Keeping motivation after four drafts
When starting out did you ever have trouble finding motivation to keep working on rewrites? Doesn’t the same story lose its interest after about four drafts?
– Brannek Gaudet
Good guess. Four drafts is about the right number. The first draft is exciting, bewildering and fresh. For the second draft, you have all sorts of brilliant new ideas and suggestions to try out, so that keeps it interesting. The third draft is generally damage-control from the second draft, where many of those good ideas ended up not working. The fourth draft, well…
The fourth draft sucks. By this point, the intractable problems of your script are readily apparent, and you’re faced with either (a) writing around them, or (b) trying to tackle them head on. In my experience, while you should choose (b), you generally choose (a).
It all boils down to two related questions: What script did you sit down to write, and what script did you end up writing?
At this fourth draft stage, you have to really decide between Great in Theory and what Actually Works. If you approach it this way, you can sometimes gain fresh eyes on your script. Read it as if some other, lamer screenwriter wrote it. What would you do differently?
Then, do that.
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January 14th, 2005 at 9:38 am
John (or others),
When you get to those later drafts what do you do to keep a fresh perspective? I find after several drafts it’s hard to know what’s working and what isn’t. Also it’s a challenge to not change too much. My writing partner has gotten frustrated that I’ve changed things that ARE working.
One thing I try to do is have trusted friends read my work and give notes. I also will got back to the original outline and log-line and ask myself what kind of movie am I writing. Also I try to get away from writing the script and just free write. Let go of the pressure of making it perfect and just ask crazy questions. What if instead of a CIA agent my hero owned a hot dog stand in Queens and was deaf? Stuff like that…shake the creative tree!
What works for you?
Jim
January 14th, 2005 at 11:15 am
Further to your comment, Jim, if you do send your script out for some “friendly” reads, do you generally try and give it to friends and/or colleagues who have a good sensibility for the genre you’ve written? I’ve given dramatic scripts to friends with comedic sensibilites who just didn’t “get it”… Whereas other friends with rather strong dramatic sensibilities loved the script.
January 14th, 2005 at 11:53 am
Bags, great point. Yes I write comedy and I send to comedy writers. Ones who are VERY HONEST as well!
Don’t pull punches I tell them, I want the script to be the best it can! Honest, hard feedback is the only to get the script there.
Jim
January 15th, 2005 at 6:02 am
If you have the time, just leave it for a week, preferably two, and work on other stuff, forgetting about it completely. Then print it out, read through it with a pen, and you should be able to spot what’s good and what’s bad. But be ruthless with that pen. Make it a red one. A big fat red one, with spikes.
January 15th, 2005 at 5:35 pm
Indeed. Spikes. The spikes are more effective than banging your head against the wall.