[The Limit] The end of marking up the script

Friday night, I finished revising the exposition scene in the middle of the script. That's the last big change I had to make, and it involved quite a bit of research.

So, that's the end of the big creative-thinking part of the script. Now to type in the changes, with hopefully only a few areas where I have to come up with new ideas. I expect that phase will have a lot of tightening of dialogue in it.

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.