happy with that because I’ve never actually deleted scenes before. Usually only the dialogue is affected.

Director’s Commentary

As I was writing this chapter last night, I felt that these two scenes neither added nor subtracted from the story, so I chose to leave them out. I’ll let you decided if that was the right thing to do. Besides, they would have made this border line long post even longer. I woke up this morning thinking about them. I definitely did not want to go back and add them to the story, but I still wanted to share them with you. So, without further ado, here they are! For continuity purposes, I’ll include the existing before and after scenes so you’ll know where they were supposed to go.

Deleted Scene 1 – Melody & Bianca Catch Up

So, we all know that Melody and Bianca have been butting heads about her relationship with Paxton. I didn’t want to make it seem like Bianca did not approve of her dating at all, but I think that’s what I’ve inadvertently done. So this scene explains why she would prefer that they not spend so much time together.

“Pleeeeease be my boyfriend!”

“Let me think about it…”

“Ok!”

“Yay!!”

“See? What did I tell you about popping pills?”

Melody shrieked in delight at her new-found status. She ran into the office to update her social network, but Bianca was in there.

“Hey sweetheart! What’s going on with you? You’re glowing!”

“I have a boyfriend!!!”

That wasn’t the news Bianca was expecting. She was happy for her in a way, but  more concerned than anything.

“A boyfriend? Who is it?”

“Duh! Paxton! I just asked him right now outside.”

“Oh…you asked him?”

“Yeah! I’m soo in love, mom!”

“I’m sorry, baby. You’re not in love. You only think you are. Don’t you think you’re rushing things with this Paxton?”

“MOOOOM!! Why are you always trying to stop me from being happy?? You’re soo annoying sometimes!!”

“Ummm…little girl..first of all, you don’t talk to me that way! Second of all, I want you to be happy! I do! That’s all I want in my last few days, but I want you to be successful too! You spend all day and all night  hanging out and talking to this boy, meanwhile your grades are terrible and you have no skills! What are you going to do with your life? Yes, being in love and having someone by your side is a very important part of life, but it’s not the most important part. What if drowns in the pool or dies in a house fire? What are you going to do then? The feelings of love aren’t going to sustain you throughout your entire life. You need to have something going for you. Today is your birthday. Have you even considered what kind of job you’re going to get? What if you and Paxton do get married? What are you going to do with your time when he’s at work? And isn’t he younger than you? What are you going to do while you wait for his birthday? I love you so much, Melody! I just don’t want you to be setting up yourself for failure. I only want the best for you. Is that so bad?”

“No. I’m sorry mom. I hadn’t considered any of those things.”

“Come here, babygirl.”

“I just love you soo much. I wish I could be here longer with you, but I won’t. I just want to be sure I leave you in a good place.”

“Oh mom! I don’t want you to go yet! It’s not fair!”

“I know. I know. Just promise me you’ll think about everything I said, ok?”

“Yes, mom.”

Bianca went to get dinner started and bake the birthday cake. Melody hung out in the office for a little bit and began to contemplate her life. Her mother was right, and she knew it. But she couldn’t help how she felt about Paxton. She didn’t want to dampen the evening with philosophical thoughts and existentialism. She had to get back to her brand new boyfriend. Melody had never felt so exhilarated and in love (or what she thought was love) in all her life. All afternoon and into the evening, she couldn’t keep her eyes off him. She had desperately longed for the day when she would be someone’s girlfriend. After dinner, gazed into his emerald eyes and told him what she wanted for her birthday.

“So ummm…I’m gonna be an adult soon. We won’t get to kick it until your birthday.”

Deleted Scene 2 – A Mother Knows

We all know that mom’s have eyes in the back of their heads and know everything. Bianca is no different! Here’s what happened to give me this idea. The cake was done baking, and she put it on the table and lit the candles. But she was sooo tired and wanted to go to bed. I had to keep canceling it and kept telling her to sit down. Same for Melody. She wanted to go play on the computer. So, they were sitting there waiting for Cadence to come (I didn’t realize I hadn’t canceled her pool interactions, so they were sitting there all that time for nothing lol), and they weren’t saying anything to each, but the facial expressions! I had to capture them, and that’s when I got the idea for this part. So, Melody has just finished “messing around” with Paxton and came to sit and wait for Cadence.

“Hi mom,” Melody said nervously. “The cake looks great!”

“If you think I don’t know what you’ve been doing, you’re wrong.”

“Oh. How?”

“A mother knows things.”

“We were just messing around, mom.”

“I know what messing around is! Messing around turns into woo hoo and woo hoo turns into unexpected children. Think on that while you’re ‘just messing around.'”

Paxton walked in the tense room after fixing himself up. He probably should have just stayed in the room.

“Hi, Mrs. Sheridan! That’s such a beautiful cake.”

“It’s awfully late, Paxton. Do your parents know you’re still over here?”

“I don’t have parents. I live in a boarding house.”

“Oh. That explains a lot,” she said flatly.

(Me again) Because this scene was deleted, I had to change it to what you read before with Paxton messing with Melody and her trying not to give herself away, but Bianca is a mom. She probably still knew!

Bianca called them inside to blow out the candles. It was time to leave their childish ways behind them–hopefully. Cadence went first while Melody was trying to keep Paxton from revealing what they were doing. He was soo happy he just couldn’t leave her alone.

Well, I hope you enjoyed these two scenes and seeing how these things come together. I definitely enjoyed doing this, and I hope to do it again. Have a great day!