The Vomit Draft...

The best thing film school did was completely erase the notion that writing a script was simply about getting a draft complete, spell checked, and then sent out to be read. It's almost ridiculous to even think a first draft can be anywhere near ready, but most film school students think in that manner, mainly because of what I call the brilliance factor. If you get into a top film school over other applicants, you like to think of yourself as being pretty brilliant. Well, you ain't. And if you don't know that, you'll send out crap that shouldn't be read by your significant other, not to mention someone who will judge you.

That all said, I hadn't been inspired to write much lately. Yeah, I started work on my book proposal, but that's more drudge work than anything. But then I thought about the very first script I started writing at UCLA. I sat down and thought about the story, adn suddenly it became completely clear. Where two years ago, the plot was so damn complicated that it didn't make sense, now I made it very simple and it works. Now I'm writing what I call, and probably others call, my vomit draft. I'm not worrying about whether things work, I'm just vomiting out scenes and dialogue. After I finish, I see what I have. It's like a crazy man babbling about something and someone transcribing everything being said. Maybe it'll make sense at the end or maybe not. But you have to get it out. So this is my sports script and with a few crucial changes, I think it works. I've written twenty pages and I'm going to keep flowing until I'm done. After that, I'll see if I can use this draft as the basis for my real script.