polish

A variety pack of fun-size treats

Maximum Z antagonist, character arc, comedy, community, fantasy, Halloween, movies, notes, polish, protagonist, rewrite, scenes, screenplay, screenwriting, script, subplots, writing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Several shorties in one convenient package for today’s day-before-Halloween installment

-The rewrite/polish of the fantasy-comedy continues. Taking it more or less one scene at a time. Several recent sets of notes made a good point about the protagonist needing to be more active than reactive, so that’s part of the current focus. It’s been quite an exercise in figuring out how she can be the one moving things forward in each scene. So far, so good.

An unexpected bonus has been more of how her arc and that of the antagonist are the proverbial “opposite sides of the same coin”. Always nice when I discover how much I’ve inadvertently laid a foundation for this sort of thing.

Biggest challenge now is incorporating the numerous subplots, but I’m confident I can make it work.

– I recently had the opportunity to do my Screenwriting 101 presentation for two separate writing groups. Both were warmly received by the writers in attendance, and I even got to sell a few of my Go Ahead And Ask books. I really enjoy doing this and will look into opportunities to do it at writing conferences.

-If you get the chance to see WILDWOOD on the big screen, do so. It is a truly amazing film, and don’t let the fact that it’s stop-motion animation turn you off. This is definitely one of those “you have to see it in a theater”-type of movies. And it can be a little dark at times, so probably not very suitable for small children.

-Submissions are still open for The Maximum Z 2026 Script Showcase, so don’t wait until the last minute to send in your script’s info.

Two down, one to go

Maximum Z action, ambition, Big Trouble In Little China, comedy, deadline, determination, draft, editing, goals, notes, outlines, pages, perseverance, persistence, polish, rewriting, screenplay, screenwriting, script, spec, subplots, writing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The past week has been really productive.

My goal for 2026 was to complete two rewrites and a first draft. The two rewrites can now officially be checked off. I really like how each turned out. Currently standing by for notes on both.

Now it’s all about getting this first draft of the action-comedy done. Target date: Dec 31. Pretty confident I can swing that. If things go the way I’d like them to, a second draft is not out of the question. But let’s not get too ahead of things.

I’d also forgotten I wrote about 32 pages a few months ago – before the rewrites took over – so those have already undergone a quick polish-edit. Now on to the next 70-80 pages.

Taking a look at the outline, the subplot front definitely needs some shoring up – especially in terms of having some. Rather than spend time on that now, I’ll stick with what I’ve got. Inspiration, ideas, and possibilities have a tendency to make themselves known along the way.

For the most part I’m keeping details about this one under wraps, but the small number of people I’ve pitched it to were very positive about it. I’m very much looking forward to when this draft is done and can start spreading the word.

Sidetracked, but in a good way (x2)

Maximum Z action, Bullitt, comedy, determination, draft, fantasy, goals, perseverance, persistence, polish, progress, rewrite, screenplay, screenwriting, script, tone, westerns, writing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Much as I’d like to give a status/progress update on the first draft of the action-comedy spec, I can’t because there ain’t one. I didn’t work on it at all this week.

But what I did work on fulfilled one of my goals for 2026: a quick polish on my western.

While many readers have enjoyed it, more than a few said it was uneven in tone. Parts of it were a hard R, while others were more PG/PG-13. Since I’m going for a wider range of audience, I’m leaning more into the latter.

(This could also contribute to the script’s lack of success in the big contests, but that’s another issue)

One batch of comments had suggestions of more creative ways of having those scenes play out. It didn’t require as much overhauling as I thought. So I hit PAUSE on the action-comedy and dove in.

Wrapped it up a few days later with the page count still the same. Waiting to hear back from a reader.

Work was going to resume on the action-comedy, but I decided this might be the perfect opportunity to check off another 2026 goal: a light rewrite/polish on the fantasy-comedy. Figure once I got that out of the way, I could dedicate the rest of the year to the action-comedy.

Earlier this year I’d written out a brief scene-by-scene outline that hopefully addresses that which needs to be fixed. Armed with that and 3 previous drafts, I’ve been slowly working my way through it. Currently around p65, with a good chance I can wrap it up in the next week or so.

Once that’s done, it’s all about the action-comedy. With how these two rewrite/polishes have gone, feeling pretty confident about how that’ll go.

Let’s ______ go

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I’m currently enjoying my time at Comic-Con in San Diego, so this week’s post is a short one.

The outline for the action-comedy spec is more or less wrapped up – some of the smaller subplots still need figuring out, but the primary storyline and subplots are at about 95 percent, which means…

Time to start on pages.

Going to take a “write it and don’t look back” approach. No editing, no polishing. Just write a scene or sequence, move on to the next one, repeat as needed until “The End”.

Objective: a mostly all-there first draft, which will be much easier to work with than a non-existent one. There’ll be time for all that fixing and tweaking and stuff the next time around.

Bonus – when I feel the need to take a break, I can shift to the continuing work on other projects.

Fingers crossed.

No lab coat required

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A writing experiment of sorts this week has yielded some very interesting results.

I took several drafts of a script and started typing out a new one that combined elements of all of them. Scenes, dialogue, etc. This was primarily to see if it would help me identify what needed work, changing, fixing, and so on.

As I worked my way through, more and more items needing my attention kept popping up. It made me realize this really was going to be the major rewrite/0verhaul I’d expected it to be. Possibly even more so.

And for that I am very grateful.

I don’t know if I would have seen these problem spots or reached this same conclusion if I had just gone through a hard copy of the script with a red pen, marking stuff up. Maybe it’s that specific eye-finger-brain connection while you’re typing that makes you a little more aware of what it is you’re actually typing.

For the time being, I’m deciding between continuing all the way through to the end or starting over at page one. I’m tempted to do the former because that might reveal more problems and issues that need addressing, and it’s probably better to be aware of those earlier rather than later.

All of these pending changes at first seem very challenging, but I have to remind myself I’ve figured my way through similar kinds of problems before, so there’s no reason this time should be any different.

Fingers crossed.