Just the right size for enjoyment at your convenience
Busy times continuing, so just a few items worth mentioning.
-Good progress as the November writing project continues. Closing in on the end of Act 2, and with a few days off next week, hoping to steamroll my way through Act 3 and wrap up the first draft. Still averaging about 2 pages a day, which isn’t necessarily because I’m not very productive, but partially due to…
-Been very busy the past couple of weeks giving notes on scripts written by writer pals kind enough to do it for me. Everybody’s patience is much appreciated.
-In the early discussion stages of helping out on 2 potential projects. Both feel like they’ll really push my creativeness to the limit. Always nice.
-Ran the Golden Gate Half this past Sunday. 1:56:36, including a lot of uphill on both sides of the bridge and a light drizzle during miles 8 through 11. Also nice.
-My daughter, the illustrious Ms V, turned 13 this week. The next few years are going to be interesting, to say the least. Wish me luck.
Have an excellent weekend, and make sure to get some kickass writing done.
Getting a little tired waiting for you to write yourself.
So how’s your November writing project coming along?
Making the progress you were hoping for? Maybe you’re producing a number of pages above and beyond what you were expecting? Or are you feeling trapped in a morass of agony and frustration because the words just won’t cooperate?
No matter what your output, good on you for keeping at it. Only 20 days to go!
For the sake of this discussion, let’s say at month’s end you have a finished draft. Most likely a first draft.
How would you rate it? Good? Bad? Somewhere in the middle? Or, if you’re like a lot of writers, you’ll label it “okay, but needs a lot of work.”
And you know what? That’s totally cool.
That’s the point of the first draft. Don’t worry about if it’s perfect or not. It’s not. But it is helping you lay down the foundation for your story so you can spend each consecutive rewrite fixing any and all things that need to be fixed.
And there will be a lot of them.
Again, still cool.
Some writers consider just writing the first draft as the biggest obstacle. You’re literally creating something out of nothing. Compared to that, every subsequent draft gets a little easier. You might even be surprised how many new ideas you come up with it as you go along.
The first draft is indeed a necessary evil. At times it probably feels like a neverending slog, but once you actually do finish it, the hard part’s out of the way. All your initial ideas are now assembled into what may or may not resemble what you’re trying to create. It may not be anywhere near the point you want it to be, but you’re definitely better off than when you started.
Don’t just embrace the opportunity of getting through the first draft. Grab it with both hands, hold it tight, and run like hell.
“Hmm. How about Mrs Bates kills Marion while she’s running through the sprinklers? Nah.”
Based on what I’m seeing on various social media outlets and assorted online forums, a lot of screenwriters, including myself, are taking part in the self-imposed project of cranking out an entire script by the end of November.
I think it’s great that so many writers are taking it upon themselves to accomplish this. It definitely helps you establish a kind of rhythm or pattern or whatever you want to call it that you can incorporate into your writing process the other eleven months of the year.
A few months ago, I’d originally set a personal goal of having this draft of the low-budget comedy done by the end of the year, so that’s what I’m shooting for. At the rate of approximately 2 pages a day, there’s no reason it couldn’t done by or at least around Thanksgiving, which would be nice.
What’s also proving to be very helpful is that because this is a first draft, which means it will most likely suck (as first drafts often do), and require the requisite inevitable extensive rewriting, I’m not constantly fretting over whether a scene or a line is perfect. I might spend a minute or two on it, trying alternate takes, but I get it out of my system and move on to the next scene. For right now, whatever I write down works.
It’s a very liberating sensation, and removes a lot of that “I have to get it done!” pressure.
Also good – setting a realistic goal. A lot of writers post updates like “Only 12 pages today. Will try to do better tomorrow.” My at-least-2-pages-a-day quota seems kind of dinky in comparison, and while I wish my output were higher, you gotta do what works for you. My schedule also plays a factor. I only have so much time to write, especially during the week, so I figure I can only produce so much in this timeframe, and take it from there.
What it all boils down to is that no matter how much or how often you’re writing, the important thing is that YOU ARE WRITING. Don’t stop, and definitely try to keep up the pace once the calendar changes to December 1st.
It’s a bad habit of mine, definitely happens in the first draft, and then has to be slowly and surgically removed with each successive draft that follows.
Simply put, I put too much detail into a scene. I visualize in my mind how it plays out, and that’s what I put on the page.
There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s probably my equivalent of a “vomit draft”, where everything gets written down because you know you’re going to go back and edit and rewrite it multiple times. It’s a starting point.
So after you’ve got that first draft written, how do you know what to get rid of?
Like with sculpting a statue out of a block of marble, just chip away anything that doesn’t belong.
Say you have a scene that runs 1 3/4 pages. Do you know what the point of the scene is? Does it advance the plot and the characters’ development? Is there a way to have the scene still do that but with significantly less words? Can you cut the whole thing in half? Can you cut it by 75 percent?
How much of the scene is just back-and-forth dialogue? How detailed are you when it comes to what the characters are doing? (“He climbs the first step of the stairs, pauses to catch his breath, wipes his sweaty brow, then advances another step.” That sort of thing).
Do you describe parts of the scene that, when you really think about it, really don’t have much or anything to do with moving the story forward (how a room is decorated, what the characters are wearing, etc)? I’ve been reading a lot of scripts lately, and have seen all of these on display.
It’s like this is the culmination of three important screenwriting rules:
–get in late, get out early
–get to the point as soon as possible
–write as if ink costs a thousand dollars an ounce
Don’t be of the mindset that you can’t or won’t change anything. Yes, this is your baby, but what’s more important? Your writer’s ego or telling your story in the best, most efficient way possible?
I had a first draft that was 132 pages. Just about every person who gave me notes said it was too long, and that it had to be at least 20-30 pages shorter. At the time, I thought that was asking too much. If I really pushed myself, I could cut maybe 10, 15 tops.
But as I went through each rewrite, trimming wherever I could, savagely wiping scenes, characters and dialogue from existence, it kept getting shorter until I got it down to 107. A whole 25 pages cut, just as was suggested. It took a while, but I got there.
Whittling each scene down to its bare essentials not only helped make the script better, but also proved beneficial to developing my writing and editing skills so while I’m sure I’ll continue to overwrite in the future, at least I’ll be better prepared to deal with it.
All the news about me that’s fit to digitally publish
Having recently given some notes on a couple of comedy scripts, I decided to see what I could do with mine, which I hadn’t looked at in about 5 months (due to finishing up the western).
The outline still seemed pretty solid, but could do with some minor tweaking. I’d already started on a first draft, so I thought I’d see how that read.
I honestly didn’t remember how far I’d gotten. Maybe page 25 or thereabouts?
Nope. A whopping 49 pages. Whoa. That’s around halfway through! Talk about pleasant surprises.
I read through and already see what needs to be cut, including too many instances of over-writing (a bad habit of mine that always occurs in first drafts). From what I’ve read, it looks like a lot can be taken out without too much of an impact on scenes or story.
So now I’ll see if I can settle back into that 3-pages-a-day routine and have it finished relatively soon-ish. I was hoping to have a draft of something done by the end of the year, so looks like I may actually be on track for that.
