The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 216 - A Busy Week

I had one Hell of a busy week recently. for one, the outline on my demon thriller is finally chugging along again. At the suggestion of my manager, I stared reading Blake Snyder's Save the Cat to help re-energize my writing faculties. Though I don't want to, I have to admit that it's been helpful. At least, I think it has been - I've made more progress in the past few days than I had made in a while, and I attribute that to the informal refresher course I'm giving myself. 


Over the course of working on the outline, and act two in particular, I'm starting to see more and more the mistakes or redundancies I typically make in a script. Usually, these involve the same two characters in two different scenes that achieve two parts of the same goal. For example, with the demon thriller, the protag and his friend-turned-antagonist have an argument around the midpoint. I spread that argument across two different scenes, with a buffer scene between them. Looking at it, however, I couldn't for the life of me determine what naturally would go between those scenes, nor did I have a very strong reason for splitting them up. Rather than one good blowout fight, I was working my way toward two weaker confrontations with a stuttering step between them. It didn't make sense. Last night, after some waffling, I decided to combine them into the one intrinsic scene they wanted to be all along. No unnecessary filler needed, no mid-argument cutoffs, no redundant scene a page later. Just one scene with one fight. Much stronger.


Ideally, I'll finish the act two outline today. That's not the only thing I have going on nowadays, though. I have started contributing to Screenwriters Utopia, a site dedicated to screenwriters of all skills, levels, and experience. My first post there came out on Sunday and deals with the many frustrations I have with a show I still somewhat enjoy watching - AMC's The Walking Dead. (Don't even get me started on it; the most recent episode fueled the flames of my fury again. Why can't they just get a script supervisor - OR ANYONE - to check for inconsistencies? It would be so easy and alleviate so many glaring issues with the show.) I hope you like it. 


Finally, I was recently given an opportunity to look into some collaboration work with a known writer/producer/director. I can't or won't say too much about it beyond that, but this would be my first foray into writing a project that I didn't conceive of on my own. And though I've done some minor collaboration work before, that has all been within the League. I'm pretty damn excited for this chance, so I'll let you know what comes of it (within the scope of my ability to discuss it).


I hope your week was just as if not more productive, and that this Leap Year proves not just fecund, but fruitful.