‘Glee’ star Chris Colfer talks about his upcoming movie ‘Struck by Lightning’

Glee allows Chris Colfer to show off his triple-threat acting, singing, and dancing skills, but he also has another side of himself to explore: being a writer.

The 21-year-old penned the script for his dark comedy Struck by Lightning, which follows the story of Carson Phillips, played by Colfer. ''My character dies on page 1,'' he explained to Entertainment Weekly. ''He gets struck by a bolt of lightning and is killed. Then we journey to my funeral, and then everything else is a flashback to his last year in high school.”

The flashbacks chronicle how Carson blackmailed his classmates into taking part in his literary magazine.

Working on the film has been “the most exciting and the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done,” says Colfer in an exlusive fan interview on GleeFans.com. “It’s very strange to be so active behind the camera (taking meetings, making calls, etc.). We have an amazing team working on the movie. David Permut is producing (Youth in Revolt, Charlie Bartlett) and Brian Dannelly is directing (Saved!)."

He continues, “I wrote it for the kids in high school who are overachieving in their own right and underappreciated for it, just like I was.”

Various actors are involved in the film including Modern Family’s Sarah Hyland, Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks, and Awkward’s Ashley Rickard. Dermot Mulroney and Allison Janney play his parents, and Adam Kolkin, who played young Kurt on Glee (and looks exactly like a mini-Chris!) will play Young Carson.

Colfer also shared what made him interested in acting and writing. "I had this old book of fairytales that my mom was given by her mom. I'll never forget because you opened the pages and all the illustrations were actual pictures of dolls in freeze form of the story," he told Billboard. "I remember in the moment never wanting an escape more ever, I wanted to literally dive into the book. I then came up with the story about these two twins that went to fairytale world and all the adventures they had, adventures I wanted to experience rather than what I was going through. I promised myself then if I ever had the opportunity to write it in a book, I would."

According to Deadline, he also wrote a pilot based on the children’s book The Little Leftover Witch for Disney Channel and has a two-book publishing deal with Little Brown that will be released in the summer of 2012. His first book is a children’s novel called The Land of Stories.

Struck by Lightning is scheduled for release in 2012.