One hundred pages
Posted: April 23rd, 2008 | Author: Simon | Filed under: Journal | Tags: 100 pages, screenplay, script frenzy, tumble | 4 Comments »I’ve done it!
I’ve written 100 pages of a screenplay in less than 30 days. As I mentioned the story isn’t done yet so I’m not celebrating just yet, but I’m damn proud of my self for being able to write 100 pages in this very tight time frame and with all the limitations I was facing.
Congratulations! You’ve bested me. I topped out at 38 pages, half-way through the first act.
But you’re still writing? Right?
Right. But not on the 100 pages :)
I stopped and I’m currently re-outlining. It’s a loss, but in the good way. Because if I hadn’t written the 38 pages, the story wouldn’t exist at all. It literally grew from needing something to write for Script Frenzy.
So currently I’m taking what existed from that ‘draft’ apart and recycling it into the new outline. Among those things, taking my antagonist and making him my protagonist, which is something I’d wanted to do almost from the beginning, but because I just had to write forward, I couldn’t.
I’ve been wanting to do an entry on it, but… life :)
I also grew sick of my story more than once during the Frenzy, but kept on writing just to produce pages.
And one thing I learned from this was outline, outline, outline. I’ve seen a lot of script writers saying that they don’t outline (the Coen brothers as an example), but that just doesn’t work for me.
I gotta have some sense of where I’m going. Else I’d just be at a lost almost instantly and write in circles.
I can clearly follow you on making the antagonist the protagonist. The antagonist is very often the most interesting character of the story. I had a huge problem with mine. He was just annoying, and /that/ is not always interesting.
I plan to do a rewrite of the script over the summer and I already have a lot planned out that I couldn’t figure out or be able to fit into the story during the Frenzy.