Voices, People, ideas forming into words
Published by on March 1st, 2006
Since Saturday (it’s now Wednesday), bed-time has been around 2am each night. Working from home means an 8-8.30 up time for start around 9am is perfectly feasible and doesn’t muck up daytime concentration to any real extent, so late at night the script moves a step or two forward.
Last night was an important landmark for the screenplay: the start of the script itself.
The structure is solid enough right now to begin the scene writing. Even though there are a few elements to be worked out in the middle, the opening 30-40 minutes are tightly formed (as is the very end) and I suspect will need little structure change over the next two and a half weeks I have to complete a decent draft.
Work up to now has been structurally based: deciding when to reveal the antagonist, how to introduce the protagonist or how much back-story to show (and when to show it). Character outlines are in place as well as their inter-relationships - and most importantly of all - conflicts. But it is not until I get to writing actual scenes, particularly dialogue, that the characters truly start to take shape in my psyche.
Once they do - and this is not just me, many writers experience the same phenomenon - characters begin to take on actions all their own. When working with character you know very well, screenwriting is more akin to transcribing the scene you are watching unfold before your eyes, than actually coming up with ’stuff they say and do’. It’s a kind of zoning, I suppose. Characters can often catch you by surprise, say something you hadn’t anticipated, open doors to new ideas and developments.
The relationship of a writer with his characters is of critical importance and often a point of stress. I once wrote the first script for a TV series idea. Developed on and off over several years the characters became as real as close but absent friends. During one major revision I came to the conclusion that the main protagonist’s sidekick (Robin to his Batman, Watson to his Holmes) was superfluous to the story telling. I had written him into many scenes, but he complicated and confused so many situations much more than he contributed to them: he had to go.
I can only compare the emotions to a manager sacking a trusted yet underperforming subordinate for the sake of the greater good. It is odd because the difficulty in coming to the decision had nothing whatsoever to do with the volume of work ahead re-writing 80% of the script. Instead it was a feeling of guilt at betraying a friend. As a minor consolation, I passed his name over to one of the more minor yet regularly appearing characters - demoted, but at least he still had a job.
In developing the horror story I do hope I will not like the characters too much or it might inhibit my ability to let them die in increasingly horrible ways. But I suppose it’s not real blood…
> Details of the horror script competition.
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