The Rotary Club of Lake Kitchigami

Maia expected to catch a trout, maybe a pickerel. Instead, the frozen Ontario lake gave her a perfectly preserved telephone.

Introduction

This script adaptation of 'The Rotary Club of Lake Kitchigami' serves as a practical exercise in translating atmospheric prose into actionable cinema. By stripping away the internal monologue of the protagonist's grief and replacing it with physical obstacles—frozen locks, stubborn machinery, and silent artifacts—we explore how screenwriting demands that emotion be externalized. This document demonstrates the rigorous application of 'show, don't tell,' converting a story about memory and loss into a visual narrative driven by interaction with the environment.

The Script

EXT. NORTHERN ACCESS ROAD - DAY

A city-bred sedan RATTLES violently over packed snow. The tires HUM a miserable tune against the ice.

INT. SEDAN - CONTINUOUS

MAIA (27) grips the wheel. She is pale, dressed in a wool coat that costs more than the car, her knuckles white.

The dashboard VIBRATES. A low, guttural GRINDING sound emanates from beneath the passenger seat.

EXT. CABIN - MOMENTS LATER

The car dies with a final SHUDDER. Silence rushes in instantly. Absolute. Heavy.

Maia steps out. The air HISSES as it hits her lungs. She hauls a stiff canvas duffel from the back.

She trudges through thigh-high drifts to the porch. Reaches the door. Inserts a key. It refuses to turn.

She jiggles it. Twists. Nothing.

Come on, you stupid piece of—

She wrestles the brass knob. Her breath comes in sharp, angry puffs. She steps back and KICKS the wood. THUD.

The door swings inward. It wasn't locked. Just frozen.

INT. CABIN - CONTINUOUS

Maia stands in the doorway. Inside is a time capsule. Dust motes dance in shafts of cold light.

A stack of National Geographics. A half-finished crossword.

Maia drops her bag. It lands with a muffled THUMP. She runs a finger over the table, leaving a clean streak in the dust.

INT. CABIN - NIGHT

Maia kneels before the stone hearth. She strikes a match. The damp newspaper smolders, releasing acrid SMOKE.

She coughs, eyes watering. She rearranges the wood. Strikes another match.

A flame catches. A soft WHOOSH. The pine CRACKLES.

Maia sinks into a worn armchair. She pulls her knees to her chest, staring into the fire. The silence of the room presses against her.

EXT. LAKE KITCHIGAMI - DAY

A vast expanse of white. Grey sky meets white ice.

Maia, bundled in layers until she is round, turns the handle of a rusty auger. The blades GRIND into the ice.

She sweats. Pants. The auger breaks through. Black water GURGLES up.

LATER

Maia sits on an overturned bucket. Motionless. A statue of misery.

The rod tip JERKS down. Hard.

Maia scrambles up. She reels. The rod bends double. The line sings tight.

She heaves. Something breaks the surface.

It isn't a fish. It is black. Bakelite. Curled cord.

Maia drags it onto the snow. A rotary telephone. Pristine.

She stares. Her chest hitches. A LAUGH barks out of her. Harsh. Unhinged. It echoes across the empty lake.

EXT. LAKE KITCHIGAMI - NEXT DAY

Maia sits by a new hole. Beside her, the black telephone sits on the ice.

The rod bends again. Heavy dead weight.

She reels it in. Hauls the catch onto the ice.

A chrome Sunbeam toaster. Two-slice. Immaculate.

<center>ANDREW</center>

T-7 model. Nice.

Maia jumps. She spins around.

ANDREW (20s) stands ten feet away. He wears high-tech gear and carries a tablet. He has the eager energy of a golden retriever.

<center>ANDREW</center>

The radiant control is spotty, but they toast evenly. Did you get the Western Electric 500 yet?

Maia points a gloved finger at the toaster.

Who are you?

<center>ANDREW</center>

Andrew. Limnology. I'm mapping the displacement patterns.

He taps his tablet. He turns the screen to her. A digital map overlaid with colored pins.

<center>ANDREW</center>

It's not random. Look. The toaster? That's Flo's Diner. The phone? The Post Office.

He zooms out. The map shows a grid of streets under the water.

<center>ANDREW</center>

Auden's Hollow. Flooded in '62. The sediment kept it perfect, but the currents are changing. It's all coming up.

A low RUMBLE vibrates through the ice.

They turn. Two massive white trucks bearing the logo "NORTHERN DOMINION MINING" roll onto the ice near the shore.

Men in orange coveralls jump out. They begin unloading a hydraulic drill rig.

Andrew's face falls.

<center>ANDREW</center>

Core sampling. They're early.

A FOREMAN (40s), face like a clenched fist, walks over. He stops a few feet away.

<center>FOREMAN</center>

Clear the area. We're running seismic in twenty minutes.

This is a public lake.

<center>FOREMAN</center>

It's a federal survey zone as of this morning. You want to fish, go to the south basin.

He glances at the toaster. Sneers. Walks away.

INT. CABIN - NIGHT

The toaster and phone sit on the kitchen table.

Andrew paces. He taps furiously on his tablet.

<center>ANDREW</center>

If they drill, the vibration collapses the sediment shelf. The town is gone. We need an injunction, but that takes weeks.

Maia stares at the phone. She picks up the receiver. Listens to the dead air.

My grandmother didn't believe in injunctions.

She sets the receiver down. Hard.

She believed in being a nuisance.

EXT. LAKE KITCHIGAMI - NIGHT (MONTAGE)

- Maia and Andrew creep across the ice in the dark.

- They pull up orange survey flags. Move them fifty feet to the left.

- Andrew pours boiling water from a kettle down a fresh auger hole.

- Maia siphons gas from the mining generator into a jerry can. Her hands shake.

INT. CABIN - DAY

Maia rummages through a desk drawer. Papers fly.

She pulls out a small, leather-bound journal. Opens it. Her eyes scan the spiky handwriting.

She stops. Reads a passage again. She looks up at Andrew.

She knew. She knew they were coming.

Maia turns the book to him. Points to a diagram. A submersible lift. A map of the spring.

She didn't just find the town. She seeded the current. She put the artifacts in the flow so they'd surface now.

<center>ANDREW</center>

She manufactured a heritage site.

Maia reads the last entry.

"A compass to see you on your way."

EXT. SHELTERED COVE - DAY

Maia sits alone. The mining DRILLS whine in the distance.

She pulls the line up. Hand over hand. Slow. Reverent.

A small object breaks the surface.

A brass compass. Not rusted.

She holds it in her palm. The needle spins wild, then snaps to North.

INT. CABIN - DUSK

Maia walks in. She places the compass on the table next to the phone.

Andrew looks up from a stack of forms.

<center>ANDREW</center>

Well?

Maia unzips her coat. She looks at the compass. Then at the map.

We don't need to slow them down anymore. We have the proof.

She taps the compass.

We file the claim tonight.

What We Can Learn

This adaptation highlights the challenge of translating internal character arcs into external mechanics. In the source text, Maia's grief is described through memories and feelings; in the script, her grief must be rendered as physical isolation (the silence of the cabin) and the interaction with the 'ghosts' of the past (the artifacts). The narrative relies on the 'objective correlative'—using the frozen door and the impossible telephone as physical manifestations of her emotional blockage and subsequent connection to her grandmother's legacy. The transition from passive observer to active participant is not signaled by a change in thought, but by the physical act of sabotage and the retrieval of the compass.

Technically, the script demonstrates the use of montage and pacing to compress time while maintaining narrative momentum. The 'Operation Minor Inconvenience' section, which takes days in the story, is reduced to a series of rapid-fire action lines. This economizes screen time while visually reinforcing the growing partnership between Maia and Andrew. Furthermore, the script avoids 'camera direction' by using paragraph breaks to control the reader's eye; isolating the 'brass compass' on its own line forces a mental close-up without using the technical jargon of a shot list.

From a media literacy perspective, this conversion illustrates how screenplays operate as blueprints rather than finished literature. The prose description of the 'deep, resonant void' of silence is replaced by the stark sound cue of the car engine dying. This teaches us that in film, atmosphere is constructed through the absence or presence of sensory input (sound and light) rather than adjectives. The audience understands the cold not because the writer says 'it was cold,' but because they see the character struggle with a frozen lock and hear the hiss of breath, engaging the viewer's sensory imagination to fill in the physical reality.