The latest draft of the horror-comedy is complete – clocking in at a respectable 102 pages. It’s out to my savvy readers, so now the focus shifts to some semi-overdue reads for a couple of colleagues.
So while I dive into those, here are a few classic posts from days gone by…
Enjoy.
More work now, better results later
I know the rules, and do not hesitate to break them
After a rough couple of days, I’ve opted to put the revision of the sci-fi adventure outline on hold and redirect my focus to a new draft of the horror-comedy.
Lots of changes in store for this one, most of all making it as cheap to produce as possible. Several characters cut, locations drastically slashed, overall production costs severely reduced.
What was once a low-budget story taking place throughout a small town has now been shrunken down to an ultra-low- (possibly even micro-) budget story with a majority of the action on a forest road, and in and around an isolated house.
In some ways a challenge, but also somewhat liberating. Also a major plus – so much usable material from the previous draft – including a line or two of description that’s been expanded into a plot-propelling sequence.
I’m slowly working my way through the outline, with the intention of getting to pages within the next week or so. One option is to type up pages for what I’ve already got in the outline, edit those, then work more on the outline, then pages, and so on and so on. I’ve done it before, with tiring but pleasing results.
No matter how I approach this, the ultimate goal is to have a completed draft (or as darn close to it I can get) by 31 March.
The ticking of the clock rings like thunder in my ears.
Wish me luck.
Quite the productive week around Maximum Z HQ, with the most significant being the wrap-up of the latest draft of the sci-fi adventure spec. It’s an improvement from the previous one, but could still use some more work. Rather than jump right in, I’m letting it simmer for a bit.
The original plan was to return to the horror-comedy spec, which is actually still part of the plan. Setting up the new draft’s notes page required me to dig through all of my script files, which involved seeing titles for older scripts that could also use at least one more draft. Four in total.
Thus a plan developed.
Work on all of them. A little at a time.
Jot down some ideas for one. Fine-tune a few scenes for another. Revise the outline for this one. Totally overhaul that one. Go through notes for all of them.
Or choose one to work on per day. A few steps forward, spread out over time.
Or I might strike creative gold and steamroll my way through one, temporarily foregoing the others.
Who knows how this’ll play out?
It could be a stroke of genius. It could also go horribly, horribly wrong.
But the important thing is I try. I’ve got lots of new ideas for each of these scripts, and will do what I can to make them better.
Having completed two drafts in as many months demonstrates to me that I have the ability to get the job done in a relatively timely manner. So no reason to think I couldn’t continue to make that kind of progress, or at least come mighty close to it.
Updates will be posted accordingly. Especially if the results are encouraging. Depends on my mood at the time.
Some exciting times are on the horizon and closing in fast. Sounds like it’ll be quite the thrilling journey. Hope you’ll come along for the ride.
So far, so good, at least in terms of how the rewrite of the sci-fi adventure spec is going.
Already managed to trim a decent amount of pages, with more potential targets coming up fast.
However, one of the most surprising results this time around is seeing more and more opportunities to really get the most of not just the words on the page, but HOW they’re presented.
I already knew overwriting was one of my biggest obstacles. I tend to go into more detail than is necessary. Not “this is the color of his t-shirt, and this is what’s on his breakfast plate”-type stuff, but more in terms of excessively describing what you’d see transpire onscreen.
This has become painfully obvious for some of the fast-paced action scenes. In the old draft, there’d be several lines about what a character was doing. This time around, I want to get to the point faster – partially for less ink on the page, and partially to help speed things up – so I highlight only the parts that the can’t do without.
It’s probably safe to say each scene has become shorter by at least some degree. Some by a few lines, others by half a page, etc. But the overall impact is becoming more noticeable. Scenes seem to be flowing more smoothly. Even though the descriptions aren’t as detailed as they were before, the new, tighter versions are just as visual.
Of course, since I’m the one writing it, I already have a strong sense of how it’s supposed to “look”. The real test comes when a reader gets their hands on it. Will they experience the same results? I sure hope so, so in the meantime, I do what I can to write it so everything is easy to follow and all questions are answered.
What’s most surprising at all about these new developments is I’d written my last few drafts of several scripts with the same approach I’d always used, but there’s just something very different about it this time around. The way this draft is being put together has a much more analytical feel to it. It’s as if something holding me back has been removed, and the positive results are coming in rapid-fire. One can only hope this sensation endures.
Once again, there’s no firm deadline for a completed draft, but as I mentioned, progress has been strong and steady, so “slightly sooner than possibly expected” will have to do for now. And even when that one’s done, there’s a strong suspicion that just a little more touch-up work will be in order.
Thrilling times, chums.
-Screenwriter/filmmaker Ally May has launched a crowdfunding campaign for her packs-an-emotional-wallop short film project In A Breath. Donate if you can!
-Major congrats to screenwriter/overall mensch Bob Saenz for the upcoming US release of the film of his script Extracurricular Activities, a journey almost two decades in the making. Here’s a great interview Bob did for Script magazine.
The latest draft of the sci-fi adventure is moving along at a pleasantly brisk pace. Still averaging about 4-5 pages a day. The whole process this time around feels a lot more organized. Much more so than in the past.
The previous draft was 118 pages, and one of my many objectives for this one is to get it down to somewhere in the 105-110 range. I’m just about at the end of Act One, and it’s already 9 pages shorter than where it was at this point last time. Seems like the odds are in my favor to hit that page count goal.
But it’s taken a good deal of work to get here, including some shifts in my approaches.
Among the highlights:
-being more diligent in applying the “get in late, get out fast” approach to each scene. Although somewhat unavoidable for action sequences, doing what I can to use this as often as possible.
-cutting unnecessary dialogue. Never realized how much more I used to put in before. It’s been a real effort (and steep learning curve) to get the characters to only say what needs to be said, but it definitely helps get to the point of the scene quickly as well as moves things along.
-not being so detailed with action descriptions – by which I mean “what the characters are doing”, and not the fast-paced, high-octane thrilling moments. Focus on the important stuff. Don’t clutter up the page. Is it absolutely necessary to be so step-by-step about it? Nope.
-In a very “why didn’t I think of this before?” kind of way, having a hard copy of the outline and the previous draft have proven to be exceptionally helpful. The outline tells me what needs to happen in each scene, and the previous draft shows me not only what I did before, but gives me a starting point for potential changes.
-Taking that last item one step further, seeing how a scene played out before, combined with the applying the question of “how does this scene advance the plot, theme and character?” has enabled me to totally rewrite some scenes which before had felt kind of flat, but now read as stronger and help reinforce those three important components.
I managed to crank out the previous draft in about a month, and hoping to accomplish that this time around as well. Of course, a few ideas for more changes have popped up. Nothing too severe, and I’m going back and forth about implementing them right away, or waiting for the cleanup-polish phase.
Every writer puts their material together in the way that works best for them. It took me a while to find mine, and it continues to be a work in progress. But if the latest results are any indicator, it’s working out quite nicely.
Maximum Z 