An audio book.
Some people (crew and cast total 8) are on the way to filming "Final Draft" in an isolated cottage in Irish woods.
Kate (doing a lit MA) meets Joel (aspiring novelist) in a bookshop. They get together.
Adele Rafferty has been in LA for 6 months, auditioning in vain. She used to be a child actor for years in an Irish soap opera. She left it to do a film but something went wrong, which is why she'd left for the States. She gets a phone call offering her 2 weeks work in Ireland plus a plane ticket. She leaves straight away. When she arrives she's not impressed. She's the only woman, she has to skimpy clothes, there's no wiki, barely a mobile signal, and they'll start by filming at night. Only Donal (assistant director) is at all friendly.
She awakes alone. She thinks maybe this is a trick, her reactions being filmed. She hears noises. Her stuff is tampered with. She goes looking for a signal. She reads the drafty script. There are similarities between the real life events and the script. One of the props is a book called "First Draft". The book (featuring Karin and Jack) also has similarities with real life. As Adele notes, it's getting very meta, like a Christopher Nolan film. Jack is killed by Gus.
The screenplay (main characters Kate and Joel) is presented in screenplay format.
We learn about her earlier film. The director, Martin, had taken her on for personal reasons and she was gaslighted - a psychotic breakdown, the rumours said. She thinks she might be the victim of gaslighting again.
Donal returns. He says he was a late recruit too. He has explanations for all the funny stuff that's been going on, and suspects that the director, Steve, might be playing tricks. She discovers a bank of CCTV monitors in the loft, with cameras around the house. She hears Martin arrive. What's he doing there? She escapes to the next house where she finds Julia, a childhood acting rival with a successful acting career, lover of Martin, and the friend who Adele had phoned for help. When Martin appears, Adele and Julia escape in Julia's car. Julia says that Adele has tried to wreck her career and take her man. She'd written the script with Martin and had expected to be the lead. She tries to kill them both in an accident. Both survive.
In the script, wannabe novelist Gus wants his novel to have the selling point of being true, so he ties to enact the plot. Kate smashes his head with his own typewriter.
After, talking about events, Adele says that were it a movie it would need another twist. A movie is planned about the making of "Final Draft".
I may well have got some of the plot details wrong. Had it been a paper novel I'd have flicked back to check.
