One of my biggest challenges when it comes to rewrites has always been letting go of what’s on the page now and making whatever changes are needed.

It’s taken time to learn to get better at this.

Such was the case with the current rewrite.

I was going through the previous draft, marking up what needed to be done.

I got to a scene that I loved, but ultimately realized that it simply didn’t need to be there. Broke my heart to take it out, but I had to do what was best for the script, not me.

There were a few scenes that had to be adjusted a bit as a result of that, which in retrospect was a pretty good thing. Those scenes are now tighter and help keep things moving along.

And it’s not like I can’t use the content of the cut scenes again. They’ll just be stored away for potential use in the future – for this script or possibly another.

Cutting that one scene has also resulted in being more open to doing more with other scenes. I’ve enjoyed working with the mindset of “Is there a different way to do this?” and then exploring the possibilities. It’s not uncommon to go through several versions before finding the one that works.

Don’t know how long it’ll take to get through the rest of the script, but I’m quite happy with how it’s going. This in turn makes me want to work on it more, so there’s a chance it could even be done sooner than expected.

I honestly think the end result will be a much better script. All because I was willing to get rid of/change material I thought was already good.