Day 101: The Journey Resumes
Wow, talk about approaching a script with fresh eyes. I haven't looked at the script for Come Ups in about 40 days. I haven't done any creative writing in about 25 days. As a result, I had some problems easing myelf back into the writing mode. Frankly, I just didn't want to do it. After finding numerous ways to engage myself to keep from sitting down at the computer, I finally just accepted that it was something I needed to do. It was downright painful, but I managed to get in around 5 hours, not all of which was productive, but I did it.
My biggest obstacle was simply reacquainting myself with the world and the characters. And I had to remember all the things I wanted to accomplish and how I was going to do that. I probably should have taken a few more notes, but then I didn't expect to be away quite this long. Luckily, the first act rewrites had been completed, so that gave me a good sense of where the story was going. And due to the long absence, it really did feel like I was reading something new. . .and I liked what I was reading. Then came the second act. That's where I bogged down.
The top of the second act is still highly frenetic from the action of the first act and we are witness to a makeshift surgery in Grady's garage. This time however, it isn't Grady doing the surgery, but Shep. That was my big change in the first act - having Grady get shot instead of Shep. I thought it would be fairly simple to just swap Shep and Grady's character names, but the whole dynamic of the scene changed with Maurah now seeing her husband bleeding from a gunshot wound, Shep unsureness on doing a surgery (for which he is vastly unqualified) on his best friend, and then tension between the two brothers resulting from Tyler pulling a gun on Shep. It was a tough scene to start with, particularly since the existing version had been structured so well. I had to agonize over letting something go that I knew worked well with something new and unproven that I was hoping was just as good if not better.
The end result was I pretty much only made it through this scene or about 10 pages of the second act. I was hoping to make it to the halfway point of the story at page 55. With this scene out of the way, I'm hoping things will progress a little faster tomorrow. I know I want to rewrite the scene with Cody and Grady as a Shep/Cody scene and I'm hoping to squeeze in a scene with Reggie, Shep's love interest. The page count is working against me however. I was already at 111 pages with the Act I rewrites, one page over my goal, and I've added about 2 pages of new material in the first 10 pages if Act II, putting me at 113. That is throwing my STC beats off quite a bit. Something's going to have to give if I want to pull those beats back into line.
