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Can you articulate the bundle of images and associations that have you jazzed about working on your project?
Try writing a paragraph or a list or a manifesto or whatever of why you really want to write this thing – and then try and stay true to it over the next 3 years.
There will be a fundamental question your story will (or seeks to) answer. The question for The Limit is "Will Peter find out who killed his son?" Knowing the question seems to help focus on telling the story.
"Whether you make a kick ass story or not is not the point. The point is, for it to work, you and your fellow players are playfully playing as if this just gonna be great by the time its done: making choices, sifting through options, recalling patterns and motifs, creating new high and low points, forcing the characters into choices (that spark creative actions on the part of the players) and so on.
Draft, in short, is not a 'warm up.' "
If it's a tie between which option will create the most interesting situation, go for the one that causes the most pain/problems.
Case in point: Veronica Mars, the election result.
Tim [Minear] used the term emotional arc in contrast to plot moves, as in, he was interested in the characters' emotional beats more than fancy plots and mysteries. He was not so much interested in the details of the plot, and when someone brought up an intricate plot idea, Tim would say, "That could be interesting, but it doesn't matter. What's the emotion underlying the moves?" Following the characters' emotions was more important than "Well, what happens next? How does Angel manage to beat the baddie?"***
Big lesson from this bout of gaming is ‘never be afraid to increase the adversity’. Adversity forces people to be creative, it makes them stand up for what they really want, to say what they value and what’s worth fighting for … and adversity makes you feel like you’ve earned survival or success.
Plus, adversity creates a situation. Stories need conflict; focusing on the right conflict at the right time creates a throughline for your story.
I asked David about the four things I need to understand in order to 'get' a show. Those are: Situation, Main Character, Main Relationship and Emotion.
Emotion = "How do you want to the audience to come away from an episode feeling?" Related to this are issues of genre and themes. The Emotion is what I reckon you should produce once an act.
Main Character = "Is there a central character? Someone whose issues reflect the themes of the show?"
The Main Character and Main Relationship are who you would expect to see often in an episode.
I think that most of the ideas I write start off as pulp, genre stories where I'm jazzed about the set-pieces I can come up with and the cool twists I can write in.
It's only through revision and digging deeper that I start to care about the characters and stay engaged the whole way through the story when I read it.
The point: is to maybe get through the pulp phase into the real as fast as possible.
Again, this pitching process reveals more about how to present the story in the final film.
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It made me believe that a well-worked out outline really would create speedy fun writing for me. That’s the goal for next time. I feel I got distracted by the pitch … put it at the wrong stage of the process. Oral should be 1st or 2nd – and then last.
I’m trying to train myself to write dramatic scenes by keeping track of the Stakes (the question we want the scene to answer) and Conflict (the people who represent the opposing answers) in a scene.
What I’ve realised is that I need to have a living stakes & conflict document right from Draft 1. It travels along and develops with the script as it goes through each new draft, constantly getting adjusted and updated – and eventually handed off to the director (hopefully me).
The reason is so that I can tell exactly what each scene is about and whether it’s contributing to what the movie is about.
With Possessions (hopefully my next script, based on Sean’s story), when I start work on a rough outline I should be keeping track of the characters’ wants, making sure they are consistent from scene to scene (which’ll be vital). As the story solidifies, I can make sure I’m driving towards conflict all the time, and build up the stakes.
What's your story about? I need to know this so that when I'm reading the script I can tell whether each scene is adding to the story that I want to see unfold.
'What's your story about?' is not what it's about at a premise level - where, for example The Limit is about Vigilantism vs. The Law, which is more effective & how using each method changes you.
It's what your story is about at an emotional level, about what's grabbing the audience and making them want to watch more. The Limit, in this case, is about 2 dads vying for the love of their son.
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Here's the stripped down, mechanical version of the writing process I want to try.
Intro characters. Present them with a Kicker, a situation that cannot be ignored
Brainstorm 20 (B20) ideas for each character’s reaction.
Choose the most interesting.
Write down on a separate page for each character, what I’ve discovered about them in making that choice.
Create the new situation based on that choice.
Write a synopsis of it on a Word doc.
Characters have to react to the new situation. Intro any new characters that that situation demands. Repeat the B20, writing process.
Soon I’ll have ‘character sheets’ filled with traits that allow me to make decisions that are consistent with their characterisation.
If I come up with awesome new ideas, write them down on a page that says Act 1,2,3. But keep going with my current story – to see what I learn. Why? Well, the idea is that I won’t know if these new ideas are the 'right' ones – all I’ll know is that they’re better – but I could come up with more if I keep going. So rather than keep getting distracted by - let's face it - an inexhaustible supply of new possibilities, I'll work through the entire story and then be able to make a decision based on overviewing the whole thing.
Read aloud. Record.
Take notes.
Go back to the start and start with the most interesting situation I've now devised. Rebuild.
Repeat till I’m confident.
Pitch.
This whole process is more character based, with a structure that (I assume) will naturally get imposed on it over time. The question of what it's 'about' also needs to be answered - but I have another post on that coming up, based on my recent consulting work on this TV show.
CURRENTLY UNASSIGNED QUOTES
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Another way of looking at storytelling in the movies* is that each phase of the film has a different 'energy' about it.
Taking War of the Worlds (2005) as an example (because that's where I first noticed this), you have four different types of energy in the story. The move from the normal domestic set up to the full on terror of the invasion is almost unnoticeable. The transition between the two happens in a bravura 15 minutes set piece involving lightning strikes and a stolen car. That full on terror of being pursued is sustained for what seems like a full hour. But then there is a noticeable gear change when Tim Robbins arrives in the film. All of the action becomes confined to a single location and the emotions darken towards paranoia and despair.
The trick, I think, is to be aware of the emotions and mood you're generating & how the audience feel about that.
*I think this applies much more to films than television because the film is designed to be watched in one uninterrupted burst, so you are more attuned to variations in tone and intensity.
***
From a talk by Dylan Horrocks:
1) You should reveal yourself, or truths about you, in a world you create.
2)
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Titles I've come up with that I think work: I think what they do is give a clue about what I think the hook is, and they use a pop-cultural phrase.There are no rules. This may be the single most important idea in this entire book. The only rule (sic) is that the script must work, and if it works by breaking all the accepted rules and more power to.
Aristotle believes a drama begins when the problem begins and ends when the problem is resolved.
All stories must contain both external and internal problems. Ideally these internal and external problems will resolve themselves at the same point of highest tension. Ideally the internal and external problems should dance together, one creating the other, where character creates action, and action catalyses character. If you avoid any internal conflict, your film is completely reliant upon external conflict to carry the ball.
Typically the first act ends with the protagonist's decision to grapple with the initial problem.
The second act complicates the initial problem and serves as the playing field on which the characters reach for a dramatic arc of change or catharsis, and in which action is initiated by, and in turn serves to catalyse, the characters.
The third act generally begins in a physical and psychological low point for the protagonist. Scenes with the greatest emotional weight come at the end.
The strongest narrative strategy is to build on existing problems and make things steadily worse. For example, each scene in the first act of Singing in the Rain either creates a new problem or augments an existing problem and makes it more complex.
When in doubt, combine.
I wasted a week by coming up with reasons not to write. The reason was: I wasn’t inspired by what I was writing.
And then I got disillusioned because this all felt like a sterile, mechanical exercise. So, a week of avoidance.
Then I started trying to vividly visualise the scene. I remember I tried this before, with Trace outside Forster’s farm. And so far it’s working. The scene is fun to work on again.
I was finding the mis-direction scene a bit difficult. Coupled with my now consuming desire to FINISH something, I spent Thursday through to Saturday morning writing a playtest draft of my new RPG, The Luck of the Joneses.
After that, I came back to the scene I’m been blocked on and finished it in a couple of hours.
Spent Wednesday procrastinating about writing the script. I felt like I had to do two things at once: come up with cool new stuff AND rigorously proof read the script.
I told myself to get a good night's sleep and try and settle back to my daily routine of exercise, writing and everything else. That took a lot of the pressure off and at some point I was able to just say to myself, "Don't proof read. Just write."
From there, finishing the script - which had seemed such a huge deal the day before - was over in a matter of three hours. My goal became to create something that was readable for others as opposed to getting it perfect right now. That took a lot of the pressure off
There was much procrastination this morning. "IT'S TOO IMPORTANT!" screamed the editorial static in my head. "I'm scared of getting it wrong."
Eventually I plunged in (after working up bits and and pieces of ideas in layers over a couple of hours).
I’ve been procrastinating a little the last couple of days. Working on a dialogue scene, trying to find Taine's voice. But I may have just had a break-through with how the parents find out Taine's gone missing - I can visualise it very clearly, so that immediately puts it at the top of the list of all the ideas I've had.
I have been getting less than an hour of work done on The Limit every day. I may even just not use the internet at all - after all it is the timesuck of doom for me.
I started to procrastinate / freak out about finishing, again. So after letting that happen for a few minutes, I bit off the smallest part of the very next problem I had to solve and tackled it. Which worked pretty well.
I find that if I'm blocked on a script, I actually get a lot of work done if I take a train up to the Kapiti Coast. The secret is to not bring anything else to read or do . There's something about boredom that really forces me to write.
The more important I think a scene is, the longer it seems to take me to write. Thinking of something as "important" makes me freak out, because I need to get it "right".
But at this stage of the script, every scene should be important. Every scene needs to contribute. Every moment, too.
That means I'm going to have to develop some way off de-freaking-out. Being a full-time writer would be good too (more dedicated time to solve problems and get into a groove). Unfortunately, I may have to let that ambition go for a while, and content myself writing on the bus.
[W]hat would happen if you treated your screenplay-in-progress like someone you had recently fallen in love with. What if you courted your story, wooed it, gave it your very best, and loved it madly?
Our conclusion was that if we were willing to throw ourselves into falling in love with our work, risking heartache, holding nothing back, the inner muses responded in kind."
"Going slow & devising solutions that convince me" is a good goal, but I think I'm starting to feel the lack of that obsessive quality, the need to get it finished by a certain goal.
The home stretch. Less than 20 pages to go. Decisions are easier to make now.
The rewriting got faster and faster as I went through.
Feeling stressed out at the thought of trying to finish all of Act 1 today. So I've set myself a couple of small goals.
I love finishing short, cool bits of writing. Achieving rocks!
I’d forgotten how good it feels to just write – solving problems at a dialogue level, trying to figure out character and get the scenes to do their jobs. Also, I’m loving the pace. I have a deadline, but I also have enough time to reflect on how to fine-tune scenes. It all feels very contemplative.
When I finished making changes to The Limit last night, the sense of quiet satisfaction I felt seemed exactly the same as what I feel when I finish any project - of whatever magnitude. To be specific, finishing the script after seven years gave me the same amount of satisfaction as working on a 48-hour film, writing a role-playing game, or locking down a well-constructed sketch.
I’m disturbed at how little craft I applied to Act 3. Basically I burned through it today, wanting to write from the heart and follow my old outline rather than re-break the scenes by Stakes and Conflicts.
I'm enjoying the writing. It's starting to go faster - and I'm expecting to keep up that pace until I hit the big re-writes in Act 3.
Two Saturdays ago - I finally read through the script myself. My emotions went through two phases:
I need to relax and have fun while I'm writing, and b) the scene didn't need to be perfect - I'm going to go back, read the script aloud when I've finished this re-edit, and make adjustments.
Just thinking about a couple of examples of where backstory has been used to really good effect.
There’s the graphic novel, Preacher – where many of its more powerful story-arcs rely on things that happened to the characters over 20 years ago (and I feel like author Garth Ennis had this all planned out before he began writing). Halfway through Season 2 of Buffy there’s a revelation about Angel that not only explains his withdrawn mopiness but turns him into a character worthy of a spin-off series. And – although I haven’t watched much of it yet – backstory seems to be a defining feature of Lost; so much so that I wonder what they’re going to do with their format in Season 2 once they’ve played out most of the secrets about the characters’ pasts.
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Joss Whedon likes to create backstories for characters that contradict how they currently appear.
Examples. Giles the librarian used to be a drug-taking upper-crust British wild child. In Firefly, Shepherd Book the mild mannered preacher is probably a recovering Bad Lieutenant type of ex-cop* and hired killer Jayne has a mother who likes to knit for him.
The point: if you want to dimensionalise a character, you can use their backstory to create dualities.
Why would you do that? Well, you’re creating story material to reveal and play with in later seasons if you want. One use for it is to easily change existing relationships between characters. That lets you introduce new tensions if you’ve played out tensions that originally drove the show.
* If anyone wants the evidence supporting that theory, I’ll be glad to expand.
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"I like to fall in love with my characters," says Joss Whedon in this interview and the commentary track to "A Hole in the World" (Angel, Season 5).
He also talks about his desire to punish characters - what I call 'finding their vulnerabilities'. The theory is that characters who are in control of their lives are boring; you only get to find out what's interesting about them when you destabilise either them, their lives or something they care about.
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Among many other things, we talked about a beloved old game he'd GMed; particularly, we talked about how rich and alive its setting was, how detailed. His players ate it up, he said, they'd go on and on about how compelling, complete, fully realized the setting was.
Then he told me how he'd done it. He'd taken three principles - I wish I could remember them in particular, J please step in here, but they were like "nobody thinks that they themselves are evil," "the Grand Galactic Empire is procedurally conservative," and "nobody really enjoys their job" - three principles something like those, and whenever any of his players asked him about anything in the setting, he'd simply apply those principles to create the answer.
"I duck into a broom closet." "Okay. There are a bunch of reg-77f portbrushes in there, but someone hasn't bothered to replace them yet, they're all slimy and they smell." All the details you'd need to bring the setting home, give it weight and momentum, and yet J didn't precreate the contents of a single broom closet.
There's lots more in the Comments section, but the basic idea I'd rip from this is to define characters via a series basic principles which you can communicate to your writers. For instance, Xander off Buffy would be ... let's say the one who makes pop culture jokes, the heart of the group and the one who no-one listens to but who always knows what's really going on.
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The fundamental problem seems to be "Who is Taine?". In other words, that I don't clearly understand one of the main characters. That's a problem because he is a character everyone else is willing to go to extremes for.
The big lesson: don't write the first draft till I get all the main characters:
-- historically
-- psychologically
-- emotionally
-- dramatically
-- as characters I'm dying want to write
The small lesson: each character should have a separate folder for the notes about them.
***
Sympathy for Taine. That’s what I feel now, which is a first.
By understanding his place in the family & why his life is so shitty, I’m that much closer to being able to pile pressure on him. Just like with all the other characters in the script, I want to try and make him crack.
***
We had another brainstorming session last night in which - due to lack of sleep - I was Mr. Grumpy. However, we roughed out another good idea for a TV series and in the process I thought of several things it'd be worth brainstorming when you are designing characters.
Career, Character Traits and Secrets.
Trajectory (or Destiny). Chris suggested this; it's where a character appears they're going to end up, at the start of a show.
Then I think you should brainstorm 20 Facts everyone's sure of about the character, 20 Ideas or wild possibilities for them, and 20 Questions that nobody's sure of the answer to about the character.
After that brainstorming, choose the issues that seem most fundamental and go through brainstorm possibilities and solutions to those.
The point is: You don't want to settle for the easy option. You have to go deep so that you're convinced by the answers.
***
How do characters change?
Okay, the obvious: characters change as a result of things happening to them.
The not-obvious (and bear with me, I'm still working this out ...)
I've talked before about my new approach of not pre-planning plot twists or cool things that could happen in a story. The idea is to just start with an opening situation (a What-If), introduce characters as needed and then see what they do.
"Seeing what they do," involves brainstorming possibility after possibility until I come up with something surprising, satisfying and that forces other characters to react. After getting the answer to "What would this character do?" I propose you ask "Why did they do that?" either straight away or in an extensive post-draft analysis.
The point: deepen your understanding of the character at every point.
Now here's where the character change kicks in (and this especially applies to a TV series):
... When you've gotten to the point where you know what your characters will do (their actions are consistent, even predictable), when you understand the limits they're bound within, when they're no longer surprising you with their decisions, then it's time to consider changing a character's Situation.
To take an example and reverse-engineer it, let's look at Buffy:
** Massive Spoilers **
Start of Season 1: Buffy's job is to slay vampires. She doesn't enjoy it.
S1, Ep 7: Her boyfriend is a vampire.
S1, Finale: She dies, kills the Master and saves the world.
Start of S2: Buffy is emotionally disconnected from the world and cynical, as a result of killing the Master.
S2, Ep 13: Her boyfriend becomes an evil vampire.
S2, Finale: Buffy kills her boyfriend, quits & runs away.
I could go on (Faith, graduating from high school, what happens to Joyce) but hopefully you begin to see my point - whenever we're just getting a handle on Buffy and the show, Whedon and his team change something fundamental, something that strikes at Buffy's core.
Whedon likes to think of it as being cruel to his characters. My approach is to think of something that puts your characters off-balance, because when their lives are out of control then they start making interesting (and possibly bad) decisions.
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I think I’ve already suggested that characters have Wants. Central objectives that define the reason they’re on the show. Watching Veronica Mars, I’ve become aware that the more Wants a character has, the more dimensions they have – because those Wants can be placed in opposition with each other.
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The next step up from understanding a character is to understand the relationship between a pair of characters. I’m just starting to think about the sort of questions I should ask in order to explore how a particular relationship works. Questions like:
Do they have a secret that they both keep (together)? What secrets do they keep from each other?
How’d they first meet?
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I’m also getting to better understand the nuances of each character’s motivations. Watching Buffy Season 4 taught me that you really only need to know what characters have just been through and how that makes them feel RIGHT NOW in order to be consistent. Let’s call it the ‘stay one step ahead’ mode of writing.
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I really like this quote from Sid Field's Going to the Movies. It's Robert Towne (Chinatown) about creating characters. He first asks himself, What is this character afraid of? In other words, what is his or her deepest fear?In Chinatown, Jake Gittes, a private detective specialising in "discreet investigation," has a certain reputation to uphold, so he does everything to make a good impression. He dresses immaculately, has his shoes shined everyday and has his own code of ethics. Gittes' deepest fear is not being taken seriously.
Some new thoughts on how I could edit a script:
Read through the script.
Mark off how ‘engaged’ I am with it, on a scale of 1-10.
That’s in order to create a Whammo Chart. A graph of the script’s highs and lows.
Read through with a blue pen and circle any bits where the story seems to be off.
Then go through each character’s journey. Use a red pen to mark any points where they don’t seem to be acting true to themselves.
If they go significantly off-beam, go back to the start and red-pen every other character’s journey up to that point. Try to understand at the level of Motivation what’s going on.
If that doesn’t clear things up, look at the conflict in the scene. Is it being expressed clearly.
What about sub-text? Is the scene about more than it appears to be about? Does it have layers to it?
***
Trying to cut 10% of the script (down to about 90 pages) is fun.
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The script analysis is completed. Halving my time estimates really has resulted in me doing the work faster. So much so that my Safety Buffer is back up to 20 days. Conclusion: if I want to get work done fast I should focus on it until it’s freakin’ done.
Now I’m going to start on the edit. 4 days seems even more ridiculous now I’ve seen what needs to be done on the script. I’m going to take it as a challenge … to see if I can get back up to ‘TV writing’ speed.
For future business reference: That was a full script analysis in 2.5 days.
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My goal’s to have a second draft of The Limit on the market by August 7. Doing that requires a massive amount of focus and time-management. Since applying the concepts from Critical Chain (a book on project management) worked for finishing off Draft 1, I’m going to use them again.
Some of the relevant ideas are:
Read … Take the whole day to do it.
Should I take notes on that first pass through?
Build a Whammo Chart.
6 Hat the script on six passes.
Polish with Andrew.
Send to Sean and Ainsley.
ID main problems.
Correct.
Send out 2nd Draft.
Sell.
Celebrate.
There’s also Directors’ Notes, the Pitch and Marketing to start thinking about.
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There’s more work beyond the end of this draft. Like taking my new understanding of the characters and the plot - and feeding it back into the start of the script, refining the story. All I’m hoping is that the amount of intense thought I’ve been putting into the writing this time round is going to remove my standard errors from the script. Of course there will be mistakes – that’s what a first draft is :) - but I’d like to be dealing with a higher level of mistakes.
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Read and analyze, collect the feedback and solve the biggest problems.
Then a really deep re-edit of the script and, while it's away at the proof readers, finish up my submission letters and send them off.
Then I reread the new draft, hoped that it's finished, do the final proof and send it off.
Followed by which I celebrate, fall on the floor and sleep for four days.
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Let's leave aside that I still re-edit hopeless and episodes of lovebites in my head 5+ years later. Eventually you have to send something you've written out into the wild. I guess I have three measures that let me know the time is right:
1) I can visualise how a scene needs to be shot.
2) I really want to film it.
And most importantly
3) When I read it from start to finish, I'm absorbed - taking hardly any notes.
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I mentioned the "doing it right vs. getting it done fast" dilemma a few days ago. When I was first writing this draft, I laboured over each sequence until I felt it was working as good as I could get it. At the moment, my writing is nowhere that intensive.
However, I think it's like sculpting*. My first draft was like taking a lot of care to get the general shape correct. Now I've stepped back, assessed what it looks like and am making some of the quick, obvious hacks and cuts to get everything in proportion. It means my concern is I'll cut too much or that I'll stray from the heart of the piece, but - unlike sculpting - I can put material back into the script. I guess it's like sculpting with play-doh ... and I think I'll end the metaphor there cos I can sense it starting to collapse.
*I've never sculpted anything, so this is what I imagine it's like.
Anyway, enough writing about writing. Back to it. The update boils down to this: 1) the work's going slower than I thought, and 2) regardless of the final quality of this draft, I won't put it on the market till I'm happy with it. (This may lead to another post about why 'happy' and 'finished' are two completely different - and achievable - measures from 'good enough' and 'perfect'; the benchmarks I used to aim for.)
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When your busy friends agree to do you a favour and read your script for free, you should add a week to the schedule for each friend. Because they have lives.
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The purpose of all this reading and thinking is to ID problems. Then choose which ones have to be solved. Some problems aren’t worth it; that temptation to make the script ‘perfect’ – that’s just be a way to avoid finishing. Next, each problem gets a page and I have to come up with 20 solutions for each one.
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Yesterday I quoted Joss Whedon saying, "... as a script doctor, the issue is always the same: “We want you to make the third act more exciting and cheaper.” And my response inevitably is, “The problem with the third act is the first two acts.” This response is never listened to."
Damn.
Basic problem-solving theory: deal with the most important problem first (and in the process you’ll solve smaller related problems). Well, one problem stands out as a deal-breaker for 80% of my readers: “The Plan” that sets the events of the script in motion.
All The Limit’s gimmicks and cleverness don’t matter because the villains are coming across as implausible (in terms of what they do and how others react to them).
So, simultaneously brainstorming solutions to all the problems – like I was describing a couple of days ago, and which was beginning to feel overwhelming – isn’t the best approach. I need to focus. The Limit is a thriller, meaning ‘what’s going on’ has to be crystal clear by the end. Everything else gets subordinated to that; and the main way to achieve that clarity is by understanding and caring about every character.
But this feedback process has worked. Reading through other people's eyes has revealed the problems that were invisible to me.
***
I think I've finished with The Plan and its ramifications. Now to write the one-page summary for Andrew, so he can bounce ideas off it.
And then it's time to sort out the rest of the problems. First I should see how dealing with this fundamental one has altered the script - and whether dealing with it has eliminated any other outstanding issues. After that, I should choose the next most fundamental issue and analyse it.
***
Now I’ve brainstormed options for all the problems that were raised … man, that was kinda exhausting and fun.
Maybe I *should* re-read it next but I feel like continuing to work with the ideal, abstracted script in my head rather than the real thing. So I might do something different.
Take a couple of big bits of paper – maybe one to draw a mind-map on & two or three for notes about each Act. Work my way from the start of the movie towards the finish, taking notes for the restructure – and as I run into a problem for the first time, look at my brainstormed options and choose the one that feels best right at that moment.
(And if I’m not satisfied, then it’s time for more brainstorming …)
Also, I should cross-reference this Scribbled Chart of Restructuring with my brainstorming notes – to refer to them during the slog of the rewrite
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I’ve finished brainstorming solutions for A3 & gotten answers from Ray Van Beynen about specific AOS issues, like their procedures and language. Now I’m finally sitting down to rewrite the script – and for a while I was in a whole new realm of procrastination
Reluctant to finish the script – possibly daunted at the amount of work in front of me. Uncertain about whether I should only be roughing out solutions to all the scenes or fixing everything as I go.
The most important thing was to make a decision – maybe not to finish the whole thing (that seems too remote at the moment) but at least to complete work on this first act. So I went through the whole script & ABC’d the scenes - to see what required totally new scenes (A) , significant edits (B) or minor rewrites (C).
There are 90 sequences to edit. 42% of them are totally new A-scenes. Almost half of them are in Act 1 (80% of them are in either A1 or A3).
… Enough numbers. While knowing what’s going on hasn’t totally eliminated my fear, it’s given me a way forward. I just going to read the C-scenes. For B-scenes, I’ll brainstorm 20 ideas for each problem they present (to give me some options when I go through the full rewrite). A-scenes, though, need a full Stakes & Conflicts workup and then have to be Beat-by-Beaten out.
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[Note to self: when making a Whammo Chart, either use a hard copy or a .doc I don’t make notes on. At the moment my chart doesn’t correlate to the script’s page numbers.]
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So, I’ll be even more focused on the script over the next week or so. I’ve scheduled 20 days to finish this section; hopefully I can finish much quicker. After that, organise all my brainstorming and then finalise it. And then the final ‘tighten up & proofread’ draft.
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"Draft D done"
Reduced from 115 pages of puffiness to a lean 93 pages of action, the script's ready for Andrew to read through it. Then we'll decide whether it needs any more radical rewrites. I'm hoping not.
Couple of things I learned during this redraft:
1. There's always more stuff you can take out.
I adhere to Stephen King's rule, that the 2nd Draft = the 1st Draft - 10% (except in my blog posts). This time round, I discovered moments within a single scene that duplicated each other, moments that didn't make any sense because they referred to previous versions, simple spelling mistakes ('streaks' became 'steaks').
In fixing all this, I took out beats I was fond of but thought distracted from getting to the story. Mostly those were slightly jokey moments or actions I wasn't 100% convinced by.
2. I always have a warm-up period where the writing doesn't come easily.
It'd be great to figure out a way around this - where it comes from and how to deal with it. That would increase my productivity.
3. I'll feel whatever I'm writing about.
That's the only way it seems to work for me. And, with this script, a lot of good's come out of it. I used to be afraid of feeling angry. Now I understand it more: the way it's powerful and it feels good - but how I nearly make bad decisions under its influence.
4. I have a new benchmark to aim for.
Earlier this year, I locked on to something new to explore in my writing - being aware of a script's central conflict and making sure every scene hooked into that. I'm still learning how to do that but now I have an even more demanding goal to reach for.
You see, I read a script and rate how engaged I am with it (out of 10) on every page. Next script, I want to aim for 10 out of 10 for all of it. I don't even know if that's achievable but there is definitely no harm in trying.
That's the great thing about writing: the process is still fun (even when it's frustrating and heart-breaking), but the benchmark for my satisfaction keeps moving.
***
I've restarted work on (hopefully) the final draft of The Limit. So far, there are 3 main problems: that the setup's too long - it feels puffy, repetitive, boring; there's also a subplot that I've recently introduced that's destroying the script's momentum; and last, the ending has too much exposition in it & not quite enough emotion. Overall, the script's a little too long - 115 pages where I think it should be 90-100 at most.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed reading it. The story has a dread & tension to it that I found riviting, and finally the third act is starting to play the way I've always wanted it to. So, there's a bit of work ahead of me if I'm going to finish this before New Years, but I do think it's possible. This thing could have stopped dominating my life within the next 10 days.
***
Now, some formatting, printing out and feedback from Andrew. Then the final tighten and polish (and rigorous proof-reading - my favourite part!). I suspect after that, I'll be asking 5 people if they want to read it, just to get a final idiot-check on the whole thing. 'Idiot' in the sense of 'did I write anything totally stupid (continuity errors & such).
***
After this, a short break to organise stuff for my sister’s wedding and the flat, then a sweep through the script to tidy up descriptions and format dialogue.
One mechanical thing I found useful on this draft was to put the script feedback into ‘endnote’ format, so that all the potential edits are together on one page. I put each Endnote under the Scene Heading, so it’s very clear what needs to be worked on.
Contacted readers yesterday. Good response so far. Also started working on letters to producers. Very excited.
***
I've thought a lot about whether I should post this, but given that I'm trying to keep a full record of my writing process I think I have to go through the last fortnight.
Two Fridays ago - DBS gave me feedback on the script. Much of it was good, some of it was really challenging. I enjoyed the session a lot.
Two Saturdays ago - I finally read through the script myself. My emotions went through two phases:
I've been:
1. making sure there's the same number of spaces after each full-stop
2. making all the '...' in the script consistently spaced
3. spell-checking stuff. Turns out that adding words to the dictionary makes the process go faster
4. formatting all the remaining dialogue. I used Page Preview for this. Next time, I really need to set up a script template with macros.
Gripping stuff, I know. But getting the presentation right is important at a "It's a good read" level.
As usual, I stalled on doing this, then found it was much quicker than I anticipated. (All hail the Auto-replace function.)
Next up, I'll be:
5. putting the (CONT.) into the script
6. making sure the scene headings are formatted consistently (in style and names of locations).
Then to print it out, and reverse-proof it - starting from the end of the script and going back a sentence at a time.
After that's all done, I've got to:
- enter the final changes
- paginate it all
- turn it into a PDF (which may be unnecessary)
- register it with the NZWG
- send it off to a producer.
***
A couple of months back, Morgue described writing a second draft as... like being inside a giant and massively complex sudoku puzzle, erasing and checking and erasing again as you try and get the damn thing to have the right balance of numbers. Equal parts fascinating and frustrating, but always compelling.
I'd add to that, that there's a constant deepening of your understanding of the characters. Every scene that's been problematic in this rewrite, I've had to say why is it in the script? That question has led to me amping up its structural importance (the sudoku aspect, above), but I've also had to 'get' previously minor characters. That deeper understanding feeds back into the start of the script and affects how other characters react to each other.
Anyway, like I said, typing, proofing, and sending out are next. I expect the secondary project I'll focus on now is to collect all of these script writing posts and start to refine and publish my process.
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