Reflections

What did I learn from my dk30 project?

1. While goal setting is important, forming a habit is even more important.
2. Don’t beat yourself up for procrastinating, just get started.
3. When writing a feature, don’t worry about what is going to be on page 90 focus on the pages you’re writing right now and work your way their naturally.
4. The characters in your script don’t care about what you plotted out in your outline, and that’s ok. If they’re fleshed out they will make their own decisions.
5. When you get stuck, try changing the scene or the environment and see what your characters do.
6. Self-doubt is real and will not go away.
7. Be kind to yourself and allow for mistakes.
8. Perfection is a myth.
9. You learn more by failing then succeeding.
10. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

All in all my first DK30 project went really well. I accomplished my goal and wrote my first feature. I’m proud of the work I did and can’t wait to start re-writing. This has been an on-going project for me since late last year and I’m glad I can continue to work on it.

See you at the next one.

I didn’t do a fix pass yet but wanted to make the full script available for people to see!

Here is the script!

It won’t let me edit my last post saying this is done. So here!

THIS IS DONE!

Day 26

Adventures in Screenwriting: Done.

87 pages later and I finished my first feature. I’m going to do some polishing and host it on google drive and post a link here so anyone interested can take a look!

Quick reflection time: I honestly can’t believe I finished it. It went by so quick. I always built this up in my head as being so hard and so unachievable. But once I started focusing on just doing what I’m doing right now and not worrying about the final product it was actually a lot of fun. I enjoyed finding and righting the scenes in the moment. And I didn’t stress over perfection just “how to do I get from A to B”.

I’ll have a more detailed write up soon. But in the next 3 days I want to get a start on the rewrite by at least just reading through it and cleaning it up a bit - fix small typos small wording things here and there just enough so I can send it to a few people and get their feedback on it.

As always To be continued…

Day 25

Adventures in screenwriting: The light at the end of the tunnel

I made it to page 79! 11 pages until the completion of my goal!

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Honestly I’ve never completed anything days before the deadline and me being so close with still 4 days left of the DK30 I may actually accomplish that. I wrote another 10 pages today. The doubt train was chuggin hard, I was second guessing everything. “Why am I writing this. This is all bad. Nothing is how I wanted it to be. I’ve been rushing through this too much” And then all the doubt just started to fizzle. I wrote my characters out of the space they had been in since page 30 and I started to feel new possibilities enter my mind. I’ll definetely want to reflect on this more during the big end of project post but just jotting these down for now.

I have an ending in mind! I can see the light. I am almost there.

To be continued…

Day 23 & 24

Adventures in screenwriting: Inching closer to the finish**

I wrote another 8 pages!

Day 23 I didn’t do any writing. I was struggling with figuring out how to maintain the conflict of the story going into Act 3. So I did some thinking and talked with some writing friends. At the end of day 23 I think I came up with a solution.

Day 24 I sat down at my usual time around 10/11 and started writing it out. I had to make a few adjustments to some previous pages I wrote but once I got through that I hit the groove again and was able to get 8 pages down in the books.

With 6 days left in my DK30 project I’m feel pretty confident I can get to my 90 page goal. Though as of right now I’m not sure how I’ll end up finishing out the story. We will see how the pen falls.

To be continued…

Day 22

Adventures in screenwriting: I did it!

I made it to my week 3 goal! 61 pages!

I’m a little concerned not sure where to go in ACT 3. The group has a game plan - they’ll compete and call the police after the tournament is over. But that seems to just outright solve the problem and they kind of beat the big bad before the last 30 pages.

I’ll have to brainstorm on this tomorrow.

To be continued…

Day 20 & 21

Adventures in Screenwriting: Backtracking

Two more days and only one writing session. I got 4 more pages done!

Like most, the election has and still is fucking with my brain. That in addition to procrastinating on other work I needed to be doing I ended up using my normal night writing time to catch up on that.

But I did do some work Day 20. I was facing an issue where even after backtracking and changing a vital decision my character made I felt that the next decision he makes still wasn’t feeling motivated or helping the story move forward. So I talked with a friend and got his input.

On day 21 I brainstormed while at work. And then decided to go back and insert a few scenes that help bridge the gap between the climactic event of the script and my characters decision to tell his teammates about it. This solved a few things:

1. More time with my main character to let the decision he made sink in.
2. Keep the surface tension high by not revealing this new secret so soon.

I need to do some rewriting of a scene I wrote on day 19 to make this bridge work but I’m not too worried about it.

As always, To be continued…

Day 18 & 19

Adventures in screenwriting: the routine continues!

Two more days and two more writing sessions. I’ve officially made it to page 55! 5 Pages off from my week 3 goal.

I had to backtrack about two pages tonight and redo part of a scene. But I think the changes were nessecary and it didn’t keep me from moving forward.

I’m getting a little worried that veering from the outline as much as I did has got me struggling with the payoffs I set up back in Act 1. There are definetly some character motivations and arcs I will need to track and make sure are present once I start reading through what I wrote and doing my first rewrite.

All in all though I continue to surprise myself with my drive to keep putting pen to paper!

Go DK30!

To Be Continued…

Day 17

Adventures in screenwriting: Chugging along

Well I’ve continued my streak and wrote another 10 pages today! I’m on fire!

The more I think about it the more glad I am that I outlined before starting the first draft. Even when I do deviate from the path I ultimately know where I want to end up so I know what to subsitute out and what to keep in order to maintain the inegrity of the story.

I am still a little nervous for the re-write becuase I am really scared I am underwriting. But who knows maybe my issue has been that I overwrite and keep myself from getting the gist of the story on the page.

All in all things are going well!

To be continued.

Day 16

Adventures in Screenwriting: Feeling Motivated

Yesterday I worked a 12 hour shift got home had dinner with the SO and felt the familiar feeling, I don’t want to write my pages today. I’ve worked really hard lately and I just don’t want to do it.

But then I waited. And I started thinking about it. And I got excited about the possibilities of where to go next in the story.

I thought to myself Maybe I’ll just write a page or two. It’ll be quick.

Before I knew it I was sitting at my computer typing away and I actually reached my goal!

I think writing every day around the same time has actually gotten me into a routine.

To be Continued…

Day 14 - 15

Adventures in Screenwriting: Committing to a schedule

So I surprised myself and actually stuck to a regular schedule. The past two days I sat down at my computer right before bed and gave myself approximately an hour to just write. The goal in the back of my mind was to hit 5 pages but I told myself if I was over or under that was ok. As long as I focus for one solid hour.

And I did it! On day 14 I wrote 8 pages and on day 15 I did the same! I’ve made it to page 26 at the end of week 2. So I’m a few pages behind my week 2 goal but given my pace I should be able to catch up in week 3.

My goal for the rest of the DK30 is to give myself an hour each night to write, no distractions!

Some thoughts on writing my first feature:

1. It’s hard to get past self-doubt. When I’m writing there’s a voice in my head telling me I need to go back and fix x,y and z. I’ve started realizing that if I’m hitting backspace too much I need to tune that voice out and just write.
2. The first draft is not meant to be perfect. I need to remember that its a first step. And once the first step is done I can go back and re-write.
3. Veering away from the outline is OK! I stopped religiously following the outline I made for the script after page 5. I’ve found myself changing character decisions which ultimately affects how the next scene will play out. Thankfully, I’m still getting to where I’m going but with different motivations and contexts driving the story. I’m a little worried I’m going to get stuck somewhere and not know how to keep the story moving forward. But it hasn’t stopped me yet!

To be continued…

Day 5 - 13

Adventures in Screenwriting: Procrastinating!

So I did the thing I usually do and literally not touch my project in a week. It is tough though with three jobs, driving 10 hours roundtrip to see my girlfriend in East Bay for her birthday, and hosting a virtual film festival I had been working on for almost a year needless to say I was a little overwhelmed.

BUT I buckled down and on Day 12 and 13 I wrote a combined 10 pages of my screenplay. My goal is to get 5 pages done a day. If I follow this daily goal I should reach page 30 by Thursday. But unless I do an entire 15 pages on Thursday I will most likely be two days behind schedule for my weekly goals. But you know what? That’s ok! I’m consistently writing 5 pages per hour which is really great! It’s the fastest I’ve ever written and I find myself finding a good flow pretty easily.

Yay progress!

To be continued…

Day 4

Adventures in Screenwriting: Final Draft 10 Licensing

I recently got a laptop upgrade through my employer which is sick. BUT it means that the 2014 Macbook Pro where I did all of my writing on Final Draft is no longer my main set up. I want to make sure I always have access to Final Draft so I spent tonight getting Final Draft 10 activated on my PC.

Luckily every purchase of Final Draft comes with two activations so I can have it on two computers even if they are MAC and PC. After downloading Final Draft 10 onto my new PC Laptop an activation window popped up asking for my customer number. This is when the nightmares started.

Finding the customer number meant remebering which email I purchased Final Draft 10 with in 2018. After going through 4 or 5 emails I figured out it was my comcast email I use when I want to be nice to the TJ Max Cashier who asked if I have an email on file and didn’t. So after a few trials and tribulations of remembering that old emails password I finally got my customer number.

I came back to my friend the activation window and input the number.

INVALID CUSTOMER NUMBER

“Oh silly me I put a 4 instead of a 7.”

Retype.

INVALID NUMBER.

“Maybe it wants all caps?”

Retypes in call caps.

INVALID NUMBER.

“Ok. Uh…Let’s try it the first way again”

Retypes

INVALID NUMBER.

*Meticulousy reads aloud each number as I key it in. *

INVALID NUMBER.

Eventually I admitted to myself something must be up so I traveled to the Final Draft support website and out of 15 total articles written about Final Draft 10. One of them is my exact issue. You’d think they’d fix this by now?

I worked through each step ruling out every possibility until it suggests copying the number directly from the email.

“Surely, it could not be that simple” I say to myself.

Command C + Command V

ACTIVATING FINAL DRAFT 10

Lower jaw drops

Just another exciting day in the adventure that is screenwriting.

Since it’s late and I’m still at work I’m going to revel in that victory and dive into my notes over the next few days and try to get started on my week 2 goals a bit early!

Hooray for small victories.

To be continued…

Days 1 - 3

Adventures in Screenwriting: The Prologue

So I’ve begun the journey of adapting my short thesis film into a feature screenplay as any person would, SMALL!

Before DK30 I shared an outline for the feature along with the proof of concept I made in grad school with a weekly script writing group I am a part of. (Vimeo Password is fsufilm) I gathered a lot of good notes and ideas and have been sitting on them for day 1 and day 2. After simmering I started thinking about first steps. Do I dive back into the outline and fill in wholes? Do I just start fresh and write?

After doing some errands, I spent Day 3 talking with a screenwriting friend about what his next steps are after outlining and how he knows when he’s ready. He said and I quote “Sometimes you just have to remind yourself that no one has to see it until you’re ready, that it truly belongs to you until then…And it’s also a world you know a lot about. Thats honestly where most of the work is: world building.”

So now to start writing. Now to get my tools in order. Final Draft 10 I’m coming for you!

To be continued…