One Done

A very big thanks to Dolly and Lara, who should be back to her fighting weight by now, for taking the time last week to read the script and return with some very insightful comments.

Taking what they said on board, I found the time yesterday to finally put their thoughts into practise and revise the material accordingly. By late evening it was finished. To do anything more to it would just be fiddle-faddle. For the life of me, I can’t think of anything that could be done to make it any better.

Just prior to making a few last-minute cosmetic changes, including one that would save the drama from potentially offending Andrew Collins, I discovered an email from Work Buddy asking if there was a newer version to come because a writer/producer he had met on his trip to Canada was interested in reading the script.

It’s nice to know that it’s done, finally. It probably should have been finished sooner but obviously life kept getting in the way, causing the stops and starts. Even then, these enforced delays ultimately helped inform both the characters and situations so that when we’d come back around to discussing it and I’d go back to working on the script, it was all the better for the time away.

We’d reconvene periodically and talk about where it was heading, question the directions the overall story was taking and going through the characters’ motivations, making notes. In fact, as far as I can recall, once Work Buddy first floated the idea we spent a long time simply talking about it and just jotting down reams of notes. There were also weeks and weeks of research to see how certain ideas could be developed. Really, only then was anything committed to paper in script format.

Because it’s in a serial format, we’d have to know where the drama was heading and how the characters were developing. Which meant to write episode one I needed to know what happened in episode two – which I tend to see as the second half of an unofficial two-parter. At the same time, for episode two I needed to be more aware of episode three’s storyline. Recently, a big chunk of what we had for episode three got folded into two to stop the pace from potentially flagging.

It was only a few days back, when I opened the episode two folder that I was reminded there was a recent four-page document we had put together that revised the plot. Which means that, with 55 of the 70-odd pages written there’s a lot more work involved than I thought. But at least now I have something specific to do for the weekend.

Talking to Work Buddy last night I mentioned my surprise at just how far the idea had evolved from it’s initial concept. The whole project has probably taken longer than we would have liked, but the luxury of time has certainly helped, along with all the different experiences in that intervening time.

Whether it's applicable or not in this instance, whenever I park myself in front of the computer to work on any material, I’m always reminded of the Thoreau quote an LA-based writer friend once imparted:

“How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.”

Actually, I think is this instance the more pertinent Henry David Thoreau quote is:

“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”