Snow Here

Wrote a page. Finished a scene. Added a tiny scene.

I’ve always wondered how you could shuffle scenes either in postproduction or on the page. Sofia Coppola said that the only thing her dad to help her make her Oscar winning film was to suggest that she shake up the order of some of the scenes*. This surprised me. On the first script I wrote, I can’t even imagine changing the order of almost all the scenes. ‘This happens’ so ‘that happens’ so ‘this guy finds out about that girl before he finds out about this girl who has his cell phone’. (Note: Not a completely inaccurate representation of my script.) But as I’m writing this one I can see doesn’t necessarily have to find the pills before her son goes crazy but instead could find them after he kills some people. The scene doesn’t really have to change in its writing but it will possibly have a very dramatic affect in its, well, dramatic effect. Just a thought as I try to connect the dots and get it all down on paper.

*I swear no more Coppola hyping.

I’ve noticed that if you go away from it for a few days, as I did in my illness, it’s hard to get motivated to go back to it. I promised the blog and myself I would write yesterday, but instead went to a movie. I made the excuse that my head wasn’t ‘cold-free’ enough and I needed to see a quality movie to re-energize my creativity. I sort of believe myself.

I saw Million Dollar Baby and I think the re-energizing scheme worked. I loved the visuals, the performances and the story. What I loved most was the screenplay. It was almost scientific in its ability to efficiently tell its story. If I were more critical than I am, I would suggest that it was too scientific and efficient. I was actually jealous of how well it foreshadowed, it paralleled character arcs, it paced the rise and fall and redemption. It was like the perfect road map. Which means, like a good map, you can see what is coming. As the jealousy subsided I realized that given the right idea, some more practice and some really good days in front of the computer, I could someday hit those same beats.

So, all in all it was a successful day of not writing.

29 pages hoping for 90-ish.