4/20/2020

There is a new threat on the horizon, and that threat is an unfinalized draft. In my time writing I have realized the way that works best for me (and most essays) is a three-draft plan. On the first go you’re just kind of getting your feet wet, you’re improvising, you don’t know where the story’s gonna go and sometimes the story tends to go down really idiotic routes (I once wrote a story where the detective figures out a mystery by looking at the culprit’s nose hair – in my defense I was nine). The second draft is almost always going to be better than the first because you have a clear understanding of all the beats you need to hit, but in bettering it you may leave out a few integral details that were initially present. A third draft allows a firm combination the best of both worlds, and more often than not craft out a scene that expands on your original idea without deviating too far from it.

Here’s the kicker though: the second half of my script, which I am well into, is not finished. Well, it is, but it’s on its second draft, which is as good as unfinished for me. It is thus I find myself in an interesting position: I am delving into the dreaded territory of improvisation. I know the beats the story needs to hit, of course, but really I am not planning more than a few pages ahead. I’m fairly certain I’m going to make the page limit without sacrificing anything integral (and even if I don’t I can still go a page or two over no problem – perks of self-publishing), and in fact so far the dialogue and story has been going decently well. Many writers do work this way in fact, making the story up as they go along and only coming back to fix the occasional blemish. Working with pen and ink I do not have such a luxury, but we’ll see what happens.