This is a collection of direct quotes, culled from the last 3 years of my script-writing diary. At the moment, I've arranged it into sections and left it. Once I've finished doing this for every section of my script-writing process, I'll come back and refine these notes. What I want to create are a list of general principles, common problems and their solutions, and examples of how I write. It's all stuff that will (hopefully) give me a leg up on the next script I write.

 

The sections in this post are:

 

-- Gaining Motivation (assign 'unassigned' quotes, do second draft)

-- Procrastination (assign 'Other Stuff', do second draft)

-- Making Progress

-- Relaxing

-- Rewards

-- Dealing with Distractions

 

 

AS-YET-UNASSIGNED OBSERVATIONS

 

[from working on lovebites]

What does 'enough' mean?

I’m disturbed at how little craft I applied to Act 3. Basically I burned through it today, wanting to write from the heart and follow my old outline rather than re-break the scenes by Stakes and Conflicts.

 

I get sucked into the emotion I'm writing about.

 

 

Taking a break between drafts means ideas are popping into my head all the time –scribble down images & snippets that’ll flesh out scenes. Guess I’m refuelling.

 

 

I'm enjoying the writing. It's starting to go faster - and I'm expecting to keep up that pace until I hit the big re-writes in Act 3.

 

For the first time with the Limit, I'm not that sure what edits I'd like to make to it. I've had that feeling before - with other scripts - and it's usually indicated that further tinkering tips the story over the edge and starts to break it.

 

Two Saturdays ago - I finally read through the script myself. My emotions went through two phases:

  • 1) the actual reading, where I thought that the script was terrible. Unrealistic, badly motivated, lame writing. It totally didn't live up to the ideal in my head and I was pretty much devastated by the end;

I took a week off, where I couldn't face reading or thinking about the thing. I drew some solace from a book on script-editing where another writer was described as adopting the fetal position for two days, curled up in bed with a hot water bottle. I was not that bad.

 

 

I feel like the script is now 'telling' me what it wants to be. It's like there's an ideal version of this draft that I'm chiselling the unnecessary material away from.

 

I need to relax and have fun while I'm writing, and b) the scene didn't need to be perfect - I'm going to go back, read the script aloud when I've finished this re-edit, and make adjustments.


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