Progress Report - Citizen Z.E.D.

I've begun the rewrite for this project, and it's coming along swimmingly.

Perhaps too swimmingly. I've re-read it several times over the past day or so, tweaking and whatnot, and I'm totally in love with it. Which may not be a good thing, as being in love with something sort of makes one oblivious to its flaws.

I'm mostly worried about it being coherent. It makes perfect sense to me, but then I'm writing the thing, so I understand all the subtexts and the contexts and all the other -texts. I'm going to ask someone to read over it for me if she has time to see if it makes sense to her, too. This will be, of course, after I've re-read it once or twice more. And, of course, my friend will have to agree to read it--she's pretty busy. She knows absolutely nothing about this thing so her opinion will be pretty accurate, I'd say.

I also added a couple of scenes because there were places where a transition was needed. This, of course, has made it a little bit too long. I'll be going in and trimming it presently. Right now it's exactly 122 pages. It needs to be 120, at most. I know, two pages doesn't sound like much, but often it's hard to cut enough to meet that target.

This is a good thing, though. I've never had to trim a script where it didn't improve it. No matter how long your script is, you can be sure that there are things in there that need to go, and they will improve the project by their absence.

So, that's where I am with that. There's a contest for science fiction scripts that has a deadline of August 1--I'd like to be in a position to enter it. But if it's not ready by then, so be it--there are always other contests.

Citizen Z.E.D. first draft

I just typed FADE OUT on the first draft of Citizen Z.E.D.

What does this mean? It means it's done!

Now what? Well, I'm going to let it sit a few days while I mull over other projects. Maybe a week or so. I'll come back to it next weekend to begin working on a second draft, hopefully with fresh eyes that'll see the problems I missed when I was writing it.

This is the fastest I've ever reached this point. It's taken me longer to write short stories. I guess I was fired up about it.

This is the most political thing I've ever done, and hopefully it won't come across as preachy. I hate that. There is a point to it, and I am hoping people will take something away from it, but if that overshadows the story then that would be a Bad Thing.

Which is why we rewrite. And rewrite. And rewrite. And rewrite. This one is going to go through some serious revisions before it's ready to be seen by anyone but me. Maybe this story will contribute towards making the world a better place, in some small way. I hope it does.

But, above and beyond any messages I'm hoping it'll spread, I'm hoping people will dig the story, even if they disagree with the message. That would be the best possible outcome.

Anyways, that's where I am with this thing.  Now, on to developing a mini-series I've been toying around with, and some other, non-screenwriting things I need to do.