Almost finished!

I'm almost done with my sitcom pilot I've been writing! I complained about it in the last post, but when I went back and read ever my script I realized it wasn't so bad. You always have to remember that when you're writing something. Writing is almost like getting dressed in the dark. You throw things together, and have absolutely no idea how they look together. Then you go out into the light, look into a mirror, and see how it really looks. So if you're writing, and thinking "Wow! This is the worst thing ever written!", just keep writing, because once you look back it may actually be really good. At the same time, if you're thinking you're writing the most wonderful thing ever written, be prepared for a shock when you go back and read what you wrote. It could be horrific.

Proofreading is always tough though. Because there's a precise amount of proofreading that needs to be done. Too little, and it will feel unfinished. Too much, and you'll lose everything that made it good. The corrections themselves are not the hard part. It's knowing when to stop making them.

Squeezing It In

I'm applying to screenwriting graduate schools right now, so the Monk spec is on hiatus while I work on pilot scripts. The graduate programs seem to have more of an emphasis on making original work instead of specs, so I figure I should have more pilots to send them. Not working on the Ragnarok pilot I talked about earlier. That one needs tons of research before I can start.

I've written pilots before, but oh, it's so hard! Writing specs for existing shows is so much easier. You have a whole universe of material already available to you. In pilots, it's all from scratch. The style, the characters, the format, and all of the background material. That's the hard part. A pilot needs to feel like you're being thrust into a world that has existed long before you got there. At the same time, you have to be able to understand what's going on. BUT, you don't want to understand absolutely everything, because there have to be a few little mysteries to keep the viewers wanting to see the next episode.

The trouble I'm having right now is giving enough explanation and exposition of the situation and characters without bogging down my entire script. And keeping it to half an hour. Getting across information by showing not telling is always more entertaining, but darn if telling isn't easier to do. It's so tempting to just take a couple of pages and go "This is Marie! This is her past! These are her motivations! Enjoy!" Of course that would make for a train wreck of a script, it'd be so deliciously easy. If only easy equaled good. Until then, it's work work work!

On the good side, I think if I spend enough time on this it could come out really well. That's another thing about pilots, is that you don't know where they're going. With a spec script, you know that in the end you want it to sound like how the actual show sounds, so you have some idea of what the final product will feel like. With a pilot you should have some kind of idea for how you want it to feel, but I think you also need to be flexible and let the project go where it wants to.

Well, back to writing! I'm almost done with the first draft, which is exciting! Wish me luck!

Saying goodbye (to a script)

It's hard to stop writing something. I'm having a hard time with my Monk spec, and I'm seriously considering calling it quits. Which sounds easy. But is surprisingly difficult. It's like that friend that you don't really like hanging out with anymore, but every time she calls you just can't help but say "sure! let's go to the movies! that sounds like fun!". I keep meaning to start working on the My Name is Earl spec, but every time I open final draft I just keep going back to Monk.

I think it's hard to be emotionally detached from something you've written. You put so much work into a project, that you don't want anything bad to happen to it. And you put so much of yourself into that it starts to resemble yourself. But when you create something, you constantly have to step back and re-evaluate what you're making. I think that's one of the hardest parts of writing, much harder than the writing itself. Anyone can just put good words down on paper, perfectly untalented people do it by accident all the time. It's much harder to look at what you've written and decide how to make it better. And sometimes, making it better means deleting the whole thing and moving on to another project.

In other news, I'm considering going to graduate school for screenwriting. Which means the next few months will be full of GRE practice tests and hunting down professors for recommendations. Also means I should try to write more scripts to show them. Here goes!