{"id":194,"date":"2008-09-15T21:55:33","date_gmt":"2008-09-15T09:55:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/?p=194"},"modified":"2012-10-19T12:30:14","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T23:30:14","slug":"the-working-first-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/the-working-first-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"The Working First Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I finished a first draft last week. It&#8217;s what I call a <em>working first draft<\/em> &#8211; a partially muscled skeleton of a script that I don&#8217;t show anyone for fear of their never reading my scripts again. I think one of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0001279\/\" target=\"_blank\">William Goldman<\/a>&#8216;s <em>Screentrade Adventures<\/em> &#8211; or was it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephenking.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Stephen King<\/a>&#8216;s <em>On Writing<\/em>? &#8211; had a name for it. Can&#8217;t find the reference. Anyway:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I have completed a draft;<\/li>\n<li>it has a beginning, middle and end;<\/li>\n<li>and I&#8217;m still excited by the idea behind it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While I was typing out the epilogue, I found I had a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye &#8211; touching reminders of why I&#8217;m so attached to the story. It was great. <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">If<\/span> When I have that effect on the reader a few drafts from now, I&#8217;ll be pretty effin&#8217; <em>stoked<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The current draft is a pretty measly 85 pages long. The story&#8217;s a 120 page kind of script. The missing pages are currently in the form of, at best &#8211;<\/p>\n<div class=\"scrippet\">\n<p class=\"sceneheader\">INT. HERO&#8217;S PARENTS&#8217; HOUSE &#8211; EVENING<\/p>\n<p class=\"action\">Our HERO has dinner with his MOTHER and FATHER.<\/p>\n<p class=\"character\">HERO<\/p>\n<p class=\"dialogue\">&#8211; SAYS SOMETHING TO REINFORCE HIS ALREADY-ESTABLISHED RELUCTANCE WITH WHICH HE DINES WITH HIS PARENTS &#8211;<\/p>\n<p class=\"character\">FATHER<\/p>\n<p class=\"dialogue\">&#8211; SAYS SOMETHING TO REINFORCE HIS PREVIOUSLY HINTED AT DISAPPOINTMENT WITH HERO &#8211;<\/p>\n<p class=\"action\">MOTHER puts her cutlery down.<\/p>\n<p class=\"character\">MOTHER<\/p>\n<p class=\"dialogue\">Stop it &#8211; just stop it!<\/p>\n<p class=\"action\">HERO and FATHER look at her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&#8211; or, at worst &#8211;<\/p>\n<div class=\"scrippet\">\n<p class=\"sceneheader\">INT. HEROINE&#8217;S OFFICE &#8211; EVENING<\/p>\n<p class=\"action\">PLACEHOLDER &#8211; until I decide how to establish our HEROINE as &#8216;a woman not to mess with&#8217; without making her come across as having regular testosterone injections.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>This week is time-out from the script. I&#8217;ve got <a href=\"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/19\/roughing-it\/\">my work<\/a> cut out for me.<\/p>\n<p>And I can&#8217;t wait.<\/p>\n<p>(Big-ass fedora-tips to <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/johnaugust\/~3\/389009126\/scrippets-10\" target=\"_blank\">Mr August<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/equinox-of-insanity.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nima Yousefi<\/a> for making the above <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scrippets.org\" target=\"_blank\">scrippets<\/a> available.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finished a first draft last week. It&#8217;s what I call a working first draft &#8211; a partially muscled skeleton of a script that I don&#8217;t show anyone for fear of their never reading my scripts again. I think one of William Goldman&#8216;s Screentrade Adventures &#8211; or was it Stephen King&#8216;s On Writing? &#8211; had &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/the-working-first-draft\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Working First Draft&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[681,25,734,352,732,733,351,349],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scriptwriting","tag-first-draft","tag-john-august","tag-nima-yousefi","tag-on-writing","tag-screentrade-adventures","tag-scrippet","tag-stephen-king","tag-william-goldman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3156,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions\/3156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}