Monday, October 13, 2008

Please, Rewind, Be Kind

I’d gotten to 61 pages in my action script, and it just wasn’t feeling right.

Writing was difficult. Ideas weren’t coming smoothly. The whole thing felt awkward.

I was thinking, writer’s block? Creative juices low? Just a glitch?

Then I realized the problem was that I wasn’t letting it happen naturally.

I’m not a hippie. But for me to write well, my heart has to be in it.

See, through an associate, if I can use that vague term, I’d heard about some producer/financiers who had liked what this associate and I had done in the past. They said they were interested in working together, and laid out an enticing plan to finance a feature, if the script contained certain elements.

Now, I wrote The D Line because it was a story I really needed to write. It was in my heart. It’s not easily marketable. But I can very much see it on screen. It’s good, and I like it, and it seems a lot of other people do, too. Slowly making its way out into the world. Remains to be seen if someone likes it enough to make it, of course…

But this script I’ve been writing with an eye toward easier marketability. I still want it to be good, something I can be proud of, but I want people to be able to read it and immediately think ticket sales. As everyone says, this is show business.

So I understand the need to make something you can sell. The good news is, I can get my heart into those types of stories, too.

But what I realized is that you have to draw the line. It’s show business, yes, but at least for me, it also has to be something you want to write. I want to write. So I can put my heart into it. Which is when my writing gets good.

So what I did with the action script is go back to where I started putting in the elements these financiers had asked for. That was page 48.

Then I deleted pages 49-61.

And now I’m starting over from there.

It’s going much more smoothly now.

I’m feeling more inspired, the direction of the script makes more sense. It’s working.

It’s still a sellable script, just maybe not to those specific financiers.

Of course, when I’m finished, I’ll send it to them anyway, see what they think.

And of course, I admit it – I’m no hardliner. If they read it and say they’ll buy it if I put in these certain elements, you know I’ll dive back in and rewind again.