Sometimes when you’re working on a story, you just have this feeling that the way it’s being told is the way it should be told. It just feels right.

Even though I’d made some good progress with the ongoing revision of the sci-fi adventure outline, something still seemed…off. What I had was good, including several scenes that now felt necessary, but as a whole, not quite there yet.

As I’ve mentioned before, I keep all the previous drafts of the outline and script on file –  you never know when some of that text will come in handy. The recent work on the current revision was accompanied by another tab on the screen containing the previous draft, serving primarily as a sort of roadmap to help guide me through this latest effort.

Despite telling myself that this new draft was supposed to be different from its predecessor, its siren call was a bit stronger than expected. There was just something about it that couldn’t be denied. Not to say that the newer version was no slouch either.

Parts of this one work, and parts of that one work. Why not combine the two?

Sure, this even-newer draft might occasionally take a somewhat unorthdox approach in how the story’s presented, but by gosh, I still like it. “Rules of screenwriting” be damned.

There’s nothing wrong with cherry-picking parts of the new draft and incorporating them into the previous one where applicable. Of course, it would have been nice to have come to this conclustion a few weeks ago, but sometimes that’s just how it works.

What’s really nice is that for the most part, save for a few problem spots, the previous draft is still pretty solid on its own. Nothing serious, and some of these new elements look like they’ll really rectify that.

Based on some extremely helpful notes, another factor that’ll help this time around is putting more of a spotlight on the characters’ emotions. Even in this kind of story, with all of its fantastical and extraordinary elements, it’s important to show how the characters are still people.

Lastly, all the time I’ve been working on this story, I’d forgotten how the initial concept and earliest versions were all written with a certain kind of tone in mind; something to really convey the vibe of what story of story this was supposed to be and how I wanted it to read. Somehow that aspect’s diminished over time, and I plan on re-introducing it for the next draft.

This is gonna be fun.