Writing Process (Days 1 through 5)

As you all know, this is the first time we, or anyone else for that matter has done something like this. Without a definitive plan, there is definitely a “fly by the seat of your pants” mentality going on right now. After the kick-off, we had this big long list of resources. The next logical step is to write the script incorporating the resources we have. Thus, the challenge begins. As I mentioned in the earlier post, several members of the Greensboro team were interested in writing. Part of the goal of this tour is to allow everyone the opportunity to participate in whatever way they want even if the area they want to participate in is not where they have the most experience. Overall, we have four people interested in writing. Now we enter that scary undefined region again and have to figure out what’s that best way to allow 4 people to express themselves and have a creative stake in the script while still maintaining a cohesive story line.

On Friday, March 27th, we met with Carl and Anthony to kind of feel it out and work on figuring out what kind of movie we want to make. After we came up with a general structure, we had great plans to kind of divide it up into four different roles. Anthony would be responsible for writing the overall structure of the script, primarily focusing on the actions the characters take and Carl would be responsible for all the dialogue in the script. Alexa and Net would work more on characterization and bringing believability to the roles they would be playing by writing in little ticks and quirks that their characters might do, really focusing on small, detailed actions.

Then, to make sure that everything flows correctly, Anthony would be responsible for bringing it all together and producing the finalized script. This was a great idea...in theory. In the end, without all four writers in the same room the master plan seemed to fall flat on its face. I think we weren't exactly clear on what we expected everyone to do and it's hard to collaborate on something without talking to each other (who would have thought?) Luckily Anthony's script provided us with at least a solid outline to go with. He had written the action really well and had put in the dialogue important to the story (which is good because Josh tends to throw out a lot of dialogue... future writers be ready for that)

The first piece of the puzzle was in place. We definitely oriented it all the wrong ways before we finally got it to fit but we did eventually get it. I'm sure we'll screw it up in some new way 13 more times. Any advice on a better approach? Leave it in the comments. One thing I definitely need to do is record the sessions with the Flip! Watch what happened after the writers meeting and I realize I failed miserably at my job.