Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Script Frenzy: Talking Myself Out of It

My current script, that is, not the contest.


I just had a wonderful, fantastic, sweeping idea for a movie. One that I'm a lot more interested in now than "Script Frenzy Movie #1" or whatever I'm calling "First Kiss" these days. But dropping that script in favor of writing it would likely mean abandoning my word count and ceding one or three word wars. Starting over, basically, a week into the frenzy. I'm not sure if I can take that step.


Still, I'm not exactly happy with my current script. I think my idea was good but I'm having trouble making it work. It's a big ball of yarn at this point. I'm just writing extended, lazy, meandering scenes that aren't really adding up to anything of value. At 5k, I'm 25% of the way to the goal and there's no coherent structure and I don't really have a plan for making one. I haven't even settled on when, exactly, I want the story to be set. I have a much firmer idea than when I started, sure, but I haven't done enough research and the timeline's all wacky and my current favorite epoch might not even work with what I've wrote.


Most damning of all, though, I'm not really enjoying writing it.


You know, I think I'm going to go for it. If nothing else, the Frenzy spirit is about locking your inner editor in the closet; living in the moment and forgetting about the consequences. I'm going to throw my old script back into development hell and start cranking out a new one. A better one. I can always get back to it later, especially if I really get rolling on a script - I've been chugging along barely reaching a k a day, I can write much more, much faster, if it's not a chore.


The question, though, is which story's next...

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