Unusually busy this week, including initial prepping for a potentially huge project, so not much progress on the rewrite front.  I also feel like I’ve been ignoring LUCY, so I brought the trusty notepad to last night’s hockey practice in an effort to see what I could come up with.

I’m up to around the page 75 mark, and need to get to the end of Act Two.  The action and stakes have to be ramped up, and just about everything in that part of the initial outline wasn’t going to work.  Simply put, I’m starting over.  Sometimes that can be good and inspirational, but looking at that blank page didn’t help.

My good guys need to reconnect with the bad guys. The situation has to be progressively harder for them, with the title character driving things forward.  But how to make this happen?  Ding! The light bulb appears.  Pick ’em off, one by one, leading to the showdown in Act Three! That’s it! Wooo! And what better an example of this than DIE HARD?

*Side note – you gotta admit it’s incredibly cool that DIE HARD is now considered a Christmas classic, right up there with A CHRISTMAS STORY and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE.  No holiday season should be without watching it.

While there have been numerous copies, some done right, some not, this is a great blueprint to follow for a solidly-constructed action story.  Hard to find any big flaws in it.

For an entertaining analysis/review, click here.

Now that I have an idea of how to move ahead, I can work out the details of how to break up each sequence into 2-3 scenes per scenario, all of which will lead into the “all is lost” moment at the end of Act Two.  I still have a few gaps to fill, but confidence is running high.

Gotta tell ya – feels pretty good to overcome a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.