Monday, May 05, 2008

The Writing Week part 18


This week was mostly about re-writes, and gearing up for the next project I’m jumping into (what that is, I still don’t know for sure). Like a giddy schoolboy bringing home a new Batman comic book (pretty much what I am), I sat down with my pages and read through them last Wednesday, which I took off from work, in part so I could have time to read the pages in one sitting.

Gotta say, I was surprised. The “problem” scenes really weren’t. They read alright to me, and actually wound up being less of a concern than something else. Coming in at 90 pages with a fair bit of quick dialogue, this script is a breeze to read. (Actually, for some reason, I had a target length of 88 pages, which is exactly where I ended the first draft—random, huh?) My biggest concern wound up being the pacing and the time I allotted for detective work within the script. There is, as you might imagine, a bit of police procedural in the project, and I was worried that I hadn’t afforded it enough time to come together cohesively. As a whole, though, I was really pleased with the draft, especially considering I hadn’t outlined it.

Zombie and I are roommates, so I cheated a bit and picked his brain about my script after he read it, despite the fact that the League is not meeting until Wednesday. He assured me that the pacing and police work was on, and illuminated something for me about the problem scenes I was initially concerned with. Basically, they are about interactions between two characters, but I never thought to show the evolving relationship by only using one character on screen at a time. That new idea will solve a lot of the problems, condense the scenes of interaction, and allow me more building room when the two are on scene together.

Writing, no matter how many hours spent at a computer or with a notepad alone, is never a solitary thing.

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