Writing Assignment Tracker IX

Hello.  It’s been a while.  This is because: (a) we’ve had the summer, and for whatever reason nothing and I mean NOTHING happens in the film industry during the summer – which incidentally makes it an ideal time for writing; (b) we’ve had our baby, welcome little girl, you’re doing pretty amazingly so far; and (c) I’ve been writing writing writing away on this second draft, no time for bloggery.

I read through my previous blog post to remind myself where we had got to.  Now I see, to my horror, that I’ve been writing this second draft for over sixteen weeks – against the four weeks that were in the contract.  Line items (a) and (b) above have something to do with that, of course, but it also has to be said that this has been the most comprehensive re-working of the script since, and possibly even including, the first draft.  This, to my mind – and I haven’t got client comments back yet – has been the turning-the-corner draft, the now-I-think-I-sort-of-see-the-kind-of-movie-this-could-become draft.  Time will tell, but I’m really happy with the work, and the time it has taken.  (And, no, nobody appears too crazily fussed about the late delivery.  Get it right is preferable to get it in.)

I have just two observations to make on this stage of the process.  The first is that I have continued to deliver as I write, as it were.  I delivered a new prologue in June, a new first act in July, a new first and second act in August and the whole shebang at the end of last week (by which time, amusingly enough, the new prologue had all but disappeared, although the work and thought that went into it certainly had not).  As I said before, I’ve found this a challenging, liberating and productive way of working: challenging in meeting shorter deadlines; liberating in dealing only with the pages or sequences in front of you, rather than forever working all the way through from beginning to middle to end; and productive because the real-time response to much of this work has helped me to tweak and refine (and occasionally reverse) as I’ve gone along.

The second observation is that while the plot, the scene-to-scene-to-scene order of the script has changed very little from the last full draft to this, the script itself is a very different creature.  This draft has been hugely informed both by the earlier idea of ‘voice’ (I’m feeling increasingly confident that the voice of my protagonist is locked down now) and by a new sense of the journey that she is undertaking. 

The old mineshaft / palaeontology metaphor has been brought to bear again, and it’s as apposite as it ever was.  The early drafts prepare the ground and establish the shape of the piece.  But it’s only when you start to tunnel, to mine, to excavate, to go deep underground, that the essence of the piece begins to reveal itself to you.  This all speaks to the idea of theme, and how the hero’s journey is, at its heart, an emotional examination and manifestation of that theme. 

It’s also reminded me that it’s a bit of a chasing-tail situation, one which I still can’t quite get my head around.  I’ve found, and lots of people have written about this in the past, that a script’s theme only really starts to emerge after you’ve written a few drafts.  Only once you have found the narrative shape, the oppositional forces, the protagonist’s voice, can you begin to lock down the emotional journey that runs alongside the external jeopardy.  And, once you have unearthed that, you then need to go back into the script and layer that bedrock of theme and emotion back through the journey.  Do we need a new opening / defining image?  Do we need some new visual imagery throughout?  Do we need new scenes or speeches that hit this theme square on the nose?  Is the ending the apotheosis of this thematic journey?

It reinforces so many golden rules about writing.  One, it’s all about the rewrite.  Two, don’t kill yourself if it takes you ages to unearth something which then seems to be glaringly obvious: that’s the journey, just know to keep your eye out for it next time around.  Three, you might start out thinking you’re writing about X, but if the script keeps on tugging towards Y, then you’d be advised to follow that.  (This becomes difficult when you start out writing A Big Commercial Genre Film and all the time the script is screaming I’m Indie!  I’m Quirky!  I Don’t Fit Into A Box!  Then you probably have to pick an end point and work back from there.)

And at the end of the day there’s a lot of luck involved.  You hope that what you discover as you go deeper down the mineshaft tallies up with what you’re already set in place above it.  But sometimes it might not.  Sometimes the rewrites get bigger, not smaller, as you go along.  You just can never predict.  Which is why this process, of charting a writing commission with pre-determined ‘steps’ has been instructive for me – and, I hope, for you.  This latest pass – arbitrarily named the Second Draft – was supposed to take four weeks, and it took four times that.  Previous passes have taken considerably less time than was anticipated.  The treatment stage took a lot longer than planned.  (And I’m still wondering how much value you really get out of a treatment, if the digging is only going to start in earnest when the drafting begins.)

A new model, which is being discussed for a job that is coming up, is ‘All You Can Eat Rewrites Until March For XXX’.  There’s a trust / respect requirement on both sides for this deal to work, of course.  But given my recent experience of sharing my work with the client as I’ve gone along (and the benefits that entailed), and my increasing scepticism that any detailed step-contract for a writing gig will probably be out of date by the time the ink is dry on the signatures, I’m thinking this might be the way to go in the future.

Back to this job.  The question now is whether the clients think the script is ready, or close to ready, to go out to a director, or some pieces of cast?  Watch this space – I know I will be.

 

Step	Name	Duration Sched / Actual	Delivery Date Sched / Actual	+/- Schedule
1.	First Draft Treatment	1 month	15/11/12
	Initial Step Outline	2 weeks	26/10/12
	Initial Step Outline client comments	4 days	30/10/12
	First Draft Treatment	2 weeks	16/11/12	-1 Day
2.	First Draft Treatment client comments	3 weeks	06/12/12
	Client comments	2.5 weeks	03/12/12	+3 Days
3.	Second Draft Treatment	10 days	16/12/12
	Writer response (not treatment)	2.5 weeks	20/12/12	-4 Days
	Client comments	3 weeks	06/01/13
	Second Draft Treatment	10 days	17/01/13	-1 Month
4.	Second Draft Treatment client comments	4 weeks	13/01/13
	Client comments		21/01/13	-1 Week
5.	First Draft Script	12 weeks	07/04/13
		9 weeks	22/03/13	+2 Weeks
6.	First Draft Script client comments	8 weeks	02/06/13
		3 weeks	11/04/13	+7 Weeks
7.	Revised First Draft Script	4 weeks	30/06/13
		5 weeks	16/05/13	+6 Weeks
8.	Revised First Draft Script client comments	2 weeks	14/07/13
		5 weeks	16/06/13	+4 Weeks
9.	Second Draft Script	4 weeks	11/08/13
	Second Draft first act		26/07/13
	Second Draft first two acts		30/08/13
	Second Draft complete	16 weeks	4/10/13	-7 Weeks
11.	Second Draft Script First Set	6 weeks	22/09/13
12.	Second Draft Script Second Set	6 weeks	03/11/13

 

Writing Assignment Tracker VIII

It’s all gone a bit freestyle since my last post, a couple of months ago.  Recap required.

I delivered my ‘First Draft Revisions’ on 16^th May.  There was then a short hiatus while the assembled and somewhat disparate ‘client’ read the draft, collated their notes, had a family wedding etc.  Then came quite a chunky notes document on 19^th June, fifteen pages of comments ranging from the top-level ‘have we captured the voice of our heroine yet?’ to line notes.  So, not green lit just yet.

We set up a call for the following week to go through them, but I responded via email in the interim, with something that turned into a bit of a ‘What are we trying to do here?’ Jerry Maguire mission statement.  Their document and my response collectively made the notes call a supremely productive one. 

It brought some of the broader notes into specific context, and specific solves were discussed.  We agreed that a prologue might be helpful to establish our heroine’s voice and back story, and show the ‘natural state’ that she effectively needs to recapture during the story that follows.

(Funnily enough, we had the same conversation at the same sort of stage in the development process with CHALET GIRL, although the prologue I wrote was a slightly more beautiful thing than what eventually appeared.  Sidebar – oh my god I can’t believe the first 46 minutes of CHALET GIRL is available free online and has been watched over a million times.  Don’t follow the link above, whatever you do!)

After this call I agreed to go away and write up this 8 page prologue, which I did in a few days (when it comes, it comes quickly).  Notes were turned around on that very speedily, too, and I then incorporated that into a revised draft of the whole of the first act.  That took another week.  Last week was about polishing the first act and pushing deep into the second act, all seeing how this new heroine’s voice / character / actions are impacting on the narrative flow.  I delivered that on Friday and am waiting for notes on that.

Thoughts on all this, then:

‘Voice’ is always a difficult term to get a handle on, but it’s so important that you all get on the same page with this.  I had a very different heroine in my head from the one in the collective clients’ head.  I was going broader, more Bridget Jones, a bit more hopeless.  They were looking for someone a bit more grown up, with real problems instead of banana skins.  Clearly, these two people are a long way from each other.  The person in my head spoke a different way and did different things (collectively, I suppose, ‘the voice’) to the person they were expecting.  Vital to get that aligned before we go any further, even if it means quite a big re-orientation now.

I’m now sharing my work with the clients as I go, which funnily enough I don’t mind at all.  For one thing, it gives me lots of little one week deadlines, which are easier to hit than big, scary eight week deadlines.  For another, we can do adjustments as we go, rather than going too far down the line and then having to backtrack and throw out lots of stuff.  Sometimes I’m frustrated that my set-ups don’t yet have their pay-offs, or that an act is being judged in isolation (it might be a more dramatic set-up act, with the comedy to come later on, for example).  But the team know the script so well by now that they know what is waiting around the corner.  It’s about being open and collaborative and respectful, and that isn’t a bad way to work at all.

That said, my agent did have to ask the question “Is this the second draft yet?”, because we rather slipped into it.  Another example of the realities of the writing process butting up against the terminology of a contract.  But for the moment at least everyone is still happy to employ common sense where required.

In amongst all of this, and shortly after my Jerry Maguire mission statement moment, I had a bit of a ‘let’s throw everything out and start again’ moment.  I felt like I had lost hold on what this story was, and felt like another, more interesting story ‘over there’ (still from the same source material) was beckoning me with crooked finger.  I shared these thoughts with the producer team, and now slightly wish I hadn’t.  It’s my job to keep looking forwards, to keep taking stock of where we are, what our options are, what the ramifications of our decisions are.  But for me to start looking back, to start second-guessing – that’s not helpful, that’s not what I’m paid for.  (If anyone’s going to do that, it’s usually the client!)

As Bill Nicholson once memorably described it, a screenwriter should be a gushing geyser of creativity.  Clients may then buy a Styrofoam cup (size dependant on fee) and dip it into the fountain (number of visits to the fountain dependant on contract).  The writer’s job is just to keep on gushing.

Another non-contract item that is looming is my wife giving birth to our third child in the next few weeks.  So a possible pause in the development process (everything seems to stop in August anyhow, so well timed wife) and a pause in the blogging (it’s pretty much on perma-pause anyway so you probably won’t notice).  Will pick up when there’s more to tell.

Updated grid, just for form’s sake:

Step	Name	Duration Sched / Actual	Delivery Date Sched / Actual	+/- Schedule
1.	First Draft Treatment	1 month	15/11/12
	Initial Step Outline	2 weeks	26/10/12
	Initial Step Outline client comments	4 days	30/10/12
	First Draft Treatment	2 weeks	16/11/12	-1 Day
2.	First Draft Treatment client comments	3 weeks	06/12/12
	Client comments	2.5 weeks	03/12/12	+3 Days
3.	Second Draft Treatment	10 days	16/12/12
	Writer response (not treatment)	2.5 weeks	20/12/12	-4 Days
	Client comments	3 weeks	06/01/13
	Second Draft Treatment	10 days	17/01/13	-1 Month
4.	Second Draft Treatment client comments	4 weeks	13/01/13
	Client comments		21/01/13	-1 Week
5.	First Draft Script	12 weeks	07/04/13
		9 weeks	22/03/13	+2 Weeks
6.	First Draft Script client comments	8 weeks	02/06/13
		3 weeks	11/04/13	+7 Weeks
7.	Revised First Draft Script	4 weeks	30/06/13
		5 weeks	16/05/13	+6 Weeks
8.	Revised First Draft Script client comments	2 weeks	14/07/13
		5 weeks	16/06/13	+4 Weeks
9.	Second Draft Script	4 weeks	11/08/13
	Second Draft first act	Ongoing	26/07/13
11.	Second Draft Script First Set	6 weeks	22/09/13
12.	Second Draft Script Second Set	6 weeks	03/11/13

 

 

Writing Assignment Tracker VII

First draft revisions delivered.  Last week in fact, but still took a week more than the contract stipulated (five not four).

Honestly, it was a tough pass at the script.  The notes were good – none of this 10% funnier nonsense, at least not stated explicitly.  Surely every pass at a romcom should aim for that?  But the areas that needed most work were clearly identified, solves agreed upon, the way ahead stretched before me like the M1.

And yet.  Unpicking a script that you’ve worked on for six months already, doing some fairly chunky structural re-engineering, retro-fitting a new character trait and a more apposite expression of ‘theme’: these can all be hard tasks to get your head around.  Particularly if you’re still feeling like the main work has already been done, and that this is all dusting and buffing.

Of course, it isn’t.  Some of the hard work has been done but most of it lies ahead.  Even now, after a painstaking first draft and a five week polish, I’d imagine we’re probably only 25% of the way there.  That was my experience on CHALET GIRL, certainly.  Who knows how this project will continue to develop, but one thing’s for sure: it will develop.  Director – changes.  Cast – changes.  Budget, schedule, locations – changes, changes, changes.

But for now, I can only concentrate on what’s in front of me.  Solving the problems we’re aware of.  Improving areas I know can be improved upon.  But being reasonably fatalistic about the process too, and understanding that this is just another step on the journey.

That approach helped me through these revisions when I found myself staring at the screen and thinking ‘is this the best I can do?’.  Well if you can’t come up with anything better right now, and if you’ve tried all your usual tricks and you’ve still been staring at the screen for half an hour, then technically this probably is the best you can do.  So put it in, or leave it in, and move on.  You’ll get other chances to make it better, other passes.  Chances are the solution isn’t going to be found in this scene, it’ll be found in the scene before it, or ten scenes before it, so you were probably looking in the wrong place anyway.  So it might need to wait for another draft, anyway.

So I made this pass as good as I could, within reason, within the notes and within the approximate time suggested.  And I feel like I’ve done my job.  One of the benefits of doing this Writing Assignment Tracker has been the ability to see the process as just that – a process, a journey, an evolution of a script.  You think Richard Curtis knocks out a filmable script at first draft?  Everyone needs a few runs at it, even the greats (canonically speaking).  Trust yourself, trust the process, and let it be.

Finally, the updated grid.  I got my first call on this project during the Olympics, so it’s been something close to ten months on this project already.  Time flies, and we’re still ahead of schedule.  But the big question is what next?  Is this draft ready to send to a director?  Or does it need another pass?  And does that automatically make it the Second Draft?  Or are we getting into cheeky-unpaid-revisions-that-you-won’t-find-anywhere-in-the-contract territory?  This team has been more than fair with me so far, so I doubt it.  But I get a sense we’re nearing the End of the Beginning on this project.  Who knows what’s around the corner?

Step	Name	Duration Sched / Actual	Delivery Date Sched / Actual	+/- Schedule
1.	First Draft Treatment	1 month	15/11/12
	Initial Step Outline	2 weeks	26/10/12
	Initial Step Outline client comments	4 days	30/10/12
	First Draft Treatment	2 weeks	16/11/12	-1 Day
2.	First Draft Treatment client comments	3 weeks	06/12/12
	Client comments	2.5 weeks	03/12/12	+3 Days
3.	Second Draft Treatment	10 days	16/12/12
	Writer response (not treatment)	2.5 weeks	20/12/12	-4 Days
	Client comments	3 weeks	06/01/13
	Second Draft Treatment	10 days	17/01/13	-1 Month
4.	Second Draft Treatment client comments	4 weeks	13/01/13
	Client comments		21/01/13	-1 Week
5.	First Draft	12 weeks	07/04/13
		9 weeks	22/03/13	+2 Weeks
6.	First Draft client comments	8 weeks	02/06/13
		3 weeks	11/04/13	+7 Weeks
7.	Revised First Draft	4 weeks	30/06/13
		5 weeks	16/05/13	+6 Weeks
8.	Revised First Draft client comments	2 weeks	14/07/13
9.	Second Draft	4 weeks	11/08/13
11.	Second Draft First Set	6 weeks	22/09/13
12.	Second Draft Second Set	6 weeks	03/11/13