Midpoint Thoughts

Well, I guess I should first give myself a pat on the back for not only getting everything in on time, but doing so with a reasonable amount of time to spare and without completely losing my mind (emphasis on "completely"). There's no point in trying to determine if I think that what I wrote is genius, trash, or anywhere between, because my answer could be different on any given day. The days after finishing one of these sections are interesting - a little intimidating - in that I have to take a step back from the script and mentally re-adjust. I don't mean "stepping back" in the sense of not working on it since I have been for the last two days. However, I find that I have to think about what got me excited about writing in the script in the first place and see how much progress I've made in achieving those things. It's almost like I've been swimming through the ocean and now I've found a floating log to hold onto for a minute before I start pressing on again... yeah, I guess that analogy works.

So I have to focus on just blasting through a section, pausing long enough to think about what needs to happen in the next one, and pressing forward. It's odd how certain things that you swore needed to happen in your story when you started end up being easily tossed to the side, while others prove to be every bit as essential as you initially thought. And I'm really, really hoping that I can keep the work on this section more evenly distributed than the others so it's not a mad dash to get it done during the second week. But it always starts as such a jumbled mess initially and takes shape gradually. I find that I'm not all that great at predicting how much time a sequence will take, so it's always a roller coaster ride in itself to see if I've got too much, not enough, or just the right amount.

I'll edit this tomorrow or so, as I had a lot of thoughts, and I'd say only a fraction of them are springing to mind in a jumbled mess right now.

A Quick One (While He's Away) <--Who reference

While my awkwardness in getting moving on Act II is a small wonder (it still feels a little awkward), I'm feeling better now than I did at the time of my last posting. Like with the last section, I keep fluctuating between thinking I have not enough and too much. I think I started with too little and then came up with too much in an attempt to overcompensate. So it's actually more reflective of earlier drafts of the plot in that I may be trying to cram in too much. Then again, there's an equally good chance that I'm just fine.

I get the impression as I'm writing that my scenes are over-written and that the plot's sloppy, but that's what first drafts are for. As long as I can straighten it out later - hey, if I have too much, then it should just be a matter of taking away, right? Even so, there is a grand design to it all that I think makes it work. We'll see, it's still really early to comment on that sort of thing, as I'm not done. In fact, I'm slightly worried about meeting the deadline, but I'm sure I'll squeak by, as always.

EDIT: A few hours after posting this, I got really jumbled on potential plot points, all of which are cool in some ways, but flawed in others, and now I'm just frustrated that it isn't all magically perfect immediately. I'm really gonna have to be accepting of the "First drafts always suck," kind of mentality and hope that I find my story as I'm writing, because I know there's something awesome somewhere in there.

Act 2

Writing Act II has thus far proven... awkward. That's not to say that it doesn't work (or that it won't, at least), but I'd be lying if I said that the story is writing itself. Obviously, the more you struggle to write something, the more self conscious you get about it and the more you question how much it works. I suppose the goal, for now, is to avoid getting too bogged down in that sort of thing and just keep progressing forward. Fair enough.

I also understand that Act I is typically supposed to be easier than Act II, so it's not as if I'm discovering some new territory here. In my head, though, Act I had a pretty linear path. There was only so much that could happen. Now, the freedom to take the story virtually anywhere is proving to be very frightening. I also have a bad tendency to get more interested in a character's pre-existing life before all the craziness than in the actual meat of the story - not just when I'm writing, but even when I'm watching movies. I think it's because that section of the story is easier to relate to, since nothing too out of the ordinary has happened, and the character hasn't had a chance to do anything about his crumby situation.

It probably also doesn't help that Act I is more about establishing the character(s), while Act II is about getting the plot rolling. That's been causing me more trouble with this script from the beginning. If I focus on writing toward the midpoint, it helps. As usual, though, it all comes down to sitting and down and doing it, all excuses aside. I'd better get on that.

Act I - JUST finished

Talk about racing against the clock. I just handed in Act I at 5:00 on the dot. I didn't even have a chance to proofread, and I'm sure there's some lines here and there that I would like to add/delete/change. But that's why it's a first draft. I've gone back and forth from thinking my story was awesome to thinking it was terrible to everything in between. Then I thought I might not have enough for a full script after having thought I had way too much. So I am ALL over the place here, but I got it done and I think that what I wrote is interesting (for now, at least). I am worried, going into Act 2, though. I can definitely see running out of material or having to dig way too deep to keep it interesting. Whatever. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. For now, I'm happy to have met the deadline, and now I have to just keep pressing forward.

Act I

Misguided though it may have been, my earlier planning is helping to make work on Act I far less miserable than it could have been. Since my problems were that I had too much rather than too little, it's mostly just been a matter of focusing my story, and to be honest, that will probably be far more difficult in Act II. One step at a time, though. It helps, in a lot of ways, to just start writing - sometimes planning every plot point makes it easy to complicate things, where as writing it out cuts through the crap and simplifies it. The parts of my story that establish the characters are proving much easier than the parts related to the plot.

After watching all these cop movies, I've seen that the plot doesn't need to be half as complicated as I thought (watch Internal Affairs or Pride and Glory - they're actually pretty simple stories where not a whole lot happens), but there's so many options for what a corrupt cop can do that it can be hard to figure out what's appropriate. So yeah, connecting all of the characters in a sensible way and figuring out the different parts of Wrigley's schemes are the difficult part at this point. Figuring out how the characters should behave and talk is far easier. I guess right now I'm just building toward a first act decision of Nate physically confronting Wrigley, presumably to help Jess, as opposed to following him from a safe distance, thus kicking off the process of Wrigley coming after him, specifically.

As a brief side note on that subject, I'm toying with how much of a jerk I want to Nate to come off as early on, while Wrigley is initially more likable, even though the audience pretty much knows that he's corrupt early on. It's not until we really start to see that Nate is trying to do the right thing in the face of daunting evil that things shift. I find the notion of rooting for the guy who, on the surface, is less likable to be an interesting one.

If I can just accept that this is a first draft and that it can be fixed later, I should be good. However, I tend to try too hard to make it perfect the first time, and that slows the process. Damn neurosis.

It has begun..

As of Friday when I sent in my opening sequence, I'm feeling good about writing this again, although I will admit that as of right now, I don't have the plot finely worked out or anything. That'll be a large part of the process of writing Act 1 for me - figuring out the rest of the plot.

My opening sequence basically featured Nate very suspiciously staking out two drug dealers who he believes to be connected to a local murder (we'll find out later that he suspects that they have info on Wrigley) when Jon shows up to give him a hand. A simple questioning turns into Nate having to chase the one guy down, which proves more difficult than expected. Nate gives as good as he gets, but is tempted to do the thug in even worse, prompting him to remember why he switched to Internal Affairs in the first place. Jon comes out unscathed. I tagged on a scene of Wrigley playfully showing off his martial arts skills back at the police station just to lead in to whatever I write next.

I've been studying different cop movies, as recommended by Professor Kaufhold, and still have a few more to go through. Production Workshop has held that up a bit, but it should be good.