“Screen-Searching”

On March 15th, I had started a draft of this blog entry. Days later, I couldn’t remember what it was about. The only thing I had written was the title: “Screen-Searching.” Like the soul-searching in which it gets its name, I’m left with little answers to the questions I face. “Will my work be good enough? “Will I be able to make it as a screenwriter?” “What the hell did I mean by Screen-Searching?”

Then just now I remember. Screen-Searching is the process in which you develop your idea. My favorite part of the process where the idea is so new and free, that as the pieces fall into place, edges get clipped, and chunks of idea float around freely. It’s much like the formation of a new planet, only less destructive.

But out of the ashes comes something new and exciting. The story twists and changes right in front of your eyes and you really feel as though the idea came to fruition on its own, like a sentient machine who just turned itself on (I’m looking at you, Skynet). Then the real process begins.

Your new and exciting idea isn’t yet through with its metamorphosis. It will changes dozens of times more until it is barely recognizable from its original root thought.

And then, a script will emerge. But that’s just the first draft.

You’ve got some work to do.

Cheers,

Jamie


Follow me on Twitter to keep up with my #DLMChallenge and other musings regarding the writing process @GuyOnAWire.

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