Last Lap Boredom

Monday, June 18th, to Michelle--

Nope, we can't see ourselves and we really can't see our writing.

Thursday, June 21st, to Michelle--

I'm over 15K and am reaching that point where my characters have stopped saying clever things as well. I think ideally as a romantic comedy this would be a ninety minute script. I think I'm going to fill out what's left with the kind of stuff you find in the deleted scene section of the DVD....

On the forum:

AvenK--you can't judge it while you write it, you can't judge yourself when you write it, you just have to write it daily, and get it out of the way, as you said.

Been reading Syd Field. He had an interesting breakdown of the first draft revision process (bear with me if you've heard this one before:) He thinks you end up rewriting:

80% of Act I
60% of Act II part one
25-35% of Act II part two
10-15% of Act III

(His three act structure is really four acts, each 30 pages/minutes long.)

Isn't that interesting if that's true? Because it kind of implies that you don't know what the piece is really about until the end. The end ends up informing the beginning.

So the important thing is to finish, for that's where the treasure is!

Sunday, June 24th, to Michelle--

I think I finally notice a pattern here. I have about three thousand words to go, roughly four and a half days, and this ennui with the whole thing is descending. I wrote in a new character today who, I suspect, is totally unnecessary, and a little too much like an A. R. Gurney stock character invader (the old woman from The Golden Age, if you really want to know....but, but! How can that be? I'm basing it on Mimsi Harbach, related to Otto Harbach, who really did end up in a Cole Porter lyric, and on Jane Carlee, whose pet ocelot really inspired Bringing Up Baby....). And I am very resistant to going back and looking at the outline, which I should probably do at this point, to fill in gaps. Which I do have. Even if I wrote a bunch of 30 second scenes to fill them in, it might help....

What I'm missing is my MC behaving badly in flashback....