I’m not ready to write this year off as a loss, but I am ready to take full responsibility for it. This December I spent some time travelling, wrapping up some projects, and dumping the two scripts I wrote this year as irreparable trash. It wasn’t a good year for robots or hellmouths, and I haven’t felt funny in a long while. Time to start over. To start from scratch.
Nick, take me out…
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Instead of writing scripts, write books. That is, if it doesn’t work as a novel, it won’t work as a movie. While some people think this is contradicted by all the good movies of which bad adaptations were made for the paperback market, that is backward and after the fact. It’s not whether you can and cannot summon the prose to do the idea justice, it’s whether or not a good fiction writer could. If the idea is unsalvageable by a pro in that genre without changing the essential nature of it, then it won’t make a good movie. People generate narrative in their heads while watching movies far more than they ever think. Bad movies generate bad narrative, the first being questions about plot points. Deux Ex Machina stands out like a supernova. Bad reasoning is as loud as a rock concert in a convent.
By doing this, I’ve thrown aside a lot of ideas well in advance of wasting time on the script drudgery. It has also forced me to think a little bit more about the visuals I usually think in terms of. It has slowed me down a bit, but if the novel comes together, then the script will follow from it.
So don’t feel too bad. There’s always a process to getting to the right story, and it is usually through a cornfield of not so good stories that seemed great when the epiphany moment struck, but didn’t stay with you. Those robot and hellmouth ideas may have new life in the future if you let them go slack for a bit. Keep at it.