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.