If You Truly Love Your Screenplay, Be Vicious with It.
Surviving my five day screenwriting fever dream. Day Five.
Five days ago, I embarked on a truly masochistic and thoroughly inadvisable quest of writing a screenplay in just five days. The previous three days of writing have netted me a full ninety-six pages of a screenplay, which I don’t recommend.
Today is rewrite day.
And holy crap, I’m embarrassed.
I printed out the entire screenplay and read it from beginning to end, and I can’t believe I posted these scripts out in the open for all to see.
It’s like a treatise on how not to develop a screenplay. Every scene feels empty and rushed and flimsy. There’s no conflict. The intentions for all my characters are lost. The hero isn’t just passive; he’s basically a blob of nothing. The descriptions are barren. And there’s too much dialogue responsible doing the heavy lifting.
Here’s the thing, though: What I read was exactly what I produced. I aimed to write ninety pages in an unreasonably short amount of time, and achieving that required very little rewriting on the fly. There’s no way I would do this in normal conditions.
So, when the script I produced is an utter mess, why would I be surprised?
The only saving grace was that the dialogue wasn’t a complete disaster. And, of course, today is rewrite day.
I found a blue pen and chopped away.
Tactic: Be Brutally Honest
Before anything, I wrote out, on the title page, all the main points that needed fixing. Some of these were obvious to me, powered by the unmistakable pains of embarrassment that stab at your soul and ego. Your heart sinks when you think about what you did or didn’t do. Here’s your chance. Make them right.
Other stuff is more cerebral and strategic, born from the trial-and-errors I went through for other scripts, reading other classic screenplays and breaking them down and understanding what types of stories work for you and what don’t. They’re more like thoughts floating around that need resolution, like opinionated butterflies in a jar the size of your brain.
And, this is the hardest part: To fix these things, you might have to kill the sections of the script you love. It’s like amputating a part of your body to save the rest of it. Just because it works now doesn’t mean it will work later. So chop it, if necessary. You’ll get over it. In time.
So here’s what I rewrote and reworked:
- Installed a very clear conflict in the first act
- Gave each character a distinct purpose
- Finessed the scenes so they become characters in their own right
- Developed sound design
Then I went through the entire script with each point in mind, one at a time. I found a nice place for conflict early on, and implemented its progression throughout. Then, I worked on my secondary characters, one by one, understanding what their relationship is to our hero and how they all compare to each other. Then, I took special time to not only rewrite the scene descriptions, but also what they sounded like. Make the reader feel like they’re there.
After all that, I went through once again and tightened as much as possible. That means subtracting anything superfluous, adding in whatever’s needed, fixing dialogue, rethinking intentions of every scene and even fixing grammar and spelling mistakes that have brought great shame to you and your family.
Here’s a PDF of all my notes. It looks like I bled blue ink on it. Most of this is written in a garbled shorthand. I apologize. My hand skills have decreased precipitously since the dawn of keyboards.
Then, I retyped the entire script and made more changes along the way. You can really craft your dialogue this way. Try things out. Copy-and-paste becomes your friend here. Enter each scene late and leave early.
What did I learn from this?
I learned that it’s worthwhile to put yourself into an impossible situation. It helps to have a plan for getting out of it.
I learned that there’s always a little more in the tank. You just got to trick yourself into finding it.
I learned that getting five hours of sleep a night is no way to get through a week.
I learned that you need to stick with what works for you. If you don’t, you’ll regret the mistakes you eventually make.
I learned that writing a screenplay in five days doesn’t create a good script, but rather, a five chaptered learning lesson.
Is it good? I think, for a five day screenwriting fever pitch, what I wrote is just okay. The plan is to let it sit for a couple of weeks, and then revisit it during the holidays, when I’m not working. See what needs to be reworked or just trashed. Hell, the entire script might just die on the vine. Who knows. I’m too close to it right now to tell.
All I know is that it’s infinitely better than the state I left it in yesterday.
Until then, I leave it in your hands. Take a read. Let me know what you think. I’m happy to hear it.
Introducing “The Transition Game”, a lovechild born out of five days of exhaustive writing and by pushing my creative resolve to its outermost limits.
