Anatomy of a rewrite — Preparation
JANUARY 15TH, 2016 — POST 011
I’m currently prepping for a rewrite of a script I wrote last year. I guess a lot of these things are in my head at the moment and maybe I might be able to shed some light on my process so that maybe that light will fall on your own.
Disclaimer: I can’t tell you how to write. I can only tell you how I write.
Revisit the point of the thing
I try to take a bit of a break between finishing a draft and rewriting. At the very least, I want to get some eyes on it other than mine. But it also gives me a chance to think on other things and let the whole thing gestate a little at the back of my skull.
Hopefully in this time, the point of the script has either condensed, become clearer, if only from having to tell people what the fuck you’ve been doing recently. No one’s going to listen to you try and work out the point of your movie whilst you’re talking to them. So, generally, I find what is being said in the script matures during this period. Or it completely gets away from you from being ignored. In either case, turning back to exactly what is trying to be said, expressed in the script is the first point of preparation.
This will focus the lens through which I am to start preparing. Knowing what I want to say with a script will be my rock moving forward.
Identify the symptoms
I already know this script has problems. I knew this when writing it. But heading into a rewrite, it’s critical to keep a running tally of all these things. For me, mere identification should come first. I try to get as complete a list of every flat spot, every inconsistent character or story beat, any moment I’m cheating my ending, really any crease that the final product shouldn’t bear.
A lot of these are fairly easy to spot. I can almost taste when I’m cheating in my dialogue, for example. The harder ones to spot are grander and I find tend to relate to the expression of the script. By this I mean, things that might undermine what’s the goal of the script is. These moments of inconsistencies must be addressed. Not to say they have to go, or be smoothed over, but they have to be acknowledged at this stage. I have to know when I’m not displaying complete control of my tools.
See the forest and the trees
Level of magnification is one of the more challenging aspects of screenwriting. You’re writing a movie of 100+ pages by writing scenes of <5 (most often <2.5) pages. Being able to rapidly zoom in and out is a skill I’ve had to develop and one I’m still not very good at.
It’s not enough for me to know my scene work. It’s not enough for me to know how my whole movie is working. The reason to keep both in sight when preparing a rewrite is that I don’t want to be blinded by dogma at either level.
Let me break this down:
I will have to lose great scenes for the sake of the movie’s point. I will have to concede the movie’s point to great scenes.
I have to keep myself open to the possibility that I just got it wrong before, whether that’s in a scene that isn’t expressing what I want it to, or, and just as importantly, if I’m actually expressing something different to what I thought I was.
For me, constantly flipping macro-to-micro and back when reading allows me to more accurately evaluate the work a particular draft has done, work that will be built upon.
Diagnose these symptoms
I have to think of identification and diagnosis as two separate processes. It can be tempting to think “Oh, this isn’t working, take it out,” but this can be a destructive impulse. In drawing the processes apart, each symptom can be worked through in terms of what is its cause. Often a moment feels too fast only because the moment that came before was really too slow, for example.
Diagnosis necessitates a rapid shifting of magnification as I search for the cause of a particular problem. Understanding that the cause of a problem might not necessarily even be located at the same level as the problem itself also bears keeping in mind.
Drop that red pen
My goal isn’t to fix spelling mistakes, my goal isn’t to keep sentences tight. Not yet. Reading with a red pen in hand is a sure-fire way to get hung up on a bunch of things that are easy to fix but don’t so much as nudge the needle.
When I read, a notebook sits alongside in which I identify and diagnose the symptoms of the script. I’ve found that if I let the pen touch my draft itself, at least during the intial reads, I’m unable to “see” the movie on the page clearly.
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I’m hoping to continue with more pieces like this. If nothing else, they force me to keep my mind on my real writing whilst fulfilling the promise of posting every day.
Two birds.
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