Chronicles 5 - Take the bloody notes and get on with it!

The Second Draft

Okay, the script consultant's notes didn't turn out to be the superfical tweaks and the fine polish job I had somehow hoped they would be. Oh, poor, deluded me.

No, this wasn't a polish, this was a rewrite, a new draft. This is what I call a new draft anyway. I had about five different versions of my first draft. Versions that I'd tweaked and honed. That's polish work. It didn't mean that I was on my fifth draft! No, the notes I had received from the script consultant entailed examining structure, character arcs, character motivations, intra-character dynamics, plot and credibility issues etc. That's a rewrite!

A polish you can just breeze through. You whack on your i-Pod and sail happily into the sunset, not so with a re-draft. It's like chess. You have to sit there and think. Make notes. Try things out. Examine your character biogs, if you've written any, juggle scenes around etc.

So idea:

Summer 2000

First draft to consultant:

October 5th 2001

I then went off and wrote a second draft and:

November 2001

I flew to Los Angeles for a vacation but also used the opportunity to get my rom-com into the hands of a few agents.

I continued with a second draft polish and was done with that on:

December 16 2001

Don't get the wrong impression here. It doesn't need to take this long to write a script! The slow pace is me, catching time to write on weekends and evenings.

Second draft is done. It's still too long - 130 pages. What was I thinking? I know what I was thinking. I've sent this out to a few chosen friends and had great feedback! Was the script ready to send out? No, but the positive feedback that I'd received empowered me to go forth with zest and enthusiasm. See Chronicles 4