Writing Life: Feature This

I wrote the other day about how hard it's been to put down my pilot script (for now) and walk away from these characters that I've had rambling around in my head for so long.

But there comes a day where you just have to try (with all of your might) to move on to a new project, whatever that may be.

Fortunately (!), I had already written a pretty detailed outline for a feature film script — and written the first few pages — in the midst of my massive pilot script revision a few weeks back.

So on Monday, I took the first tentative steps to step into this new project.

For me, every day of writing begins the same way: I look over what I've already written, whether it was the day before or the week before, and I revise. I take a red pen to whatever I've written and try to read it through fresh eyes. What could be written better? What sounds off? What was I thinking when I even wrote this?

I try to be both brutal and kind to myself, to approach the material as a stranger as much as humanly possible and to try and see what could be tweaked and improved. (And, as hard as it is for me, to pat myself on the back for a well-turned phrase or an evocative description.)

This new project is an adaptation of a public domain book that I read quite a lot when I was growing up... but I'm also not going to feel beholden to the source material. I'm updating it to a contemporary setting and looking at how various technology might have influenced the story had they existed when it was written. Like my last script, there's a distinct whiff of the supernatural to the story but it's also about society, technology, and morality and about the intersection of all three.

And yet I'm terrified: I've never written a feature script before. The structure is completely different to television. The expectations are different. Unlike a pilot script, there needs to be a distinct beginning, middle, and end that is ultimately satisfying and wraps up the plot. 

Someone once told me that anything that is worthy of doing ought to make you scared. I'm trying to remember that with this project. Especially as I try to remind myself that nine months ago I'd never written a television pilot script either. Challenging yourself is good. Being fearful is good. Complacency, as I used to tell my writers, equals death.

With that in mind, I'm excited to dive deeper into writing this script and to (hopefully) discover that these new characters haunt me as much as the last ones did...