PILOT SCRIPT - DAY ?

So, here I am at the last day of the champion contract with a "finished" script in hand.  My feelings: mixed.

On the negative side, I hate it.  The only thing more boring and unremarkable than the plot is the dialogue therein.  I understand I'm being hard on myself, but I also know my standards for what I will and wont watch.  There's something there though, I just don't think I have anything shootable yet, which wasn't necessarily the goal.

On the positive side, I've finally got it down on paper somewhere.  Seeing as how this was a story concept I began coming up with in 2005, having a pilot down in any form is a great success.  I talked with Andy a bit about it the other day as he was sharpening his beard, and he reminded me that having one junk script done is better than a thousand good ideas floating around in my brain or on scraps of paper.  At least the pieces have been made so they can now be shuffled around and refined.

Aaron continues to be a great help as a writing partner, giving me space to create, but helping me push through the roadblocks.  Once I freshen up a last scene or two, I will be sending the draft over to him for demolition.

In summation, I think that this Champion's contract was a success in getting a vomit draft out there as a first step.  I'm interested in taking things a step further for my next contract, which may involve an old script getting dusted off and a new draft thereof.

PILOT SCRIPT -- DAY 3

I hate dialogue.

Today has not been as good a writing day as yesterday and I'm trying to figure out why.  I think dialogue is the culprit.  I hate it.  I'm so picky about my dialogue as it is.  There's a lot of exposition and themes that I want to get through to the audience, but I hate doing it with dialogue.  I teacher told me long ago: show don't tell.  Why have a character say "I love cats" when you could put a cat in front of her and have her squeal with delight.  My dialogue is completely without character right now.  Anybody could be saying these lines.

Yesterday I wrote a lot of action and playing with gadgets, which was awesome.  Today I have to have characters have conversations, and it sucks.  I think it sucks the most because it's telling me that I have filmsy characters, so I have no idea what they would say or how they would say it.  So, rather than dig myself further into this shit hole, i'm going to take a break from the script to focus on the character's histories and what makes them unique.

Hopefully I'll come up with something by tomorrow, because I'm starting to fall behind here, and I can almost hear the sound of Andy, Sam and Chris sharpening knives.  Or sharpening beards.  I think that's more terrifying: sharpened beards.

PILOT SCRIPT -- DAY 2

Well,
I'm happy to report that the second day of writing has faired much better than the first, as far as actual pages written.  After stumbling through some notes on the opening paragraph with Aaron, I charged head first into where I left off yesterday: page 2.  I'm happy to report that I've written more than twice as much as I did yesterday.  The bad news is that I have no idea how long the finished script will be.  I think a half hour show isn't looking doable so far.  Many people have suggested web series to me, so perhaps it will ultimately be a collection of minisodes.  Trying not to let that hold me up in any way.

At this point, I'm realizing that running into a wall or point of contention completely derails me and kills my motivation to continue writing.  So, thanks to the outline Aaron and I had created earlier, I'm trying to jump ahead to scenes where I still feel fresh, in order to let the scenes I'm stuck on simmer.  I'm worried this is going to wreak havoc when I try to tie it all together, but as far as keeping the vomit draft on track, it's better than giving up.

Here's a question, how many hours of writing per day is considered good?  Obviously, it's different for every person for every project.  But, I do find myself exceedingly distracted after around four hours and in need of a break.

Also, walks are great!  I took a walk yesterday after burning out, and I came up with a bunch of stuff I was interested in.  The problem was that I was like a mile away from my computer.  How do I walk and write a script at the same time?  That's the holy grail.

CHAOS AGENT PILOT SCRIPT

Many of you may have heard about my sci-fi series, Chaos Agent, as I've been fooling around with the world for the past 6 years.  A futurist action series still continues to keep my interest as I finally start to reign it in to get the particulars in order.  Aaron, my writing partner has been invaluable in reigning me in, helping me focus on characters, places, and events that we can wrap our pilot around.  Not long ago, Aaron and I finished a scene outline for the pilot (of still indeterminate length), but getting started on the script has been very tough for me.  So I entered into a contract with Andy, Sam, and Chris the other day in order to get some fire under my ass to write this pilot.  I have till May 10th to kick out a vomit draft of the pilot, and today's my official first day.  I spent all morning procrastinating, responding to emails, cleaning my house etc.  Then I finally moved on to creating the title card.  Some concern was expressed about getting audiences situated into the world early to keep them from getting lost.  So, I've been flirting with a title paragraph that would open each episode.

Finally, finished with the paragraph by mid day I was ready to type "FADE IN:"  Several hours later, I'm still here not finished with page one.  So I took a break to write this blog for accountability.  I'm not super stoked with this slow start, but I don't feel like time's being wasted either.  Writing is still pretty new to me and just getting started so that I can pick up where I left off tomorrow is a big step, in my opinion.  Though it's mid afternoon and I'm getting burnt, I'm going to tough it out a few more hours and call it a day.

Tomorrow I hope to hit the ground running hard!  Wish me luck for the rest of today.