In my previous blog, posted on July 8, 2024, I promised to return at the end of August with the rough draft of an idea that has been rattling around in my head for a long time.
I fought myself almost every single day. I took on other assignments that weren’t essential. I even accepted a part-time job on a trial basis that would have consumed every spare minute I had. I did anything I could to avoid doing what I knew I should be doing. On the other hand, I asked myself, what was the point? I started to think about all the months of rewrites, the peer reviews, the competitions—vast swaths of time dedicated to a project that might go nowhere.
But I kept thinking that I had said I would do it. And although it is now the beginning of September, I did, in fact, map out the whole idea, scene by scene, well before the end of August. In other words, I faced my fears and did it anyway.
Along the way, I did two things I had never done before. First, I was sick of filling out character questionnaires. I felt boxed in, forced to answer a long list of questions that made it seem like I was creating a character based on the questions rather than organically. This time, I just wrote down my first impressions of the characters and focused on their Achilles’ heel and their tragic flaw. By doing that, I was able to get to the heart of the characters more quickly instead of answering endless questions like, “What is her favorite color and why?” Don’t get me wrong; character questionnaires should not be dismissed. In writing ten Lifetime movies, I used them every single time—they were lifesavers. But this time, with my original idea, I needed a different approach.
The other thing I did differently shocked and surprised me, although it shouldn’t have: When I was putting together my bullet-point list of scenes, I got all caught up in the story, and the ideas were coming to me way too fast. So, I turned on the “voice typing” tool and started talking, racing away, blurting out all the thoughts that had been stored in my head for at least two years. I wasn’t worried about spelling or grammar or anything else. I just wanted to get the ideas down as quickly as possible. This was incredibly liberating.
This approach was so fantastic that I can’t imagine ever going back. I’m not sure why I didn’t do this before. I felt every barrier removed because I wasn’t trying to make sure I hit a specific point by a certain page number. I just let the ideas flow out of me—the story flow out of me. Yes, I stumbled here and there, but for the most part, everything felt “organic” and not forced.
The next goal is to get a first draft based on the bullet points. Now I have some structure to hang my dialogue on. I’ll check back with you next month. I might fight myself all the way to the 11th hour, but keeping promises to myself seems to work.
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