Day 5 Assignments

[Phyllis Strong]

Phyllis Has Finished Acts 4 + 5

I had some trouble putting necessary exposition in the draft in an interesting way, but other than that, I finished off the draft at high speed.

[Marcus Wolf]

Marcus has finished Acts 4 & 5.

I’m not used to writing a “30%” script. It takes some getting used to. As I write, I worry that I won’t be able to fix all the problems of this script in later drafts. But I’m sticking to the new method. My problem is similar to Phyllis’. My dialog writing seems flat and on the nose. To get it done fast, I wrote what I wanted the characters to say, but not the way they need to say it (clever, subtext, etc.)

I’m looking forward to continuing on with this method, though. I like where it’s going. I think a number of aspects of my writing have already improved, so let’s see where we go from here.

[Mary Andrews]

MOD 4 LESSON 5 FINISH ACT 4&5

Mary J. Andrews Has Finished Act 4 + 5
What I learned is that I don’t fully grasp how scenes are supposed to work. Are they meant to signify camera change of location or to show the beginning middle & end of a concept or both?

High speed writing is much like using Race Writing (meet and write for a specified amount of time then tally up word count) It works the same, especially once you figure out to prethink what you are writing each segment before time.

Go back over the Midpoint, Act 4, and Act 5 to make sure you have truly created a “Point of No Return”

[Kimberly Gore]

Kim has finished Acts 4 and 5.

What I learned from this assignment is…I had trouble completing it all in one fell swoop. Part of that is life with a job and kids. But also, my motivation wanes occasionally. It’s so easy to fall into the “Am I wasting my time writing this? Will it really go anywhere eventually?” mood. But I also know if I want something bad enough, I have to try for it. So, I finished the last two pages of the draft today. Good or bad, it’s done.

[David Thome]

Finished 4 and 5. Feels good.

At the very end–the last scene of Act 4–I realized that one problem I had not worked out in the topsy-turvey world of Blank Slate was how Salva would know she was dead in the baseline reality. I know the direction was to plow ahead, but this was the climax scene, for crying out loud. So I spent a few minutes using some of the brainstorming techniques to figure out things like who needs Salva to get back to their familiar lives, but that didn’t produce any results. Then I switched to figuring out how she would know this information–and IT WAS ALL THERE. She’s a scientist, for God’s sake. All I had to do was add one piece of information in an earlier scene, and the climax just happened.

Excellent.