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The ProcessPOSTED BY SCOTT MULLEN OVER AT Alligators in a Helicopter.
So the screenplay I'm writing now is the first new one I've actually gotten immersed in in several years. My Nicholl script was an old script that I tweaked, while my supernatural thriller was the latest rewrite of a script I first wrote 2 or 3 years ago.
I did start several other scripts last year, only to get sidetracked and ultimately set them aside. I wrote about 40 pages of a horror movie rife with sex and violence; I wrote about 15 pages of a supernatural comedy that I had done a pretty full treatment of. Both are scripts I'd like to finish sometime this year.
But now I'm immersed in the new thing, and trying to refine my writing process, which is something that I know all writers wrestle with, and something that by its nature is different for everyone.
I used to dive into the actual writing process way, way too early. I'd come up with some interesting characters and a basic situation, and just jump right in. I dig the actual writing process much more than the sitting-around-and-thinking-about-it process, and I wasn't mature enough to rein myself in.
The good thing with this is that I'm the kind of writer who gets a lot of ideas while actually writing scenes, more so than in the pure-brainstorming process, so there's a method to my madness.
The very bad thing is that this process tends to take a long time, because in the course of finding the best story (which often had little resemblance to the story I started out with, while probably neither was actually the "best" story) I would write draft after draft after draft after draft.
I'd like to say that I'm such a genius writer that I knocked out my Nicholl semi script on the first pass. The truth is that it took about 20 drafts, during which a LOT of different storylines came and went.
But as I kept setting that script aside, and writing other stuff, I refined my process more. Some scripts came easier than others. My frozen time script somehow blew into my head fairly fully-formed; I wrote out an extended treatment of it, and then knocked out a first draft. It still took a few more passes and a couple of story shifts to get it right, but it was a lot less work than my Nicholl script was, while quality-wise they are fairly similar.
Still, the essential quandary for me (and, I'm guessing, a lot of other writers), is this:
Read about the essential quandary over here.
//Scott Mullen
Categories: [characters_] [plot_] [action_] [dialogue_]Labels: action, Alligators in a Helicopter, characters, dialogue, plot
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