Crawling Through The Words

I don’t know what made me smile more: when my son crawled for the first time last Saturday, or when my wife started bawling when he did.

It was one of those perfect, real, beautiful moments that can knock you on your emotional ass. So simple, so normal –- and yet powerful beyond description.

The kind of thing that makes you glad to be alive, no matter how fucked up the Bush administration is making the world. (Oops, politics crawled in there…)

(Crawled. Get it?)

Anyway, it's the kind of thing that, if it were a scene in a movie, could either be remarkably cheesy or the moment that makes you finally believe those actors up there are real people. And once you believe that, the movie can take you anywhere (even to a hotel being blown apart by FBI SWAT and North Korean gangsters [Right Greg?]).

This is where the director and actors are much more important than the writer. The writer needs to know when, where and even if to put in that scene. But then the director and actors are in charge of making it work. Or making it fail miserably.

I think this is why I tend to over-write in my early drafts. I know I need to keep everything lean. But there’s something inside me that thinks at first that this…

INT. LIVINGROOM – DAY

DECLAN spies a toy just out of reach, plops onto his stomach and crawls to it. AMY turns to DAVID and breaks down in tears.

…as a scene might be misinterpreted as a throwaway, hackneyed nothingscene, and people reading the script might think I’m a throwaway, hackneyed nothingwriter.

So in early drafts I tend to write it out much more descriptively so anyone reading could see what I was intending.

And then Greg yells at me for being too wordy. “It’s not a novel, you fucking hack!” he screams, throwing Jell-o at me (which, sent flying by his mighty hands, nails itself to the wall).

So I trim it back.

It’s a good lesson to learn: trust the reader.

But don’t trust the North Korean gangsters.

And crawl before you walk, I guess is another good lesson.

Thanks Decs. Thanks Ames.

And thanks Greg. Though you don't have to be so cruel.

And Ryan, more Dismal news soon...