Tomorrow evening is the reading of the second draft of my play. It's taken me a year and a half to do the rewrite after the first reading. This is largely due to the inconvenient fact that I have to work for a living and that my job (which I started at exactly the time I had the first reading) has very nearly sucked my soul out of me, not to mention several gallons of brain juice. But I'm not going to complain and carry on. Heaven knows I've done enough of that over the last year. No, I'm just going to try and keep the forward momentum going on this nutty little project of mine.
So...overall I am quite satisfied with the progress I made since the first draft. I think it is in much better shape. I took the actors' comments and suggestions and my own notes and made lots of improvements. I pared away a lot of the blah blah blah. So many words that didn't need to be there! They just get in the way and slow the story down.
One trap I think a lot of writers fall into is they fall in love with the sound of their own words. Guess what, it's not about the words. Well yes of course it's about the words but only insofar as they serve the story. Words are only part of the way that a play tells the story. And what the characters don't say is often more important than what they do say.
So tomorrow night I get to hear how many more words need to be ruthlessly obliterated. Of course there will be a third draft, and probably a fourth. But my feeling is that from now on, it will be more tweaking than major overhauling. But I'll know more in 24 hours.
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9 comments:
I hope you get some great feedback that will strengthen your writing. Let us know how it works out!
It went so well! All the actors really liked it and I got nothing but positive feedback. All the work and agonizing I did really paid off. It's in such good shape that the next step is to put it into workshop for a couple of weeks. The rest of the changes I make will come from what I learn in that process.
This is a really big deal. Of course now I get to the point where I'm going to need money. Even if I can get actors to work for meals and bus fare I will still probably have to rent a space somewhere. Plus I'm going to need a director to block the thing and work with the actors. I'm so broke, though. I'm going to need to come up with some creative solutions here.
Nothing will happen until after the holidays anyway so I'm just going to feel excited now. And I'll talk to some people I know and get ideas.
Thanks for your encouragement, Fermi. It's nice to know that I can come here for support. I will definitely keep everyone up to date. And some time in the future, there will be free tickets for everyone here.
Why don't you get Ctheokas to direct it? You never know until you ask...
Very cool!
Interesting suggestion, wa11z. The thing is that film and stage are very different in terms of direction. There's a whole different set of knowledge and skills required for each. Anyway, I'm sure that Ctheokas is totally involved in his own project, which is great. I can't wait to see the finished product, which will definitely be sooner than mine.
Um, wait. What?
Yes, we're talking about you. So now that you're part of the conversation, how's your film going?
Yeah, how is it?
Yeah, how is the film?
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