Absence Makes The Script Grow Weaker
Like any great editor, time can be ruthless.
In August, I finished writing the second draft of my new feature screenplay, Bitter Pills.
Bitter Pills is the story of a small town doctor who begins telling all his healthy patients they are dying of cancer. This news gives them a new perspective on life.
Back in August, I was rather happy with what I had written and felt the script was almost ready to be released into the world.
Having spent most of the first eight months of 2009 distributing The Last New Year (and writing Bitter Pills), in September it was time to get a job and pay some bills. I took a job as a producer on Down2Earth, and put the writing aside for a while.
Last week, I picked up Bitter Pills for the first time in almost three months. Reading it, I was shocked (and somewhat dismayed) over the amount of work which still needs to be done! Far from the polished work I had considered it to be three months ago, I feel it’s now a ‘good’ draft that requires considerable structural changes to get it where it needs to be.
… As the paint dries, the cracks begin to show through.
Stephen King says giving your drafts time to rest is one of the best things you can do as a writer. He suggests pounding out a draft, and then putting it away for at least a few months. The time between drafts allows one to become detached and provides a new perspective on the work.
Of course he’s right. What’s most surprising is my ability to forget this truth over and over again. Every time I finish a draft, I think it’s perfect, or at worst, only a ‘polish’ away from perfect.
Coming back to the work several months later is both daunting and exciting. Daunting because, even after diving back in, tearing the work apart and piecing it back together with laboured precision, there’s a good chance I could find myself in a similar state of mind three months after completing the next draft.
Exciting because, seeing the cracks so clearly now, I know there are ways to make it better.
Despite my feelings last September that Bitter Pills was ready to leave the nest and face the critiques of a harsh, unforgiving world, I never really felt it was as good as I’d initially hoped. Although well structured with strong characters, it wasn’t as remarkably, unbelievably, stupendously compelling as I thought it deserved to be. It wasn’t jumping off the page and grabbing me in a headlock and throwing me on the ground and kicking me in the teeth. It just wasn’t THAT good yet, and I thought, perhaps that’s just its fate. Perhaps it will never be that good…
But, perhaps it will, and with time come new ideas and new hope. I again believe it can and will be an amazing script, an ass-kicking script, and I have an arsenal of ideas about how to take it to the next level.
Now all I need to find is the time to work on it!
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