TPD Project Journal: Press Start

Okay, now, I’m ready to start…again, ha, ha.

I’ve finally finished prepping material for the second draft of “Things People Do”. It was a fun process, revisiting the characters, interviewing them, getting to know more about them, adding new scenes. I’ve added a lot to the beginning of the story to show how things were between the characters right before their motives and goals began to conflict with each other. This is where readers/viewers will start to choose sides between the three leads.

A big difference between the two drafts is the second will be written linearly, as the first was not. In the second draft, I’ve also added more scenes throughout the screenplay overall to fill in gaps and missing links as the first draft was written out of sequence with backwards and forwards jumps through time. The orginal screenplay held 97 scenes, but now, the scene count has grown to 185. Almost double with old and new scenes combined. I know the scene count will drop a little because, once I start writing, a lot of the new scenes will shorten or completely cancel-out older ones.

Looking over my 62 pages of printed virtual index cards, I like what I see. It “feels” like a whole story now, solid, strong, and self-contained. Each of the main characters will have their moment of shine, giving us a look into their psyche so we can better understand why certain decisions were made. Not that we’ll like or agree with all these decisions, but we’ll at least be able to see, from the characters point of view, why they chose to do what they did.

So, now,  I go down my list and “x” off everything that’s completed:

Concept [x]
Outline [x]
Chapters [x]
Scenes [x]
Synopsis [x]
Characters [x]
Locations [x]

All that’s left is:

2nd Draft [—]

I’ve been preparing to write the second draft nonstop for the last month or so, and now, I’m trying to decide if I should jump in and start writing right now, or should I back off and let it marinade for a week or two and start “fresh” Jan 1st, 2011?

What do you guys think?

Any suggestions?