My very first screenplay was ghastly. Oh, the pain of reading it! It's a mythological fantasy adventure and it was great fun to write. But it's ghastly! So is everyone else's first screenplay. So what? Well, I'm spending several hours a day rewriting it, that's what! And, it is such a bad read that I wear a paper sack over my head so I don't have to see my own reflection in the screen of my laptop.
I love the story, but I can't think of anything mean enough to say about the writing. This particular screenplay, however, is the only one I've written that ever advanced in a screenwriting competition. How is that possible when the writing is so poor?
In Writing the Wrong Story, I mentioned that I didn't ever want to give anyone who reads my work cause to say, "it's not a bad story, it's just written that way." Well, it took reading my own blog and two and half years to figure this out (yeah, I'm really that green of a newbie). Never say never. My first screenplay was not a bad story. It was just written that way.
4 comments:
my first 15 screenplays were terrible (I am now on the 16th draft of this one haha)... now if I had just gotten past this one I'd have a body of work by now intead of just a bunch of FD files called Barber 1, Barber 2, Barber 3...
I have one of those, too. I think there are about twelve drafts. But each of those has some undecided revisions or rambling thoughts in the margins so there's draft 8A, 8B... I doubt I ever finish that one. I lost my passion for the story halfway through the second act and consequently, the third act stinks. I think I just wrote myself into burnout. If I ever get my passion back for it, I'll finish the screenplay but right now the forecast looks partly cloudy with a chance of apathy.
mine started out as a coming of age in linear fashion.. skip ahead a few drafts and it became a flashback opening and the later consequences in more of a serious drama.. flash ahead to a few more drafts and now it's a ghost story baby! (yep I am still on it)
You don't outline, do you? :)
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