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02/10/2007: Are Your Bay Leaves on the Table?


Hmm... what I thought was going to be one post about rewriting based on notes has turned into a trilogy. Here's part three:

Put it all on the table. You might think you're already doing this, but you probably aren't. There is almost always some moment, some exchange, some theme or whatever, that you are determined to preserve. Often, it's whatever inspired you to write the script in question. It's the moment that you woke up thinking about, that seemed to come into your head fully-formed and complete with music. Cut anything, you tell yourself, change anything... just not that. Let's call it a protected moment.

But sometimes that moment, no matter how inspirational, is a bay leaf. You needed it to get started, to get the flavor right, and now it's done its job. And until and unless you acknowledge that you've given the moment in question a special status, you can't even SEE that it has become superfluous. I'm sure there's a parallel to be made with people who carry on with unsatisfying jobs, bad habits, or problematic spouses long after they should have dumped them.

This is one of the hardest things to do, of course -- to cut or change a protected moment. Sometimes, if I'm considering a big change like this, I'll copy the script into a file called something like "experiment" and make the change there, while leaving the original file untouched. That way I can fool myself into thinking I'm not really changing it. Then I can read it without having that "what have I doooone?" feeling. And if I don't like it, I can go back to the original file knowing that at least I was open to every option.

By the way, I became aware of my own protected moments early in my career while watching show runners make changes that I, a less-experienced writer, was expecting them to balk at. Sometimes you don't realize you've put up walls until someone else starts inviting people to climb over them.

Lunch: "Buffet City" -- prawns and bao and pot stickers and tiny custard cream puffs