Final 434 Meeting With Dave...

Today I had my final 434 meeting with Dave. We went over the script and he made great notes. For me, as I continue to learn about writing scripts, little lights continue to come on. In the first quarter at UCLA, I simply experimented. I needed to know what worked and what didn't when it came to dialogue. Cause I didn't know. I didn't know "on the nose" from the tip of my own nose. After ten weeks, I was straight. I'd had some UGLY dialogue in getting there, but my ears were getting attuned.

Next was structure, and my 434 teacher Hal drilled structure into me. Before, I thought I knew where to put the muscle on the skeleton, but this allowed me to feel the pressure points in the script. After that, I watched every film known to man and began recognizing the points of emphasis. Remember, I'm not a film guy, so I didn't pay attention to it before. But now, I know.

So I walked into Dave's class with the notion that I can pretty much write an interesting script, with the beats set up correctly, and with dialogue that is not on the nose. Dave was cool for a couple of things. He gave us the industry prespective about writing scripts that sell versus just writing scripts for contests and the such. Second, he gave great notes. We had fun, but the notes were on point.

Today, the light that went off in my head was how to write the arcs of characters other than the protag and antag. We were talking about two characters, a UK police officer and my main character Biko's love interest, and I was realizing that I need to plot out there own script within the main story so that they're not just inserted in whenever I feel like it. I need to integrate them in. Again, maybe that's something everyone else knows, but I hadn't thought about it. Now, I feel like I can do it and make them much more three dimensional. So I'm going to do a rewrite of The Yardies, and make those adjustments.

Dave said my second rewrite will probably make the script fat, and I agree. I'll probably add too much to the script. But that's what a third rewrite is all about. I can honestly say that for the first time, I KNOW that three passes over this script, it'll be ready to be shown. I can feel it in my bones.