I think I’ve been working on this script for about 20 days now. I’m up to 76 pages, so making good progress. Today, though, I realised that I had things out of sequence. Stuff was happening long after it should have, so I took my printout, cut it into scenes and laid it all out on the floor.
Ever wanted to know what 76 pages of script look like? Something a bit like this:
Anyway, I shuffled things round a bit, and that was fine for the first half dozen or so columns of papers, but the last two or three are giving me real trouble. They’re just too clunky, not enough flow. Not enough contrast between scenes. (You see that really long scene, on the right? Too many pages. That's where the trouble starts!!)
See, I just knew that I’d need Syd Field’s The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver before this script was done. I’m not surprised that I’ve hit a problem, and I’m also not surprised that it’s happened now, at this point. If I were writing a novel, it’s usually at this equivalent point that trouble sets in. Course, novels are tricky buggers and I’ve usually put them on hold when I’ve hit this brick wall in the past, with the promise to myself that I’ll come back and fix it ?in due course?. But I never do.
This time, though, it’s a bit easier to see what the problem is. Possibly a bit harder to find a fix, but there is a fix there, somewhere, in my head. I just have to find it.
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