On Rewriting On and On

When in doubt you can always add a robot

Hello friends! I started rewriting a screenplay this past week and so have not had much time to think about extracurricular writing. But it did get me thinking about re-writing, which, if you ask me, is the most important part of the job. [It’s also the least glamorous]

Everyone writes differently, so take this all with a grain of salt, but I’m personally a sprinter. I write quickly, in short bursts, every day. When I’m writing a new screenplay [after I’ve outlined it, I usually do that first and that’s more time consuming], I try to write about 5 pages a day, which is something that I can easily accomplish within a couple hours. Once I hit my 5 pages I feel like I can stop for the day, but if I’m feeling inspired I can often get more done. And if I hit that goal consistently I can crank out a new draft of a movie in 3-4 weeks.

Wow! you might say.

Cool! you might say.

You must write a million movies a year! you might say.

To which I would say, “Well… then there’s the rewrite.”

This method of short quick bursts is really good for getting a first draft of a movie done. But, what will often happen, is I’ll get to a scene where I don’t really know what I’m doing or how to figure it out, and I’ll write the gist of it instead.

Writers disparagingly call this a “vomit draft.” [We have a gross / dumb nickname for just about everything in Hollywood.] Those sketched out scenes will usually look something like this.

Riveting stuff, huh? Not exactly. But! It’s doing its job as a placeholder and a note to self to figure this scene out later and better. Sometimes I’ll even write… “something better here.” This way, I can keep the pace up, keep my momentum going, and don’t get stuck or slowed down by complicated action or scenes I don’t totally understand yet. I can just write “Would be cool to have an action scene here, maybe the car goes into the river.” And then, I don’t have to solve that problem in the moment! It becomes a problem for The Future Writer has to solve it.

The only problem is… eventually I become The Future Writer.

Once I’m doing the rewrite, I’ll usually have a decent enough draft, minus the holes. So as I read through the script I’ll take pen to paper, and mark it up with a lot of notes to self. [I personally like to print things out to read and give notes, because it just seems to make it easier to think critically than staring at a screen. Sorry trees!]

Here are just some of the sage notes to self I’ve written on my current screenplay:

“No.”

“No. Not yet.”

“Ok”

“But she didn’t sign it. Maybe she should have?”

“Do we want this to be closer to page 30?”

“Right? This is like a beginning of Act 2 thing.”

“Does she know? Does her daughter know?”

You get the idea.

The point being, I will make very detailed notes throughout about everything. What I like, dislike, am confused by, what does work, what doesn’t work, what should be in a different order, etc, etc, etc. And then I’ll take the back page to write what is basically my diagnosis of the current movie. It will usually be as legible as a doctor’s note. What are the main issues that still need to be tackled? What are the best parts and worst parts? Where did it lose steam? And what could dramatically change between this draft and the last draft?

Do not be afraid to radically change the movie! You can always go back, and you almost never do!

Once I have those major notes to self written out, I’ll take a break. Ideally for a little while to let everything be fresh and new when you look at it again (but the break will be determined by your deadline). Then I will type up a document containing all of these notes, as bullet points.

• Pg 1 — Susan’s ritual should be different

• Pg 2 - Can we add a moment about her daughter?

• Pg 3 - Maybe Harriet is a robot who plays the saxophone

You get it. Some of those will be bigger, thornier questions — Should this be happening in here or should it be later? Why isn’t this part funny or fun? This is my “Work Order” that I’m basically handing myself so that as I sit down to actually do the rewrite I can check things off, and know what it is that I’m supposed to be looking for.

If you go into a rewrite freestyle, you can often end up rewriting just to rewrite and you look up hours later and realize you have no idea why you just changed everything.

[Something insane that I do is I save a new draft every day, organized by date. This way, if I liked the movie better a week ago before I introduced Harriet as a robot and screwed everything up, I can go back to last week’s robot-free version and take a look. Is this insane? Maybe? Has it saved me in the past? Yes.]

Then, once I’ve crossed off everything on my work order, I’ll reread the movie. And do it all again. This is usually when I have to turn the script in to someone to get their notes. [You’ll notice that I do two drafts privately before turning it the one new draft I owe them]

If I’m working on my own, I’ll just do it all again without turning it in to anyone.

Most screenplays I’ve written have gone through AT LEAST four drafts. Many have been more like 7-8 drafts. And it’s hard to count because for me, most drafts end up with a strange middle draft that nobody gets to read but me. This process is, unfortunately, an art, not a science, and a lot of the time you’re grasping at emotional straws trying to figure out why something does or doesn’t work.

I often find that the rewriting process tends to include the moment when I step back and ask myself “Why did I even write this?” Not in a “what the hell was I thinking” way, more in the sense of… what was the original goal of this endeavor? What does this movie really mean to me, on a deeper level? Why did I want to write a movie about Susan and Harriet getting involved in high-stakes car hijinks? Right, right, it’s about motherhood! Well if it’s about motherhood, then their fight at the end of act two should REALLY be about… blah blah blah.

And that plumbing of one’s own psychological depths takes time. It’s very rare that you know everything about the movie from the beginning. You will undoubtedly learn more about the movie throughout the entire process, so it’s only natural that you’d want and need to rewrite it, over and over and over. And sometimes you have a crazy idea that just might make it all click. Adding a robot, for example.

Writing a movie is agonizing. And redundant. It requires a lot of finessing and carving down words and polishing up stuff that isn’t very good yet but has an inkling of something interesting. In my experience, putting in the hours to understand why you’re writing something is just as valuable as putting in the hours to understand what you’re writing. And if you do it after you have a draft, you tend to find a lot of surprises you didn’t expect. And surprises tend to make for more interesting movies!

When I was younger, I’d finish something and never want to look at it again. Or be convinced that it was basically done and didn’t need any more thought. It’s easy to get tired of staring at the same dumb thing. That’s all normal! But, if you want it to be good, you have to look at it. Again, and again, and again. And maybe just one more time before you turn it in, just for good measure.

So anyway, that’s what I’m up to over here. How are you guys out in Hollyweird?