Don't you hate it when that happens? :p

There was, like, a secret brotherhood involved in the story that I wasn't sure was necessary, and as I near the end of the story, I keep thinking about how superfluous it was. The script's going to hit well over 100 pages before I can resolve all those stupid loose ends I made. :\

Fortunately, that'll push me through Script Frenzy, and I've thought of a ton of ideas to replace the secret society subplots that my MC is wading through. And afterwards I can compare drafts to see if, by some freak chance, it was better after all!

Ah well, time to push through this draft, at least. I must come to a better understanding of how "drafts" work.

I quite enjoy the "everything including the kitchen sink" nature of first drafts, because without the whole thing down on paper, you can't develop, pare and refine it.

Drafts are simply markers on the road towards perfection. A complete draft gives you the opportunity to see how all the elements in your script combine to make a whole. You can see what moves fast and slow; if the pace grinds to a halt when it should speed up; if characters talk their way through things you should be showing; if you hit the marks for whatever structure you're writing to; how much redundant material or character you have; how much light and shade you have; what's missing.

First, second, third, seventeenth; it makes no difference. Each one is an attempt to improve on the last.

And when, after all your drafts and passes and revisions, you have written perfection, you get to sell it and watch someone else turn it into something else completely!
-------------

SF08: Gethsemane - Thriller
SF08: Shooting - Comedy - 105 pages - done

Good luck to you all.

Before I tried Script Frenzy, I'd been "working", in a desultory fashion, for over a year on my screenplay. Plenty of ideas, but I kept changing it in my head and starting over; after all that time I had a couple dozen pages. The best lesson I've learned so far from Script Frenzy is to just plow ahead with the first draft, throwing in every idea I have concerning the piece, not worrying about what a big mess it'll be. Then I'll have something to work with, and hopefully trim, rearrange and polish into a serviceable second draft.

So, keep going.

Oh, I had just this problem! I wasted God knows how much time on a plotline which involved:
a) a challenge to get three golden apples from the tree at the end of the world, which my MC easily faked (way too easily)
b) Liselotte's eleven older sisters
i.e., the two things from the novel I had decided did not need to appear in this version, because (a) was what killed the novel (she actually went and got the apples, which was SO out of character and weird), and (b) involved too many complex characters and names while not really having anything to do with the central plot (Liselotte, however, does have to do with the central plot).

The plotline also involved a ridiculous Cinderella character who was SO unnecessary.

It's better now, though.
----
I am but mad north-northwest. When the wind is southernly, I know a hawk from a handsaw!

The first drafts of my novels are almost always unreadable messes with a few gems embedded. It takes forever for me to edit them, and it sometimes takes months for their plots to actually match the plot I gave them in October.

As for my script: I did a few rewrites on certain scenes, but only after I got the necessary ideas that made the plot intelligible. That's why my script can be considered almost a shooting script (or the comics equivalent). But then, I'm much better at scripting than I am at prose storytelling!

-----
Script Frenzy 2008: Spanner
Project Blog: Spanner's World