"The January Partial Script"

My first goal of finishing rough first drafts of partial scripts was a tiny character drama. I had written about 15 pages of it a few years ago. I knew the ending, parts of the middle. With all of that, I managed to bang out an 80 page "ball of wax" to work with later. I love those semi-impressionistic indie dramas. Where acoustic folk plays over a series of images that tell the story along with the dialogue scenes. STATION AGENT is one of the best ones. The plot was (accidentally) straight out of Nicholas Sparks, but instead of sappy melodrama, it turned out just how I wanted. The Rhapsody playlist was Iron and Wine and Kings of Convenience. They fit perfectly with the breezy, nostalgic feel of the story.

"The February Partial," "The Fate Script"

There are many movies dealing with the inner workings of Fate. The best - NEXT STOP WONDERLAND comes immediately to mind; as does SERENDIPITY - deal with flesh and blood characters who are moved closer and closer together through the story by the machinations of Fate. The worst treat the characters merely as chess pieces, as the machinations are the focus of the story. (Oddly, this works fine in the FINAL DESTINATION movies, which are the flip side of the same coin - showing Death (Fate) working in a sequence of events. It works because it's horror. Horror is about the horror more than the characters.)

Several years ago I co-wrote a romantic comedy that was more overtly about the hand of Fate in our romantic lives. Being obsessed with the subject, I wanted to write another one, but how to do it without repeating myself?

Enter "Mad Men" and TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY.

In newspaper and magazine articles, you should never "bury your lead." In this case - the doings of Fate - I would have to, so not to copy my previous script. But how? Mad Men" and TINKER served as models. They bury important information in a mound of chitchat. You think you're just listening to conversation, until you realize you're being told very important information. In this new Fate script, why not "bury" the connections underneath the character interactions? The connections are there, but obvious attention aren't drawn to them. Only after the movie is over will the viewer think back and say, "ah, okay: this happened, which caused this, which caused that." At the time, it's just a movie dealing with what most of us deal with - that ever-elusive search for love.

I know, I know

Almost two years? Wow. What happened? Eh, life. You know - you miss one week of blogging...that turns into a month, which turns into a year. From now on I promise to post once a week. Deal?

Where have I been? I'm still writing; still sending things out. But, life again. Problems that arise that don't so much derail you but cause you to lose 100% focus. You still write every day; still e-mail queries...but not quite with the same intensity. Suddenly, a year pass, and you realize...that a year has passed. ANYWAY.

Like most writers, I have a hard drive full of partial scripts. It's 10 pages of this, 30 pages of that. For some reason this had begun to bother me. It never had before. Some of these are as old as 1999 - and written on MS WORD to boot. But, for whatever reason this had become a point of irritation. Like a progression in music left unfinished, they need to be finished.

Fueled by this sudden and mysterious OCD-ness to finish these scripts, I decided to spend a month on each partial script and write very rough, "ball-of-wax" drafts. These drafts are just to get the general idea/story down in 80-90 pages, to expand, fine tune and finish later.

Oddly, this is a very freeing writing exercise. Your subconscious isn't constricted to a strict outline - so there's no "pressure," for lack of a better word. You already know points "A, M and Z" of the story, and the themes, and the general mood or vibe, so the ideas that flow fit what you're doing...not like stream of consciousness just to fill pages. Some ideas may stay in the final draft, many might be replaced; right now it's just to get that very rough draft down.

The "BOURNE" Series And May Spies

I love espionage books and films, especially set in post-Cold War Europe. The "BOURNE" movies did this so, so very well with the usage of old world locales. And three of the best action movies scores of all time by John Powell.

Last year, I had an idea for an older, retiring spy that would be found in the same basic area of the film world as Jason Bourne. Using the "BOURNE" flicks as general inspiration, I set off to write the first draft in May.

I'm behind. As you know, my writing schedule is three days a week, my days off: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and sometimes Monday. That's approximately twelve writing days a month, multiplied by eight pages a day - about a 100 page script a month. It looks like I may have to extend into June.

I had the general idea for the script - no outline to speak of, just the basic framework. As I was writing, the story took an unexpected turn for the much better, which required me to go back and completely rewrite about 20 pages. So is the peril of writing without a treatment, but I believe if you know the basic story, in some cases it's better not to outline, as you can discover the story along with the main character.

This isn't always recommended. Some genres lend themselves to planning - suspense thrillers, con game, mysteries - as the plot twists drive the story forward. Others, if you have an overview of the story and where it's going, it's much more fun to just get in there and write, and let that first draft be almost like a treatment. Sometimes you get lucky and a screenplay comes almost completely hatched, with only minor revisions to make before it's ready. Every project is different.

"24" and April Revisions

And the polishing-of-older-scripts continues...

"24" is one of my fave shows, and one of the best television series of all time. It succeeds so greatly because it takes all the B action movie standards - Heroic Good Guys, Terrorists With A Plot, Government Conspiracy - and filters them through a topical reality. (To quote Kiefer's favorite word of all time, it adds "gravitas" to them.) Also, it always has a political layer - Presidents, VP's, First Ladies and First Families that adds even more complexity to the arching storylines

I wanted to write an action script captured the spirit of the show. Not necessarily written in real time, but over the course of a single day, like John Woo's "BROKEN ARROW."

All in all, this is a very good genre action script, with a female protagonist to boot. Let's hope it gets made one day!

Late March/Early April, More Polishing...

After rewriting/polishing the sports comedy, I still had several days remaining in March to work on something. I divide projects up by months: "I'll finish this by the end of this month; start this draft the next month." Psychologically, it helps my brain to focus. Knowing I only have x-amount of days to finish a project, my creativity turns into a laser, locked in on completing it. Otherwise, I'd be scattershot - writing here and there - turning a single screenplay into a year-long endeavor. (It's amazing how creatively freeing it is when you shackle your mind with time limits.)

So, I took out a neo-noir, suspense thriller that I had in my drawer. Its muse drew from the superior John Dahl neo-noir "RED ROCK WEST." I love that flick and used that as...well, the muse. I'd completed a rough draft, polish and another draft in which I had a marked-up hard copy of revisions. Thumbing through the pages that would need to be changed in Final Draft and comparing them to how many writing days I had left in March - it was doable.

Some pages remained completely untouched. Others, the revisions on the marked-up hard copy were fine. And, others, I had to revise the hard copy revisions.

All and all, I got it done. It's also caused me to go through my files and see what other scripts need a read-over for a possible polish.

The Month Of March

The other greatest sports comedy of all time, "SLAPSHOT."

I finished another draft of the sports comedy. (Since BlogSpot won't let me do links, see September and October 2009 entries.) The first/rough draft ran 120 pages. The final count is 114. So far there hasn't been a lot of revisions. Some line deletions, additions, or alterations but no wholesale changes in scenes. No addition or subtraction of plot points, scenes, or characters. This seemed to hatched whole.

I'm moving it to the backburner for now. It seems, however, that it'll only require one more pass before being releasing into the world.