comedy

Just another gradual shifting of gears

Maximum Z comedy, concept, draft, dramedy, feedback, multitasking, notes, output, pages, productivity, project, quality, screenplay, screenwriting, script, spec, story, writing , , , , , , , , ,
gear-shift
Start at first and take it from there

Notes continue to trickle in for the comedy-now-dramedy spec. General consensus – solid concept, underdeveloped, reads like a first draft, still needs a ton of work, and so forth.

All of which is fine by me. I wrote it in an extremely short amount of time, which is probably quite evident in the draft itself.  It’s also the fastest I’ve ever cranked out a draft, and to me that’s still a victory in itself.

Would I have loved for everybody to gush about it and claim it truly wonderful? Of course, but that ain’t gonna happen. As long as nobody says “This is terrible!”, I’m good.

Is it at least a decent script? Well, I like it. There’s a lot of potential in it, and the quality can only improve from its current state.

So while the thoughts of “what to fix and how to fix it” percolate, I’ll slide it to the always-expanding back burner and move on to the next couple of items on my agenda, which includes notes on some friends’ specs, followed by the first draft of a long-in-development project.

Exciting times, chums.

It’s that time again!

Maximum Z comedy, dramedy, notes, pages, polish, production company, productivity, project, reading, representation, rewrite, screenplay, screenwriting, script, story, writing , , , , , , , , , ,
New York Author Honored at Cocktail Party
Sparkling wit, bon mots & smart turns of phrase are right at home here

Another three months has passed, making it a more than fitting opportunity to check in with all of you hard-working writers to find out exactly how that writing is going.

That’s right, gang. Put on your public-speaking pants (online edition) and step up to take part in the world-renowned Project Status Update Time!

(insert triumphant fanfare here)

It’s a fairly simple process. In the comments section below, feel free to share with the rest of us what’s new with you and your writing.

Page count. Logline development. Contact with a prodco or rep. Pre-production on a short. Any and all updates are welcome.

As is the tradition, I’ll start things off:

I’ll still give it one more read-through, but I wrapped up the rewrite/polish on the comedy spec. It’s more of a dramedy now, but still quite a charming little story.

I’m also in the process of giving notes on some friends’ scripts, and once all of those are done, it’s onto a pair of new projects. Exciting times, indeed.

How about you?

Trying to unlock a key moment

Maximum Z acts, believability, context, creativeness, determination, development, draft, half-marathons, plot points, polish, protagonist, running, scenes, screenplay, screenwriting, script, spec, story, writing , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
skeleton-keys
One of these HAS to be it

I was hoping to wrap up the polish/revision of the comedy spec this week. Everything was going quite smoothly until I hit a bit of snag when I got to the end of Act 2 – only one of the most important parts of the story. Where things are definitely at the lowest point possible for our hero.

The general consensus of my readers was that the hero was too passive, and therefore needed to be much more active and stand his ground, yet still end up failing. Some suggestions were made, and I’ve been working on making it stronger and more effective.

Which brings us back to right now. As it reads, it’s just not working.

And that’s kind of frustrating.

I know there’s a solution to this, and my creativeness has been working constantly to come up with one that not only works with the context of the story, but seems plausible and believable.

As I said to one of my readers, I tend to overthink this kind of thing. To which they responded with “Remember, this is a story that’s supposed to entertain.”

And that’s pretty important, too.

Hopefully when all is said and done, it’ll do all of it.

-I ran the Giant Race half-marathon on Sunday. Got a small rock in my shoe around mile 7 or 8, but opted to keep going rather than sacrifice the time to remove it. The rock eventually was a non-issue and I managed to just beat my ongoing goal of 1:55 by one whole second – 1:54:59.

Several thoughts while you wait

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young-frankenstein
This was originally a clip of “Igor, would you give me a hand with the bags?”, but the greedy jackals at Fox have removed it. This photo proudly takes its place. RIP Mr Wilder

More feedback coming in on the comedy spec, so some tweaking and revamping is underway. Hope to be done with it soon.

In the meantime, I think these previous posts do a more-than-adequate job of summing up what a lot of writers, along with yours truly, probably experience and encounter during this process.

Enjoy.

Thank you. I’ll take that under consideration.

Knocked down, but not staying there

Not everybody’s going to like it

The great exchanging of two cents

Am I getting better?

 

 

 

 

Time for the editor to take over

Maximum Z blog, comedy, draft, editing, screenplay, screenwriting, script, spec, writing , , , , , , , , ,
editor
Where’s the ‘delete’ key on this thing?

The latest undertaking: the edit/rewrite of the low-budget comedy spec is underway.

Even while I was writing it, I knew there were changes that needed to be made. So now it’s time to dive in and make those changes, which tends to be equally as thrilling as the actual writing process. For me, anyway.

This is the part where I force myself to let those changes be made, even for the parts I absolutely love. There will most likely be more than one instance of “Why did I think this was a good idea?” Then I change it.

It happens with every draft of every script. You have to be able to be your own harshest critic. Every decision stems from “How can this be better?”

Sometimes it comes easy, and sometimes it doesn’t. It takes a while to get the hang of it.

“But why not just do it while you’re writing that initial draft?” some may ask. Because you don’t always hit the bullseye on your first attempt. You need a couple of practice tries. Many’s the time I’d suddenly stumble into a solution that proved to be significantly better than the original.

Don’t hold back. Don’t be afraid to make those changes. As I’ve discovered many times in the past, once something is changed, it is very soon forgotten. So much to the point that you’ll barely remember the previous incarnation.

When this whole process is done, at least for this round, I believe the end result will be a better script. I’m fairly confident this won’t take too long, and think writer-me will be quite content with the decisions made and steps taken by editor-me.

And then the whole thing will repeat itself again.

*Side note – blogger-me is proud to announce that the number of visitors to the blog has surpassed the 20-thousand mark. Not too shabby, especially considering the first few years were me and about six other people.

Thanks for reading, everybody!