after taking a couple weeks off from my script to work on more pizza-centric projects, i’ve dived back into it. i’m not deep yet, but the second draft has begun.
the distance i put between myself and the story really paid off. i was able to look at the script critically, and instead of thinking “there’s no way i can make this better without it sounding inauthentic”, i was able to slash through whole paragraphs of text with notes like “awkward” or “make better”. and with nicole’s help, i was able to get better perspective on what works, and which concepts need more clarity to really come across to the audience.
but beyond just these necessary surface fixes, more consequential plot changes are rising up as well, and i believe the story is going to be much improved for it. there was a whole aspect to the script that i had come up with and even fleshed out, but written off as world-building, that i now realize a viewer would have felt robbed of when they finished the film without seeing it play out on screen. it needs showing, not telling. and so it is now going to play heavily into the structure of the story. it would have wound up as a completely founded critique of the film that i would be kicking myself for after the fact, and it didn’t even occur to me to include it until now.
this sort of progress is something i only would have expected of a situation where an unwritten concept was revisited years later, re-examined, and morphed into something else entirely. instead, this happened after a short break. and i’m not feeling as though i’m sacrificing something good for something better; instead, i feel like i’m just improving and evolving the idea into its best realization.
suffice it to say, the process is proving itself.