_This is an Obvious Stall
[The livejournal is like a tribal economy. Without people posting, responding, or otherwise interacting, it becomes more and more impoverished. Soon, you look back and it's been two months since you've written anything. And yet, one of these days, I'm going to look back on the LJ fondly and long for the days when you and you and you and you were all posting and responding regularly and the motivation to post again was immediate.]
I love creating setups when I don’t know what the payoff will be. I’ll give a character on page 7 clairvoyance, not knowing why she needs it, but sure enough 30 or 50 or 80 pages later, I’ll find that not only did she need it, she couldn’t have saved the day without it.
Screenplays are not hard to write. At first I thought it was this daunting task that began somewhere in the past and ended several years later. But once you decide you’re going to write one, from start to finish, once you decide to quit your job and focus on nothing else but being prolific… yeah it doesn’t take long to finish, and it isn’t that insurmountable to conceive of bringing a character on a scratch pad journey that’s only three acts. It’s like playing a video game. Your choices affect their success. It matters if they complete their mission. There's setbacks, turnarounds, dead ends, but eventually you, the writer, gets there.
There is also a sadness to writing - immersing myself in a world I’ve never been, getting to know people I’ve never known, and then having it all end. I immediately forget they aren’t real. Sentience amounts to nothing more than a collection of dialogue and actions that the same actor might one day perform. Still. I care for them, their quirks, their shortcomings and I find their journey, though always false, one that somehow rings true.
And when that journey comes to an end, it matters. Now, I imagine many writers feel accomplishment by finally getting to that final “FADE OUT” 120 pages into their script, but that's never been me. When I get to that movie moment where all the characters are cheering for having defeated the villains and the hero gets the girl, I always feel loss… some literary version of post-mortem depression. The author is no longer needed in the new world order.
Yes, I realize my delusions of grandeur are profound when I compare myself to God, but had I birthed the universe and not just a tiny screenplay, it would have taken me much longer than a single Sabbath to recover.
So my script, a story whose premise I’ll have to reserve for a locked post, nears completion. This is, of course, the first draft of probably many, but once that line that starts in the beginning finds its way to the end, nothing more than tweaking remains. The journey is pretty much over.
I love creating setups when I don’t know what the payoff will be. I’ll give a character on page 7 clairvoyance, not knowing why she needs it, but sure enough 30 or 50 or 80 pages later, I’ll find that not only did she need it, she couldn’t have saved the day without it.
Screenplays are not hard to write. At first I thought it was this daunting task that began somewhere in the past and ended several years later. But once you decide you’re going to write one, from start to finish, once you decide to quit your job and focus on nothing else but being prolific… yeah it doesn’t take long to finish, and it isn’t that insurmountable to conceive of bringing a character on a scratch pad journey that’s only three acts. It’s like playing a video game. Your choices affect their success. It matters if they complete their mission. There's setbacks, turnarounds, dead ends, but eventually you, the writer, gets there.
There is also a sadness to writing - immersing myself in a world I’ve never been, getting to know people I’ve never known, and then having it all end. I immediately forget they aren’t real. Sentience amounts to nothing more than a collection of dialogue and actions that the same actor might one day perform. Still. I care for them, their quirks, their shortcomings and I find their journey, though always false, one that somehow rings true.
And when that journey comes to an end, it matters. Now, I imagine many writers feel accomplishment by finally getting to that final “FADE OUT” 120 pages into their script, but that's never been me. When I get to that movie moment where all the characters are cheering for having defeated the villains and the hero gets the girl, I always feel loss… some literary version of post-mortem depression. The author is no longer needed in the new world order.
Yes, I realize my delusions of grandeur are profound when I compare myself to God, but had I birthed the universe and not just a tiny screenplay, it would have taken me much longer than a single Sabbath to recover.
So my script, a story whose premise I’ll have to reserve for a locked post, nears completion. This is, of course, the first draft of probably many, but once that line that starts in the beginning finds its way to the end, nothing more than tweaking remains. The journey is pretty much over.