Week 0 (concept)
Week 1 (outline)
Week 2 (first act)
Week 3 (first half of second act)
Week 4 (second half second act)
Week 5 (third act)
Week 6 (evaluate your first draft)
Week 7 (rewrite plan of attack)
The hardest thing about rewriting is encountering problems that you don’t have the answers for. For example, you might have a weak main character. This is one of the most common problems you’ll find in writing. One of the main characters isn’t clicking for some reason.
And because your main character has such an outsized influence on your story, you can’t fix the other problems until you fix this one. You don’t know what to do. Do you come up with an entirely new character? Do you tweak the character you’ve got? What are that character’s new characteristics? If he has new characteristics, does that mean you have to rethink the character’s backstory so it stays in alignment with his new actions?
This famously happened with the American version of The Office.
The original six episode run had a colder Michael Scott who did what he wanted without thinking about the consequences. This is a guy who, when Oscar, the lone latino in the office, asked him if he could play in the company basketball game, Michael replied, “I will require your talents come baseball season, my friend.”
In the second season, they softened Michael up by changing a key tenet of his personality: Michael cared only about being liked. Everything he did was about getting the employees to like him. For example, when it came time to strip the employees of major health care benefits, he handed the job off to Dwight so they didn’t all hate him. The Michael of the first season would’ve had no issues enacting those changes. This change made Michael more human (and, by proxy, likable).
You can see how minor changes can have a major influence on characters. And if those characters are big, those changes will have big effects on the story.
This brings us back to the original problem. You may have a character like First Season Michael who you know isn’t working but you don’t exactly know how to fix him. You don’t yet know that having Michael desperate to be liked is the answer. What do you do?
There are a couple of options. Talk to someone about it. Explain the character. Explain what you don’t like about them. And get their opinion. Even if they’re not writers, just hearing yourself talk out loud about the character and hearing someone else react often gives you ideas. I also love lists. Specifically, “Top 5” lists. Write down your Top 5 ideas on how to solve the problem.
Then you have to pick something. Even if you’re not positive it’s the right route, you don’t want to get in the habit where “not writing” is the norm. Because every day that the solution to your problem is, “I just need to think about it more,” you reward the decision not to write. It then becomes more likely that you won’t write tomorrow. Pretty soon, you’ve gone weeks, maybe even months, without writing anything.
At a certain point you need to go with the best idea you have and understand that you might get halfway through the rewrite before you realize the actual solution, which will require you to start the rewrite over. I’d rather you do that, though, then keep going without writing. Just like your hero needs to keep pushing the story forward, you, the screenwriter, need to keep pushing the script forward.
I speak from experience. I’ve let a lot of scripts die in the rewrite process because I couldn’t figure out the solution to one of the problems. And while, in some cases, it was best that those scripts died, in other cases, I could’ve had something good if I had just pushed through.
By the way, there is usually a problem in every rewrite that seems impossible to solve. But when you do figure that problem out, it’s a game-changing moment for the script. It tends to open up a whole new world of ideas.
Let’s get back on track, though.
You have the entire month of May to finish your rewrite.
That’s 25 pages per week, which is the same number of pages we did for the first draft. That means you’ll be rewriting 3-4 pages a day. You might ask why we’re not moving faster. Since we’ve written a lot of this stuff already, shouldn’t we be able to move through the script more quickly?
No because I’m factoring in problem-solving time. There are going to be days where you don’t know what to do and you will spend two hours trying to come up with solutions. Once you have your solutions, the next day you’ll write 6-8 pages to make up for it. Which sounds like a lot but we’re assuming most of the scenes you’ve written will stay. That means you’ll be able to cover certain scenes in a few minutes, adding a new line of dialogue or two and that’s it.
But whatever you do, do not go more than one day without writing. Because that will get you into the habit of not writing. I cannot stress how easy it is for two days of not writing to turn into two weeks of not writing. If you don’t have the perfect answer for how to fix something, go with the best thing you’ve got. I promise the perfect solution will eventually come to you. You’re just not ready for it yet.
If you ever feel like you’re in the weeds and have lost track of what it is you’re doing in your rewrite, go back to the list I asked you to place at the top of your outline. The Five biggest things that need to be improved. For example, here are the five biggest things I needed to improve in my fictional comedy feature script, “First Date.”
1) Make Doug more active!
2) Claire needs to be less angry, more fun.
3) Story needs to be more active. They should be on the move 95% of the time. If they’re sitting or standing while talking, change those scenes so that they’re moving somewhere.
4) Beef up Tony the Villain. Look to add more scenes of him wherever we can. Cut to him more.
5) Look to sneak in exposition about Claire’s weird dating history wherever you can but only if it’s natural. It should never read like exposition.
Do what the list tells you to do. Remember, you prioritized these. In other words, “Make Doug more active,” is the most important note to making your script better. Therefore, if that’s the ONLY THING YOU IMPROVE, your script is going to get a lot better. So go through your scenes and look for ways to make Doug more active in every one of them.
If you’re someone who can focus on 2-3 things at once, also try and make Claire more fun while keeping them on the move when they chat. If that feels overwhelming, just focus on the “Make Doug more Active” problem. Then go back through the script a second time and focus on making Claire more fun. Then go through the script a third time and focus on keeping them moving.
There’s no perfect way to rewrite a script. A lot of problems are interdependent on each other. They naturally influence one another. So if you’re making Doug more active, Claire is going to change by the nature of being around someone who’s more active. She’s going to have more opportunities to ‘react.’ Those reactions are where you can focus on making her more fun. So solving some problems might solve other problems.
In other cases, solving a problem will create a new problem. By making Doug more active and regimented, maybe he’s not as funny. The most active character in The Hangover was Phil (Bradley Cooper). He was also the least funny character. So now you have to figure out how to still make Doug funny. And this will require you to go over the script again, and again, and again. Even though you’re creating an “official” second draft of your script at the end of this month, you may go through the script a dozen times over that month, changing things at each pass.
Let’s be honest. A rewrite is like a birthday wish list. You’re not going to get everything you want. However, if the only thing you’re able to do is solve your 3 biggest problems, your script is going to get a ton better. So don’t get obsessed over little things like that punchline to the joke on page 72. Spending two hours getting that joke just right isn’t nearly as valuable as spending that time solidifying your main character.
25 pages by the end of the week!
Good luck everybody!
I give you an update on my first producing project, Kinetic, and get into the challenges of producing in general. I review a 180 page screenplay starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie. You will not want to miss this review, trust me. I get into Amazon’s insane spending spree on content. Numbers so big that they don’t make sense anymore. I introduce you to the concept of geezer teasers. I ask the question if Steven Spielberg even cares about audiences anymore. I give you my raw opinion on those Oscars. And I give two great screenwriting tips! Oh, and there’s a trivia question for half-off a Scriptshadow screenplay consultation.
If you want to read my newsletter, you have to sign up. So if you’re not on the mailing list, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “NEWSLETTER!” and I’ll send it to you.
p.s. For those of you who keep signing up but don’t receive the newsletter, try sending me another e-mail address. E-mailing programs are notoriously quirky and there may be several reasons why your e-mail address/server is rejecting the newsletter. One of which is your server is bad and needs to be spanked.
Remember the days when you were a young gullible screenwriter and assumed that whoever you sent your script to sat down in front of a warm fire, a glass of expensive red wine by their side, and read your script from start to finish with the determined focus of a surgeon?
Ahhh, those were the days.
Eventually, you learned the truth. That most people who open your script don’t finish it. Sure, people who have been paid to read your script, such as readers doing coverage, will finish it. But the people who actually matter – the producers, the execs, the directors – they’re out the second they’re no longer entertained.
Most screenwriters don’t know that someone finishing your screenplay is a big deal. Even if they only thought the script was okay. The fact that they actually read your script cover to cover is an amazing feat. I still contend that entertaining people with words written on a page is the most difficult form of entertainment to hold someone’s attention.
It sucks that you never know *when* someone gave up on your script. People are generally nice. They don’t want to destroy your dreams. So even if they stopped reading on page 5, they tell you they finished it but it wasn’t for them. And how does that help you? You’re trying to become a better writer yet nobody’s identifying where it is you need to get better.
While I can’t tell you the exact moment readers give up on your script, I can give you the two most likely places. If you can master the writing in these two sections of the screenplay, you will reach your ultimate goal of writing a script that someone reads from beginning to end.
The first of these moments is THE FIRST TEN PAGES.
There is so much going on in the first ten pages from the reader’s side. For starters, they’re seeing if the first scene draws them in. They’re deciding if you can write. Is the writing professional? Is it easy to read? Or is it choppy and clumsily written? They’re deciding if they like you as a writer. Do they like your style? Do they like your voice? I just read a script by a well-known writer that I hated because I hate the writer’s style.
But what the reader is really looking for in those first ten pages is to get lost. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean that what you’ve written is so compelling that they forgot about everything else that’s going on in their life and only care about one thing – what the next page holds. That should be every writer’s goal with those first ten pages.
This is why I tell writers to start their script with a mystery or a problem or an objective. All of these require a character to be active. They’re already moving through the story. And if the mystery or problem or objective is interesting, you’ve got us hooked. There’s a reason Raiders of the Lost Ark is considered to be the greatest movie opening of all time. You’ve got this big objective that’s seemingly impossible. And we get to watch this bad-ass motherf&%$#er try to obtain that objective. It immediately thrusts us into a fun entertaining situation.
But that’s not the only option. It can be a scene that plays to your biggest strength. If you’re great with dialogue, for example, drop us into a conflict-filled dialogue scene with 2-4 characters and let the dialogue fly, like the breakup scene in the opening of The Social Network. If you’re truly good with dialogue (and don’t just *think* you’re good with dialogue cause your mother told you so), readers will recognize that and not need a big flashy opening. The crispness of the dialogue will tell us, “This guy has talent. I need to keep reading.”
And don’t take your foot off the gas in those first 10 pages. I’ve read a lot of good teaser scenes that last 4-5 pages and then the writer reverts to clunky character setup and exposition. You don’t have the luxury of doing that. Your script isn’t already greenlit. As unfair as it is, once a script is greenlit, they can take their time in the first 10 pages. But you’re still trying to win people over. So you don’t get vacation time. You have to keep pressing. You have to constantly ask yourself, “Is this moment boring?” If it is, rewrite it until it isn’t.
If you manage to write a great first ten pages, readers will almost certainly give you until the end of the first act. The first act is where the big problem in the movie is set up (save the princess, get into the exclusive party, retrieve the infinity stones) and the beginning of the second act is where the characters set off on their journey. That stuff is inherently structured and usually fun to read.
This brings us to the second most common place a reader gives up on your script, which is 10-15 pages into your second act. The reason for this is that most writers know how to set up a story. But very few know how to tell the middle act of a story. They don’t have a plan. This becomes evident almost immediately. The goal isn’t clear. The characters seem unsure. The direction from the writer, if there is any, is vague. It just feels like they’re making things up as they go along (probably because they are).
And the threshold for how long a reader will put up with that is about 15 pages. Personally, I’ve seen so many scripts fall apart at this stage. You can almost read the writer’s mind. You can see the lack of confidence building with each subsequent scene.
The trick to getting this section right is, first, understanding what the second act is. It’s the obstacle act. Your hero will be pursuing something – the ultimate goal in the movie – and you will then throw a bunch of obstacles at them. Sometimes these obstacles will be overcome. Other times they will set your hero back. If, at any point, you let your foot off the gas with either of these (character no longer pursues goal, interesting obstacles stop appearing or don’t appear frequently enough), you will start to lose the reader’s interest.
In the movie Nightcrawler (one of my favorite screenplays ever), the ’15 minutes into the second act’ marker has Louis Bloom getting to a crime scene too late because his newly hired assistant, Richard, accidentally sent him the wrong way. It’s an obstacle he did not overcome. He gets right back on the horse, speeding 90 miles an hour through the streets of Los Angeles to get to the next crime scene where he’s able to get some gruesome footage that he sells to the local news.
He then parlays that into a meeting with the station’s news producer. He wants to set terms for future deals.
Louis Bloom’s determination – his goal to become the number one nightcrawler in the city – creates a narrative where, when we reach 15 minutes into the second act, he’s going to be doing something. And readers LOVE THAT. They love when the main character is ACTIVE and DETERMINED and will do anything to achieve their objective.
Conversely, in Gilroy’s and Gylenhaal’s next collaboration, Velvet Buzzsaw, if you fast forward to 15 minutes into the second act, you see Gylenhaal’s art critic character lazily waltzing through an art showing, chatting up others at the gallery. It feels random. Not to mention, the story hasn’t established which direction it plans to take. You take Gilroy’s name off of this script, I guarantee you no one makes it past page 45. Such is the importance of establishing a direction by the writer and a purpose for the main character.
If you can get this section right, I’ve found that most readers will read the rest of your script. If they make it to page 45 and they’re still into the story, they’ve decided your script is worth their time. So pay extra attention to these two sections of the script. When they’re good, it usually means the entire script is good. Good luck!
P.S. Look for a new SCRIPTSHADOW NEWSLETTER in your Inboxes Friday night!!! Update on Kinetic! Yayyyyyy!
Genre: War/True Story
Premise: Chronicles the clandestine CIA operation that risked igniting WWIII by recovering a nuclear-armed Soviet Sub, the K-129, that sunk to the bottom of the ocean in 1968.
About: Scott Free Films (Ridley Scott’s company) bought the rights to the David H. Sharp book “The CIA’s Greatest Covert Operation: Inside the Daring Mission to Recover a Nuclear-Armed Soviet Sub” three years ago, presumably for Scott to direct. Scott Free hired a relatively unknown writer, Dave Collard (Annapolis), to adapt the book. That ended up being the right decision, as the script finished 3rd on last year’s Black List.
Writer: Dave Collard (based on the book by David H. Sharp)
Details: 123 pages
When you ask people what the number 1 rule in screenwriting is, they’ll probably tell you it’s “Show don’t tell.” Or “Make your protagonist likable.” Or “Don’t write a scene unless it pushes the story forward.”
They’re all wrong.
Anyone who’s been reading Scriptshadow for a significant amount of time knows the real number 1 rule in screenwriting: DON’T WRITE ABOUT THE COLD WAR. There has never been a movie about the Cold War that’s done well at the box office. It turns out that when you write about a war where there was no actual fighting, people aren’t that interested. Who would’ve thought?
Which is why I haven’t read Neither Confirm Nor Deny until now.
However, the lackluster offerings I’ve been seeing near the bottom of the Black List aren’t panning out. I figured if this script got 26 votes and finished in the Top 5, it might be good. So I’m giving it a shot! Even if that’s one more shot than was ever fired during the Cold War.
It’s 1968 and the Russians have just lost one of their nuclear submarines. This at a point in history where nuclear subs were redefining the potential to win a nuclear war. No longer would sides have to wait ten endless minutes for their missiles to sail across the sea and destroy a city. Now they could park themselves off a nearby coast and strike within seconds.
Somehow, the US Navy finds the missing Russian submarine at the bottom of the Pacific. This gives CIA Assistant Deputy Director John Parangosky an idea. What if we could capture it!? A simple question that has a complex answer. Nobody’s ever tried to pick up a dead submarine off the ocean floor before in one piece, while, at the same time, hiding it from the entire world. This won’t be easy.
So “JP” calls upon the smartest engineer he knows, Dave Sharp, to create the device that’s going to capture the sub. And then he goes to fellow brainiac, and alcoholic, John Graham, who runs an ocean mining business. He wants John to design a plan to scoop this thing up.
What the crew quickly realize is that this task is impossible. They can’t use any current Navy ships as they’re not equipped to lift that kind of weight. They will have to design a totally new ship. The budget blows up to 375 million dollars, the CIA’s ENTIRE YEARLY BUDGET. And in order to explain why a weird ship is parked out in the general vicinity from where a Russian sub disappeared a couple of years ago, they have to hire eccentric Howard Hughes to pretend he’s digging for rare ocean minerals in the area.
All of this takes a lot longer than anybody planned for. They first spot the sub in 1968. They don’t get to the point where they consider pulling it up until 1974. They want to test the equipment even longer but when the press gets wind of the mission, it’s only a matter of time before the gig is up. Therefore, they have to do it! Will they succeed and save America? Seeing as I’m here typing this, I’m guessing yes. But wouldn’t it be one hell of a twist if the whole mission, instead, started World War 3?
Neither Confirm Nor Deny is going to be a hit for people who liked The Imitation Game and Argo. It’s very much in that same vein where we follow a bunch of government folks trying to pull off an impossible task, but the writer never takes the world too seriously. There’s a big emphasis on creating “Characters” with a capital “C.” You can tell that just from the way people are introduced.
“JOHN GRAHAM (50s) walks into his office, clutching a cigarette in one hand, a coffee in the other. A one-two punch that he’s perfected so well that he can drink the coffee without removing the cigarette.”
Neither Confirm Nor Deny revels in the fact that it gets to include wackadoodles like Howard Hughes, and I have to say I’m a much bigger fan of that approach than the super-serious approach. These backroom government bureaucracy flicks can feel self-important if you don’t have a sense of humor about things. That’s the vibe I got from this. It never let things linger too long without a laugh.
Secretary: Now I got a question for you– how come you never come out and play volleyball with everyone?
Dave: Because I’m here to work.
Secretary: Even God took off one day.
Dave: Yeah, well, he wasn’t trying to raise a Russian sub that’s three miles down.
That approach alone makes this script worth the read.
But, ultimately, what prevents this script from reaching impressive territory is the sheer amount of time the team has to complete their task. Hollywood movies need urgency. We need to feel like things must happen now or else we start wondering why we’re watching. If you have all the time in the world to get the job done, then I can go home and be reasonably certain you’ll get it done. If, however, you tell me it can only be done RIGHT NOW or else the whole thing blows up, I have to stick around to see what happens.
You can trick audiences for a while when it comes to lack of urgency. It requires being vague and cutting to each scene without telling us that four weeks have just passed, or two months have passed. It feels seamless because you’re not drawing attention to the time jumps. Another Ridley Scott movie, The Martian, does this well. You don’t realize that the time is passing on Mars as much as it is.
However, if you try and extend the timeline out too long, the audience becomes hip to your misdirect. I mean, we started this adventure in 1968. It’s now 1974. How important can capturing this piece of equipment be if we’ve waited six entire years and nothing in the Cold War has changed? And haven’t they built new cooler more sophisticated subs by now? It’d be like me trying to backwards engineer an iPod but by the time I was finished, they were on the iPhone 12. Big deal.
This is part of my broader problem with the Cold War as a script backdrop. It doesn’t provide high enough stakes. I remember reading The Imitation Game and, at one point, I think they said that for every day they didn’t figure out the Enigma machine, 100,000 more people were killed. Those are what I call “stakes.” That is what I call urgency.
To be clear, this is an enjoyable script. But it never convinced me that capturing this submarine meant anything in the broader scheme of the Cold War. It was just a fun side-quest for the CIA. But, for what it’s worth, it did introduce the phrase, “We can neither confirm nor deny “ into popular culture. So there’s that.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “The bad guys are getting close.” In my favorite new movie, Bad Trip, we constantly cut away from our heroes’ journey to show Bud’s psychopathic sister getting closer and closer to catching up to them. They’ve stolen her car and she’s going to make them pay. This common screenplay device is a nice way to add urgency to a narrative. If we see the enemy getting closer, we know our heroes have to hurry up. Neither Confirm Nor Deny should’ve used this device. There should’ve been a subplot where we intermittently cut to the Russians, who are getting suspicious about the Americans’ activity at sea. The more we see the Russians getting close to figuring out the Americans’ plan, the more urgency it would’ve added to the objective.
Week 0 (concept)
Week 1 (outline)
Week 2 (first act)
Week 3 (first half of second act)
Week 4 (second half second act)
Week 5 (third act)
Week 6 (Evaluate your first draft)
A PLAN OF ATTACK
This week, you will lay out a rewrite-targeted outline.
The key to any good rewrite is A PLAN OF ATTACK.
The more specific your plan of attack is, the more effective your rewrite will be.
Last week, I asked you to read your script and identify the five key areas where your script needed to improve. Common first draft problems include a slow plot, inconsistent characters, a large page count, a small page count, scenes that don’t push the story forward, abandoned subplots, setups without payoffs, payoffs without setups, generic characters, cliche choices, low stakes, and low urgency, to name a few.
Also, with comedies, there is such a strong desire to “write funny” that first drafts have a lot of comedy situations that have nothing to do with the story. You can get away with a couple of these if they’re ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS (the zoo scene in Bad Trip comes to mind). But you definitely want your plot driving the characters’ actions.
When reading interviews for Borat 2, the director talked about this extremely funny scene between Borat and the barber. But the comedy was random and had nothing to do with the overall plot of the movie so they had to get rid of it. That should tell you something. If they’re not including funny bits from a Borat movie due to plot, you don’t get special privileges for your script.
One of the most common changes from first to second drafts is speeding up the plot.
What often happens in a first draft is you follow your funny bone more than you follow the plot. If you’re writing a comedy called “First Date” about a couple on their first date, you might get a funny idea 30 pages in to have the couple bump into the guy’s crazy ex-girlfriend, who freaks out when she sees him on a date with another girl and tries to beat her up. That unplanned scene could add five extra pages to the script.
You might get another idea later where they’re driving to the next destination and get mistaken for an Uber and have to take a pissed off married couple across town. This couple can’t stop complaining about how marriage sucks and it’s pointless to ever get in a relationship, seeding the idea that this first date is pointless to our heroes. That adds another five pages.
For this reason, you end up hitting all your major plot points late. This pushes EVERYTHING in your script back too far, which creates a slow-moving plot. Now to you it’s not slow. It never feels slow to the writer because the writer assumes that everything they write is amazing and is therefore riveting to read. But trust me. The reader is bored. So you have to move your plot points up in the second draft. In fact, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen someone take their “lowest point” break into the third act and move it up to the midpoint.
Comedies tend to be funnier when your characters are trying to accomplish things – when they’re moving forward to the next goal that gets them closer to achieving their ultimate objective.
This is why road trip comedies work so well. We can physically see our characters getting closer to their ultimate destination. But the point is, you should be evaluating all your major plot points and asking, “Can I move this up in the script?” The closer your plot points are together, the faster the script tends to read.
If you’re writing the First Date movie and the characters go 60 pages without any interruptions or major things getting in the way of their date (zero plot points), chances are the reader is bored. Keep the story moving. Keep the story moving. Keep the story moving.
THE REWRITE OUTLINE
Here’s what I want you to do.
I want you to open up a new document and at the top of the document, I want you to write the 3-10 most important OVERALL notes you want to implement in the rewrite. These are not page or scene specific, but rather stuff that will come up over and over again.
For example, an ‘overall’ note might be: “Make sure MAIN CHARACTER is more active!” In the last draft, he was passive or reactive. And this time around you want to make sure his eyes remain on the prize. You want him to be more involved in pushing the story forward. Another might be, “Add more obstacles!” In the previous draft, there weren’t nearly enough obstacles getting in the way of their date. You want to change that. Make the date even MORE difficult. (“MORE,” “BIGGER” and “FASTER” are common themes when trying to improve a script)
After you’ve done that, you’re going to split your outline into 8 SEQUENCES. SEQUENCE 1 is pages 1-12. SEQUENCE 2 is 13-25. SEQUENCE 3 is 26-38. SEQUENCE 4 is 39-50. SEQUENCE 5 is 51-62. SEQUENCE 6 is 63-75. SEQUENCE 7 is 76-88. SEQUENCE 8 is 89-100.
If you want to write a 110 page comedy, add 1 page to each sequence.
What we’re trying to do here is take that big unruly mess of a vomit draft and shape it into something more focused. I find it’s helpful to name each sequence so that it has a theme. And then, underneath that, write down all of your notes for what you’re trying to achieve in that sequence. It’s up to you how specific you want to get. You can construct big hierarchal mini-outlines under each paragraph or just write a few sentences for what you’re trying to achieve.
Here’s how this might look for our fictional script, “FIRST DATE”
SEQUENCE 1 (PAGES 1-12) – “MISCOMMUNICATION”
– Let’s intercut back and forth to both of them getting ready instead of showing her entire routine then his entire routine.
– Might be funny to play with expectations here. Doug should be the one who takes forever and Claire is the one who’s ready in five minutes.
– Get rid of Doug’s annoying roommate. Wasn’t funny.
– Better establish that Doug is broke.
– This time, when Doug gets to the restaurant and calls Claire to see where she is, don’t have Claire be so angry. The anger from both sides needs to build over the course of the night. If we start Claire at an 11, we have nowhere to go with her. So Claire will be more jokey about it. “Didn’t you forget something?” “What?” “That in order to have a date, you need to pick the date up?”
– It will be an ongoing debate throughout the night on whether they agreed to meet at the restaurant or Doug was supposed to pick her up.
SEQUENCE 2 (PAGES 13-25) – “RUNS OUT OF GAS”
– Instead of Doug running out of gas in a sketchy part of town, which has been done before, have him run out of gas on the freeway and get stuck on the left shoulder, where it’s impossible to escape.
– When he calls Claire and lies about where he is, we should keep hearing her ex in the background. Remember, in this draft, she’s still living with her ex, who Doug thinks is still in love with her. So we have to keep that thread present.
– He’ll get a call from the AAA truck when it’s close that they have to cancel cause they ran out of gas.
– Doug will try to call an Uber to pick him up on the freeway. Begs the driver when he refuses. Finally relents when Doug offers a big tip (which is all the money he has – he doesn’t know how he’s going to pay for dinner now).
– Claire very confused when Doug picks her up in an Uber.
And so on and so forth. The reason the sequence approach works so well is that it keeps the plot moving. You know that every 12 pages, you need a new development in the story. That ensures that the story is constantly moving and changing.
Now because this is just the second draft, you still have permission to follow new ideas while you’re writing. If you come up with a hilarious scene idea 50 pages in and it doesn’t quite fit into the story, include it anyway. We can figure out how to make it work in the next pass. However, if it’s not a hilarious idea. If it’s one of those, “This might be funny” ideas, ignore it. You need to start shaping your story so that it moves quickly. Even the funniest writers can lose the reader with a wandering plot. We need to give the reader a strong sense that the story is headed somewhere and is not a collection of disjointed jokes.
We’re going to be moving through this draft a lot faster than we were the first draft. So you need a strong plan going in. The less specific you are about the changes that need to be made, the longer and more frustrating your rewrite will be. You have one week to get this outline done and, starting next Monday, we begin the second draft!
Until then… :)
