Sunday, January 02, 2005

THIRD DRAFT CONTINUES

I'm working away at the third draft of Unseen. The second draft was easy, but more than anything it showed the shortcomings of the story. This draft is much harder. I'm always stopping to work things out on my little tin notebook. What started as a logical but rather farfetched narrative is getting denser, richer and less farfetched. But keeping it logical at the same time has proven tricky.

I dropped a whole reel (10 pages) out of the second act today: two of the least convincing sequences which, I'm happy to report, turned out to be unnecessary and replaceable. I'm getting better at chucking out stuff that doesn't quite work. I'm getting more critical of my writing as I go on, less willing to let lame stuff pass.

When you're writing on spec, a "draft" is just the writing that occurs between when you send it to someone for comments. In other words there's no such thing as a "draft" really. How much has to change before there's a draft? Back when people retyped things, the term must have meant more.

The concept of a "draft" is more meaningful, and therefore more problematic, in the professional world. Theoretically you are supposed to get paid for each draft, and theoretically producers get to give you notes only once per draft, as you move on to the second draft. Many producers balk at this and want there to be "revisions" of drafts. The WGC and WGA will always back the writer on this if it gets to that point. But on the other hand you don't want to turn in a draft that isn't good. Usually I resolve this problem by getting comments from other people so I can go and revise my draft before turning it in to the producer. But other writers seem content to revise endlessly on the same ticket. Producers love this devotion to the cause. Unfortunately it does not generate income. I'm not sure there's a real answer to this conundrum. You read about writers doing 20 drafts of something in Hollywood, and I doubt they're getting paid scale for each draft. But these are also writers who are getting paid six digits for opening up their laptops; so it works out pretty well for everybody. In TV it's not a problem, because everyone gets paid scale for their scripts, plus a very respectable story editing salary if they're rewriting on staff. It's the feature film world where everything's a little bit more messy...

10:02 PM

1 Comments:

I'm glad you mentioned this issue. As I learn more about this business, I am discovering how complex this is. Producers seem to want every draft to be considered a "polish", but the WGC claims that a polish is when 5% (or less) has been rewritten. Arguing constantly about these issues makes it tough to develop a good working relationship with a producer - yet I realize how important it is. Live and learn...

By  Martine, at 11:07 AM  

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