hatehatehate

Wanna hear more about my journey in writing, guy?

FUCK YOU ALL, I'M GOING TO MARRY THIS DOG.

fine with finishing

Well, I think I just might be satisfied with Act One, at least enough to move onto Act Two.

Last week was the deadline for the dude to turn it in and my mind was so dead at the time that I couldn't decide how I felt about it. I left it alone for a week and re-read it today and I really can't think of anything that screams, "CHANGE ME!" So that's good...

I leave for London in 3 weeks. I don't know how heavy my workload is going to be for that semester, but I don't want to stop writing this. I can't let it get in the way of my schoolwork, but I know I'm not going to let myself leave this story alone while I'm over there. I have to make sure I don't overload myself and remember to have fun over there while I can.

That's about it.

fear of finishing

It's been a week and I somehow managed to cut 16 pages. 16 from 53 is a lot. So that leaves me at 37 pages. A first act is typically 30 pages, at least that's what you're supposed to aim for.

I can deal with having 7 pages over the standard limit; I'll live.

When I wrote my terrible and terribly long screenplay last year, I kept making excuses for not cutting. I'd tell myself it was OK to have a really long first act as long as I had a very short third act and trimmed a bit from the second. Dumb ass! No! It's about pacing. You don't ever want the first act to be much more than 30 pages because nobody wants to wait 50 pages to see where the story is going.

Even this time, I didn't take every step I could have. I didn't write a beat sheet, and even though it's not necessary, it might have helped me make the main character more active, or rather, the story would have been more propelled by her actions.

Or not. That's the challenge in writing based on true events. She didn't really make a shit-ton of decisions. Things happened and she reacted to them. But that happens in films as well.

Also, my inciting incident isn't quite where it typically "should" be. I wait til page 30-31 to introduce the inciting incident, and then around page 35, the main character makes THE DECISION, which is Plot Point #1, the action/decision that hooks us into the second act.

Whatever. Anyway. My point is, it's not going down in the book of All Things Standard, but I feel like it works. It's hard to tell at this point, having read it 9 billion times. I'm probably going to keep working through the night and the deadline for this first act is tomorrow, around 4:30pm.

It's funny, I'd never dream of writing something that someone else is going to submit to a class as their work. I'm not a screenplay-bitch. And while I could say, "I don't give two shits about your grade, I'm gonna finish when I finish," I see his deadlines as a way to kind of discipline myself. If it weren't for his deadlines, maybe I'd never make the time to finish. Now that I pretty much finished the first act in a space of 2 1/2 months, I've gone too far to feel like slowing down. I'm gonna take a break until I go to London next month, and once I'm there I'll get started again. I'll have a lot of work to do for my classes, (and I'll be in motherfuckin Europe) so I can't slave at it for weeks on end, like I've been doing, but I won't feel pressured.

I suggested to dude that we don't put the screenplay out until he graduates next winter anyway, to prevent him losing the grade... that he... worked so hard for...

What's keeping me from feeling like screenplay-bitch? The fact that I'm not yet rich and famous and the work that makes us those things is usually done for free. Cause it's all we're worth.

I apologize for this post. I think I'm stalling. I might be afraid of being done. That's real lame.

Checkpoint

I just finished the first draft of Act One. If there's one thing I learned from the screenplay I wrote last year, it's the importance of staying organized. I got lost in a maze I created and I couldn't write my way out of it.

I ended up with the task of having to cut so much out that the story needed to be changed. I basically had to re-write the entire story and in my re-write I think I lost my mind and it just ended up getting weirder and weirder and weirder. I don't know if it got so weird because it was authentic weird, or because I was so upset with having to rewrite the whole thing that all the weirdnesses were just convenient devices to make rewriting the piece of shit more bearable.

Anyway, this time I'm taking it act by act. I don't know why I didn't focus harder on acts before, but that one is in the past forever. I don't think I ever want to go back and fix it, even though friends of mine still want to shoot it.

I want the length to be as standard and to-the-paradigm as possible. A first act is typically 30 pages and I stopped at about 50-something. I have about 20 pages worth of trimming to do. I know it's pretty much all just shortening conversations. It sucks always, being that I spent so much time, but it'll be worth it. I have to figure out how to keep it short enough while still giving you an idea of the characters.

Hopefully I'll be done cutting this down in about a week and a half.

Wish me luck.

clickety clack.

This was taken from my Great Notebook of Confusion.
I guess you could call this concept art. I get stuck when I write over too many consecutive days, but with the deadline of the first draft of Act 1 due Wednesday, I can't really give my brain rest days. I think the best way for me to be able to read over the same 30 pages of screenplay without tricking myself into not reading (skimming my eyes over the words) is to have something visual to go with each scene. This way I can attempt reading Scene 2 for the 18,297,950th time, but even if I don't really let it play out, I'll have the image to refer to. I'll know what I need to be seeing.
I have a seriously hard time rereading the same scenes over and over and remembering to put the mental image in my mind as I read. I wonder if other screenwriters have that problem, or are most writers' memories good enough that they don't have to constantly reread their own stuff to remember what they wrote, and how it flowed, and what it "looked like".
I was going to go fishing in Google Images for photos that relate somewhat to each scene, but there's really no better way to give yourself a mental idea of what you want to get out of each scene than drawing it yourself.
Too bad it's a road film and I can't draw cars.

Addicted to distraction and the Science of Sleep

This film has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm writing, but there are so many little things about it that you can apply to almost any screenplay. There are so many little things; things I think most people miss. I'm watching it for the small bits of genius dialog, and the devices in the dialog that say so much more than the few words themselves. Michel Gondry will have his brain eaten one day, hopefully by me. Much of the time it seems that certain things like humor are not completely translatable, but his writing is really universal. To be able to even fuck with the language barrier itself and make it a good joke on both sides... For real, if I ever get the chance, I will totally eat his brain with crackers and juice.

I'm feeling pressured now. I'm technically ghostwriting this screenplay, at least for the next few months. A friend of mine who is a producer is taking a screenwriting class (I won't even begin my rant on how I feel about non-writers taking creative writing, it's like me taking a class in composing symphonies; I don't comprehend the process of the creation of music, so why would I try to take a class in it?) and he's having me write for him. He does at some point want to film this, so killing two with one, he's having me write the screenplay and fulfilling a "writing intensive" course requirement needed for graduation. I'm in love with the story (which is a true story) and I'm happy in pants to write it, but I am the invisible person in the class. I have to meet his deadlines. Lucky for me, I'm taking the semester off, but either way, I don't respond well under pressure when it comes to writing. And living in my mom's house again, I can't succumb to my bad habits that help me think they help me write. Which I guess, is good.

Goodbye.