I was flipping through a couple of books from the library today before I sent them back. Both of them were on writing comics/graphic novels; I’d gotten them when I originally thought I was going to write a graphic novel script for Script Frenzy. I came across the section on writing characters in one of the books, which made me start thinking about the characters in my screenplay. My “villain” character wasn’t acting at all villainous and my main character has been really flat; these are all problems I’ve been aware of for the last while. But I actually sat and thought about how the story is progressing, and I came up with a few ways to fix things. Unfortunately, fixing things would require a major rewrite, which is something you’re not supposed to do during Script Frenzy (or NaNoWriMo). And leaving things how they are would mean a lot more work later if I just keep writing. So I am going to give up on Script Frenzy this year, but I am not giving up on my story.
All the way through this screenplay, I’ve been thinking of it as a discovery draft which will eventually become a novel. So stopping now and reworking everything will also give me the opportunity to turn this story into the novel I’ve always envisioned. As I said before, I did some world building which I am happy with, but the further I’ve gone in this screenplay, the less the world feels comfortable confined within a screenplay. Changing to a novel now will mean I can make this into the story I really want it to be.
So I will not be continuing with Script Frenzy this year. A friend of mine has expressed interest in maybe collaborating on a script next year, so hopefully that will become a reality. Good luck to everyone else still working away at their own scripts!
An Acquaintance with Letters 