Black Had To Get Shot Down Somewhere

The verdict is in. The pages were, well...mediocre. Not the end of the world but not exactly Oscar worthy. It was a start though. After a couple of months of procrastinating it was good to actually get something down on paper.

Three people at the workshop last Saturday. Disappointing to say the least. I was hoping to get some more comments but the advantage of having only two others there was that I did get some invaluable in depth feedback. The only problem is that I need to restart the pesky screenplay from the beginning. Everytime I get about halfway through the same script, I get some great ideas and I inevitably go back to the start. Now where are those index cards. Black had to get shot down somewhere.

Mann Had To Rewrite Somewhere

Success...ish.

Finally managed to put two words down onto paper. Actually, five pages. I would give an actual word count but I couldn't find the pesky word count feature on Final Draft (My stupendous screenwriting software that does everything but, unfortunately for me, come up with the story)

The scene in question has been written before. Numerous times. It was static, boring and uncinematic. The rewritten scene is also static and uncinematic but hopefully isn't so boring. I guess the proof of the pudding will be tomorrow at the Screenwriter's workshop when it will be critiqued by a bunch of people who know so much about screenwriting that it's actually scary.

It's amazing what another set of eyes can do for a story. At times you suffer from tunnel vision so bad that you can't see the obvious. You shut yourself down to ideas. If you can keep yourself open to all possibilities and not fall in love with your pages then I reckon you've got a decent chance of creating something decent. I've been driving on this highway for 500 miles now and suddenly I've found an alternate route. A route that will take me into the unknown, the unchartered. The downright scary.

Scenes get re-written. It's a fact of life. Never say no to alternatives. Never say no to suggestions. Never be so arrogant to think that the stuff that you've written is the best that has even been produced.

A wise man at the workshop once told me this: If you're writing a courtroom scene then think of the best courtroom scene ever made (Perhaps the Nicholson v Cruise scene in "A Few Good Men"). If your scene doesn't better that then why write it? Why accept mediocrity? Each film has a duty to raise that bar ever so slightly higher. No excuses.

Writing is the easy bit. It's the rewriting that's the hard bit. Hey, Mann had to rewrite somewhere.

Nolan Had To Start Brainstorming Somewhere

Brainstorming - a treatment for writer's block some might say. For me, it's just writing useless random words in a random order trying to entice my imagination, kick start my creativity.

Since my last post at the end of July, I have written zero pages. A big fat nought. Don't get me wrong, I've been brainstorming like crazy trying to convince myself that this is all part of the writing process but at the end of the day I don't get to see any results. It seems like cheating. There doesn't seem to be any end product. Someone once said that writers are working when they are thinking or daydreaming. For me, this is true. I have an idea and I brainstorm - in my head. Lying on bed staring at the ceiling may seem like sheer laziness to you, but I assure you, a great mind is at work. Nolan had to brainstorm somewhere.