Be The Best Writer You Can
That was horrible. It’s done, but it was a real battle. And rather more than three weeks too. The biggest problem I found was that pretty soon after I started, and every day since, I was working on the script with one eye on what the blog was going to say. Sounds insane, but I [...]
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This is great. And got me through a black horror spot this morning. http://harkaway.tumblr.com/post/12362617025/7-minutes I’m always banging on about how writing every single day keeps the Muse hovering close to hand. Once again, objective tests (by me) show it’s true. But sometimes I simply need to be forced to follow my own advice. That 7 [...]
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What was I thinking? In the story breakdown I glibly painted a scene where a 15 year old and her two slightly unhinged friends waltz around some dark inner city pubs, emerging having bought an illegal handgun. This gun turns out to be highly instrumental for the rest of Act 3. I can’t do without [...]
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Pretty stable day today. Another six pages down, pretty lively stuff. This idea of David Milch’s is great. I’ve always, up till now, spent ages and ages visualising the scene, running it through in my head to get the pictures right, then, when it was rock solid, getting it down on the page and adding [...]
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Real life will keep on getting in the way. And I say ‘real’ that advisedly. So far today for example I’ve spent exactly 12 hours on my own with a computer. You have to do that if you’re writing. But add it up over the years, and, my god, that’s a long time to spend [...]
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Pretty good day. I sat down, wrote solidly, and I’m now at 21 pages, well into Act 2. That’s not actually quite as good as it sounds, because a lot of it is pretty slack stuff, and I’m going to have to cut it right back when I come round to polish this draft before [...]
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OK. Progress. I’ve completed 12 pages of the script (out of a target 46-48), and I’m pretty happy with these 12 pages, (though I’m running a bit long) but I’m stuck on the sequence at the end of Act 1, so I’ve come over to write an update. Then I shall have a bath. Assuming [...]
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This is getting alarming. Day 8 already, and I’m behind. Well behind. First of all I couldn’t write over the weekend, thus breaking one of the main rules – (‘Write, even for half an hour, every day.’) I had house guests, and family commitments, and it was impossible to get the time. That means that [...]
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A more or less non-writing day today. I spent all my time listening to the old interview tapes and getting back into the world of the characters. It’s amazing what depth this sort of immersion brings to your vision. At the same time you’ve got to be SO careful that you don’t include something just [...]
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A fairly straightforward day today. Because I had to do quite a lot work to get the commission in the first place quite a lot of this early stage was already done. Looking at the Guider it’s now as full as I need it, with stories that all work, and that cross over enough so [...]
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How To Write A Screenplay