So after a night to think about it, and realising that I couldn’t tell my own story off the top of my head, I took the step of nuking most of what I had to take it in another simpler and funnier direction.
On Thursday I sat down at my favourite burger place, ordered my favourite burger and wrote down what I wanted to accomplish with the story on one side of my project sketchbook. I wasn’t allowed to eat the burger until I’d written the story beats I needed on the facing page.
Food – withholding it – is powerfully good motivation.
So. I’ve been rewriting things again from story beats up since the day after I posted the last thing. One of the main characters got cut. There are now rhythms and patterns. Everything is better, tighter, funnier.
After another 17 hours of writing (yes I’m counting), I now have a 5,500 word treatment about a determined and curmudgeonly alien inventor who’s forced out of his shell but finds a way to stay true to who he is and what he knows all the same. (Beforehand, it was about a timid inventor who nearly got beaten up by an escaped psycho. Not as much fun. At least, not for me.)
Much has changed. The protagonist used to be vulnerable because of his isolation and timidness; now he pretends not to be vulnerable. He doesn’t even want to admit his vulnerability until someone wiser than he is picks at a badly hidden stitch and tears his insecurity open. The protagonist is much more interesting like this, and much funnier too. I’ve done a couple of comedy and character passes on the treatment and everyone’s really coming to life.
Some bits stayed the same. The ending is much the same. One character is almost exactly the same but he was always kind of great.
I threw out more than 10,000 words of work because it wasn’t what I wanted. I’m glad I could do that and I’m glad I did: I like these characters in this world undergoing this story in a way I didn’t this time last week. I want to spend time with them. I want to bring them to life and tell their story.
And since that’s how I feel, it’s time to move this project from development (concept and writing) to pre-production (design, storyboard and planning). (EDIT: This is not what happened at all.)
There will be much research and much drawing of concept art to begin with. I’ve already got some sketches of props and characters but nothing that really excites me the way this treatment does. Not yet.
