A few weeks ago, I printed a copy of the animated fantasy-comedy, and then posted on social media about holding the actual document in my hands and the sensations that resulted from doing that.
(Quick note – said sensations were of a very positive nature. There’s definitely something to be said about holding a physical manifestation of all the time and effort you put into this draft. It’s exhilarating. Uplifting, even. A true sense of accomplishment. And then eagerly accepting the next step of figuring out what’s wrong with it and how to fix it/make it better.)
The post yielded quite a wide spectrum of responses. From “Totally agree. It’s fantastic!” to “I can’t imagine NOT printing it” to “You still print out scripts?”
As I matter of fact, I do. I find it to be incredibly helpful when it comes to editing, proofreading, and overall polishing.
As more than a few people put it, “Printing out a script is a necessary part of my process. I can see things on a page I’m holding that I might not see on a screen.”
That can definitely apply to me. After I finish a draft, I’ll step away from it for a few weeks, then print it out (double-sided) and have at it with red pen in hand. I go through the whole thing page by page, line by line, marking it up as much as necessary.
Could there be some kind of subconscious connection between holding an honest-to-goodness physical printout in your hands and what it does to your creative process? Beats me, but it seems to really make a difference.
I’m much more likely to spot something that needs to be changed when it’s on a piece of paper rather than on a screen. A line of dialogue that doesn’t work or needs retooling. A scene that doesn’t flow the way I need it to, so I try rearranging it. Or those most common of miscreants – a typo, a misspelled word, or a rogue punctuation mark. It happens.
Sometimes I’ll have a page that’s totally mark-free, or maybe one or two little fixes. Sometimes the page has got more red ink and edit marks than actual text, or my notes and comments occupy a lot of that white space.
All of it – not uncommon.
One interesting side note – many’s the time I’d have to decide about cutting something I was hesitant to cut. I would then figure out what was best for the script and story, and not what I wanted. If cutting this or rearranging that resulted in the scene, and subsequently the script, being better, then so be it. The usual follow-up to that was I’d make the change, then immediately forget about what was cut because the new version was better.
Once all the changes and fixes have been taken care of this draft, I’ll go back to the beginning and start implementing those changes and fixes on the digital copy.
Also not uncommon – trying to read my own handwriting, which can occasionally border on appearing microscopic in size from me trying to cram too many notes on the page. It might take a few passes to read it, but I eventually get there.
Before I know it – voila! A new draft.
Printing out my scripts to do some more work on them in order to make the next draft better is a process that’s served me quite well over the years, and I don’t see any reason to stop doing it.
Maximum Z 