Script Frenzy Week 3 - 83 Pages (and counting)

All right all you Writer groupies, you may begin tossing your undergarments at the stage! :D

Script frenzy has it's official page-validater 'bot up and running (before, it was just the honor system) and I am officially 17 pages away from the win!

And I may not even be finished yet...

See, I'm running into a rather interesting dilemma: When I outlined the screenplay, I was working with a sort of guess-timate about how many scenes it would take to fill up the script, and how long those scenes would run.

When I began writing the script, I discovered I could plow through the scenes at a pace of about 2 pages per scene, but they didn't really have much "flavor", if you will. They were just one moment moving into the next moment.

Not a great read.

So I gave myself license to write the scenes the length they wanted to be written, and I can always condense them later. Sometimes rewriting is a process of looking at a scene, seeing what's there that's good, seeing what's there that's not really necessary or interesting, then condensing the scene for greatest impact.

PLUS...

Writing long ensured that I would win Script Frenzy. Last year I plotted out a feature, then wrote it, and it came just shy of 90 pages. 90 pages is the shortest a screenplay can run and still be called a feature. Hollywood won't even read a spec script that's under 90 pages.

So I felt safer erring on the side of over-writing, rather than risk under-writing.

And now I'm ahead of my page count, but I'm behind on my scene count, lol.

See, one of my goals with this year's Script Frenzy was to finish this script. I want to win the Frenzy, yes... but I also assumed that by winning the Frenzy I would also be finishing the script.

And there's a fairly serious risk, now, of me winning the Frenzy, but still having another week or so of work before the script is finished.

And I've got projects that are dying to be written! For the first time since my early 20s, I can't write fast enough to keep up with my great ideas! (I'm not talking "decent" or "okay" ideas, I'm talking great ideas! Ideas I can't wait to write so that I can show people!)

And the thought of having to work even a week past April is kind of disheartening.

But I've made a deal with a friend who has really stuck with me since around November of last year, making sure that I stick to a writing schedule and actually get something finished.

So I can't, in good conscience, begin working on a new project until I've honored my obligation -- the obligation I begged my friend to keep me to -- to this story!

So...

Despite the fact that I've exceeded my page count for this week by 8 pages, it looks like I need to continue writing tomorrow, to try and catch up on my scene count. I'm 5 scenes behind where I should be.

The good news is that I might complete my Script Frenzy obligation by tomorrow, lol. The bad news is that when I go back to rewrite this thing, I may be hacking and slashing like Jason Voorhees and a certain notorious Friday.

But I'm DONE for tonight.

It's now 5:04 am, and I've been writing since just before 6:00 pm yesterday. (That's 11 hours of writing, folks.) I need to lay down and listen to some Spooky SouthCoast and give my poor, blessed fingers a REST!

Since it's been such a looooooooooooooong day, and since I may be writing tomorrow as well (and therefor revising this week's page count), I'm going to hold off on the Frenzy Beard update for now.

If you're really, actually interested in how thick my Frenzy Beard is (or is not) getting, check back late tomorrow night or Wednesday for the pics.

Meanwhile, have a FANATASTIC day!!! :D