Play me a screenplay

I've been thinking about structure lately.

One day when I was 9, while my parents were searching for a hobby for me to take up, they brought home a nickel Bundy flute from the flea market and handed it to me. I learned to play it.

It seems like every girl was handed a flute at some point in childhood. I hear women all the time saying, "Oh yeah, I played the flute," when what they really mean is "Oh yeah, I picked up a flute and learned to play a scale and then forgot about it."

Not me. I actually learned to play the flute. I got a better instrument eventually, but I never got the B foot or the gold plated mouthpiece like some spoiled brats who think they're so awesome but have stringy hair.

I loved my flute. I liked the low notes best and always tried to get second part so I could play the harmonies. While the other girls were coming to blows about who gets first, I would volunteer for second. A band director once said it's probably because I'm an alto, so that's the range where I am comfortable.

I had a private tutor for a while and she thought I had enormous potential, but my mom stopped paying her because she said I didn't practice enough.

But here's why I didn't practice enough. Practice is boring. All those notes and scales and dippy little runs that you have to do over and over - they are not nearly as much fun as making up your own stuff. I was part of a flute ensemble and the band director who knew nothing about flute and never really taught us anything would hand us these little Mozart quartets to play. I don't care how great people say Mozart is, I loathe the man because of how many stupid little derivative flute quartets he wrote that all sound like an inverted "Eine Kleine Nacht Musik." That's right, I said it. Mozart sucks.

Anyway, I was never a very good reader. I'd go to auditions and contests and rock the prepared piece and play the scales just fine and then I'd go into the sight reading room. For those of you who don't know what sight reading is, it's when you get a piece in front of you that you've never seen before and you have to play it right then and there. I always sounded like I'd never even seen a music note before.

But at all those auditions they never had an improv category, and that's where I would have won. I used to start off during practice playing my flute and then I'd get bored with the piece in front of me and go look out the window while I made stuff up. And my mom would say, "Wow that was really pretty," and I wouldn't tell her I wrote it. The band director would overhear me do it sometimes but he never once mentioned it. And then one day I put it to good use by joining a rock band. Those were the days.

So you may be asking yourself, what the hell does this have to do with structure? Okay here it comes.

A screenwriting mentor of sorts has recently suggested I go back to my zombie script and do a new outline to restructure my script, and a member of my writers group is always asking what outlining method you use or suggesting everybody restructure stuff, usually using the Blake Snyder method because he's obsessed with Blake Snyder.

But I find that very, very difficult.

I outline, for sure. But it's a loose outline and as soon as I start writing I veer off and let the story take me through. I always outline, don't get me wrong. I would NEVER suggest starting a story with an idea and a cup of coffee and an hour of wasted time. But I like to improv.

When I play flute I know the notes and the key and the time and the tone I'm going for, and the rest is just filling in the gaps with what sounds right. I think the same way about writing. I know the basics of the story and of course I know how to write a screenplay like I know how to play a song, but I feel trapped when I feel like I'm interpreting too close to the lines.

But I'm trying to play the song the way it's written.