Cranking

Nothing like a deadline to light a fire under oneself. I really want to have this second draft done by the end of next week. Match stuff has sort of thrown a wrench in my schedule, but I can salvage it.

I'm feeling sheepish about showing it to anyone before I've gotten it as good as I can possibly get it. I don't want to reveal this second draft, necessarily, because I still know I can improve it. We'll see.

Anyway, on a good roll this morning. I can see the light at the end of Act 2, and it's motivating. Declan has just appeared. I feel like I am hitting all of the structural sign posts well.

The pages I submitted to my class have Jess as very exasperated, irritable, not very nice, hrumphy, eye rolly, etc. I want to change her to INNOCENT and nice. I'm realizing how much she is going to parallel the arc of my favorite character ever, Annie Hall. From a Chippewa Falls girl saying "la dee da" to a savvy LA recording artist. Jess will go from a woman sheltered by academia and a relationship to an expat researcher. Horizons broadened and all that.

Discipline

Week 5 of this six-week revision stretch, and I really need to keep plugging away. Had a good day of work yesterday, but it really is a challenge of writing to stay self-directed. Luckily, I'm still having fun.

The rest of my feedback trickled in from class, and it was once again very helpful. As currently written, my main character Jess seems too mean. I need to make her innocent and nice, not oblivious and condescending. Defining her character has been hard but rewarding.

My peers in class have felt slightly more like a focus group than a workshop, at times. I have gleaned more about how people will react to these topics than how I can improve my craft, but that has been a great experience, too. Besides our teacher, we are somewhat the blind leading the blind, so I'm not sure what I expected.

OK, off to get a few solid hours of work in this morning. I'm approaching some of the sections that will be brand new for this revision or revised in a fundamental way; they will take a lot of thought and time. Here we go!

Symptom tracking

Today I'm going back through and highlighting all of the spots where Eli is showing symptoms of HD. It has been one of my challenges, figuring out how to sprinkle instances of it throughout, how to be consistent, how to show plausible progression.

I already worry about offending the HD community. I worry they will not like that the HD character uses illegal drugs. But I also feel like I can't worry about that too much. It's a balance. On one hand, he will be pretty much the only mainstream representation of HD, and people in the community would hope for a "positive" portrayal. On the other, he is a fictional individual, not meant to represent every HD patient ever. I'm looking forward to going to the HD support group next week and hopefully asking people about this directly to elicit actual opinions rather than predicting negative opinions.

Creative ups and downs

Some parts just don't *pop* like the others, and it's hard to know how to get them to. I have a series of appointments written right when Jess opens her medical marijuana consultation practice, and they don't have any zing. Other parts just jump off the page. What is the difference?

The only feedback I've gotten so far from class this week said something about the medical lingo being too esoteric. I think this is a really common problem in medical humanities in general. Partially, I want to portray Jess as someone out of touch with regular people, and thus she talks over their head with jargon. But I also have to think about the viewing audience. I don't want them to be as annoyed as the patient.

I also have some fears that this script is too "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" for UCSF to be happy with it. It is medical, definitely, but I worry that the edgy, R-rated subject matter will put Pathway people off.

Onward!

Second draft underway

It's been a while since I posted, but the revision is going well. It feels so good to compress and cut. The script is going from rambling and bloated to lean and mean. I feel clear about the purpose of each scene and the trajectory of my characters.

I posted my revised script synopsis and the first ten pages of the screenplay for critique by my Gotham Writers Workshop class this week. Their feedback in the last round helped me clarify and improve the synopsis, and it also prompted me to think about how to fix my plot. This is the first week that people are presenting any actual pages, though, and I feel a little nervous putting it out there.

I believe I'm on target to have this revision done by the end of March. It's moving along well. Then I will send it to some of my first readers. I'm considering submitting to a screenplay contest, depending on what kind of feedback I get.

We watched "Love Story" the other night, and it struck me as so odd that Ali McGraw's character is diagnosed with some vague hematologic disease out of nowhere. Her only symptom was that they were unable to conceive. But she was healthy and vital. Apparently audiences weren't that interested in the specifics of her illness, just that she was tragically dying.

In any case, feeling like I still have good momentum and excitement. My characters are coming more and more alive, and I like spending time with them.

Let the revision begin!

Well, now that the first draft is written and printed, it's time to start the real work of revising it. Scott read it over the weekend, the first person to get the full glimpse, and he understood it, liked it, thinks it's going somewhere. Thanks, hubby!

I also posted my story map to my online writing class and got some good feedback on the overall structure. My major question going in to the revision is whether there is a way to better connect the medical marijuana/Eli storyline to the Huntington's/Sean/Declan storyline. Some way to cross-pollinate them.

I have six weeks to do this revision, and I think I will need every second of it -- a slow process that will involve more thinking, pondering, opening of my mind to new possibilities than writing per se.

Here we go!

Story map

Posted my story map to the "booth" today in my screenwriting class. I feel proud of it but also know it needs work. My fear is that I essentially have two different movies happening, a pot movie and a Huntington's movie, and they don't really cross-talk that much. I worry that we meet Sean and Declan too late in the game. But it was a very clarifying exercise, and it will be good to improve it since it is essentially my pitch.

Onward!