five days later and i’m five more pages into the script. i hit page seven tonight, which is where i had hoped the story would end, but it’s going to be another four or so. i wanted to get through the first draft by the end of the weekend, but obviously that was not in the stars. i spent a good chunk of my work on the script today trying to nail down some specifics of last third of the story, without which i couldn’t get past the second third. now that i have all of that in place, i just need to trust my characters to get us all there.
my writing pace has been not terrible. i had the luck of starting my return to writing during a week-long vacation, and so i was able to really dedicate my time to it. since i’ve been back to work, my pace was close to a scene per day when really putting the effort into it. this new script is looking more like a page per day. it’s a very different script though, and the writing is less “i will shit whatever sounds funny onto the page” and more “i will write a story with characters in it”. so a lot different from what i’m used to. but the method has been the same between the two – brainstorm and outline specific scenes in a text file, then write my way through the outline from beginning to end in the screenwriting software. this script’s outline, however, is a lot more granular in its descriptions, and is broken more into story beats than scenes given that the whole thing is just one long scene (more or less). the system seems to work for me, allowing me both the structure of a plotted story as well as the freedom to improvise. i think something of my DMing is in there.
much of my day today was focused on making sausages for a cassoulet nicole made for dinner. the whole project was of gigantic scale, and i think it all turned out very nicely. the meal was delicious, and the sausages (toulouse style) were good. sausage making is very rewarding; it feels like you’re creating something out of nothing… something greater than the sum of its parts. and you literally get your hands dirty doing it. i’d never heard of these toulouse sausages before, but they’re very nice. aromatic with allspice and nutmeg and garlic, yet still mild and meaty in flavor.
in doing research for the recipe, nicole turned up a treasure trove of other sausage recipes, which has gotten me really excited. i have been wanting to make another pizza lately, and now i’ve been burdened with the desire to make my own pepperoni for my own pizza. that will be its own adventure.
I really like the connection that writing is similar to DMing. Obviously there are some significant differences, however there is also a lot of overlap and I think actively DMing would be a great way to “keep the mind in shape” between stints of actual creative writing. You are thinking about characters, and plotpoints, and how they will organically connect. And where in DND, the PLAYERS often are the ones that will reveal some flaw in your planning, in writing, that sort of thing is discovered only when you get past the outline and deep into the writing itself. Very interesting thought!
Also, I’ll make you delicious keto fried chicken if you make me delicious sausage.
I told rusty he should save some sausage for you, but I think we cooked it all
yeah you really hit the nail on the head, from what was a nine word throwaway sentence. the improv and character voices are playing with the overarching story in a very particular way that applies in both scenarios. one major difference being that d&d dialogues are almost always much more throwaway, whereas every word matters in a script. more important interactions are a different story though. i used to have dialogue written out for big scenes and certain characters in our campaign, but i’ve changed how i run things quite a bit since then. we’ll see what happens for the next major plot point you guys come across (aka manny’s revenge).