Here are the milestones for a typical script:
- the what-if? moment (or maybe finding inspiration in something I read somewhere);
- gestation;
- a prose treatment, usually sprinkled with script-formatted scenes that Just Can’t Wait;
- enforced break;
- caution thrown to the wind and first draft blasted out by deadline.
Looks easy, don’t it? Idea. Treatment. Script.
Yeah, right.
What is missing from the above timeline is that any and all of those stages are apt to be repeated over and over, usually in full, sometimes – only if I’m extraordinarily lucky – sometimes only partially.
It’s a grind. It’s lonely. And it takes time.
But it beats working for The Man.
