spec

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.

More like this, please

Maximum Z action, antagonist, character arc, characters, comedy, determination, development, draft, editing, I Love Lucy, ideas, perseverance, persistence, protagonist, rewrite, scenes, screenplay, screenwriting, script, sequence, spec, story, subplots, writing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Some MAJOR progress on the outline for the action-comedy spec this week, and I am thrilled.

Among the highlights: figuring out how and where to connect some sequences, plotting out a few others, and coming up with a great new angle about my antagonist’s arc.

Some of these were a long time coming, and some were spur of the moment. I’ll take what I can get.

Also realized a few subplots still need work, which range from “should this be cut or expanded?” to “three scenes should cover it”.

One thing that’s been nagging at me since the beginning is the best way to show my protagonist’s arc in action. How is she changing over the course of the story, and what are the most effective ways to do that? Doing what I can to have this occur at every opportunity, even if it’s something that initially seems insignificant but plain as day in retrospect.

Ain’t easy, but it’s coming together. Would have been great for this to have happened a few months ago, but that’s how it goes.

No guarantee this momentum will continue, but confidence levels are currently registering as high. I may even be so bold as to suggest a strong possibility the outline could be done by the end of the month. This will most likely be followed by either a whole lot of editing and revising, or setting it all aside to work on one or both of the two rewrites.

Either way, there’ll be at least one completed draft of this script by the end of the year.

Planning ahead

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The aftermath of last week’s post about my more-than-questionable notes from Austin, along with a few sets of quality notes from actual humans, AKA trusted colleagues, on that script and another one, has made me realize that both scripts are pretty good, but have a lot of potential to be much, much better.

A lot of my focus these days is regarding the new action-comedy spec (which has seen some good progress over this past week), but after much consideration, I’ve concluded that it would be in my best interest in 2026 to not only get that one into fighting shape, but to also do some major work on the other two.

These rewrites will be especially challenging because this is when “kill your darlings” and “embrace the change” will be at the forefront of this strategy. I’m going to get in the mindset of being totally willing to make whatever changes are needed – but nothing too drastic. I don’t want to lose what was appealing about them in the first place.

There are still some notes to come in, but come January 1st, each day will see some kind of work on one of those scripts. Until then, it’s all about the new spec with the hope that I have a semi-decent outline by the end of this year.

Another aspect of this undertaking is totally skipping contests. I’d already drastically cut back, so this isn’t too much of a change. Better to have some really solid scripts ready for the following year, or at least as better samples for my manager to put out there.

I was initially hesitant to give this a try, but a very talented writer I know gave this a try and had some pretty amazing results. Not that I expect the same, but there’s no reason this will not only help my scripts improve, but also my overall writing skills. And it’s significantly better than not doing anything.

Fingers, as always, will be firmly crossed.

Creativity activated

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Super-shorty post today.

Not happy with the development and what feels like a lack of progress on the new spec, so taking some time to see what I can do to rectify that. I’ve got ideas.

Wish me luck, and have a good weekend.

-quick contest update – my fantasy-comedy didn’t make Second Round for Austin. Was hoping it would, but that’s the way it goes. Back to the spec.

The only constant is change

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Even though a lot of the past week was family-oriented, thoughts about the current spec were omnipresent. There’s still a lot to figure out, but things are progressing, albeit slowly.

One positive result is that as these ideas develop, each causes a ripple effect in terms of how it impacts the rest of the story.

Just as an example, I needed to come up with a very important story detail, so started listing all the possible reasons how it could happen. I came up with one I felt worked best and started implementing it into the still-under-construction outline. That in turn triggered thoughts of “that could be because of ____” or “what if ____ is why?”.

A little more rejiggering of possibilities and how they’d fit into the story and voila! Some really helpful ideas and additional details that strengthen its designated storyline AND how it affects a few others.

When I started this project, I reminded myself that the end result would most likely be very different while the core story remained the same. Staying on top of all those little details is really keeping me on my toes, while also forcing me to constantly ramp up my creativity to make this script as original and entertaining as possible.

It’s a safe bet I’ll come up with more story-changing/impacting ideas over the next few weeks, but I welcome them and will deal with those as they happen.

The main focus remains just putting it all together.