Well I'm over the hump.
In every screenplay there comes a time when I stop. I stop because I'm not sure about the realism. My biggest problem with writing is that if I don't know about something, I'm unsure as to how to go about writing it, so I tend to stop and ponder it for weeks before I pick it back up again, and sometimes I never do.
With Not Dead Yet it was a tidal wave in a place I've never seen and I was totally unsure as to how it would work or what would cause it so I sat there and sat there. Then after about a month of sitting I called my Ex and took him to the now tragically closed Doughboys to pick his brain. And I went home and continued my script.
This time the delay happened early. This is a historical piece, and 9 pages in I suddenly realized I did not live in this era and have no idea how someone would have talked besides the stereotypical way people do in movies about the era. So I sort of froze and thought and thought and thought.
And then I started thinking. One new trend in screenwriting is to write period characters using modern language, so I'm just going to follow the trend. I mean, if a Roman can speak with a British accent and people from Deadwood can use "fuck" and "cunt" like they're prepositions, then I can have my characters use more common language as long as I establish it early.
So then once I stopped worrying so much about the realism and started worrying about the story I was able to write the next page. And now I know exactly what I'm doing.
So yay, I'm over the hump. I hope.
I really hate that about historical screenplays. I really can't write one because I keep worrying about messing up historical facts, or that I don't know much about a real-life person.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know, and why I like it even more, the word 'Fuck' is used since the 17th century, in roughly thesame meaning..
ReplyDeleteSo cowboys using is is hostoricly correct..