And I Was Naked

My brother-in-law called on Sunday with notes on my screenplay. His first comment? "Font's wrong, Dude. You've used 10 pitch and it needs to be 12 pitch."

Crap.

One note, and 109 pages (acceptable) becomes 139 pages (so long no one will ever look at it).

He had other notes, mostly formatting, sort of redirected from things he got about his own screenplay from his former room mate, who is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter.

So, I sat down with my laptop and mercilessly ripped through the rough draft. I followed William Shakespeare's lead and got rid of all the stage direction, except where it's essential to the story.

And then I went through it again.

And again.

By Sunday night, I'd shortened it by ten pages, and by Monday afternoon, another seven pages. Have I mentioned that I hate rewrites? My elegant descriptions and scene setups had been reduced to cursory shorthand designed to evoke a visual in as few words as possible. Nothing remained but what was essential to the story.

And at 122 pages, I was still 2 pages too long.

Another note regarding a villain who never gets his comeuppance. I shredded a scene to give him that comeuppance, and damned if it didn't make the whole screenplay better. The writing was tighter, so it got me down to 120 pages. Another scene rewrite and it's down to 118 pages.

118 pages.

And the news this morning is that Hollywood is hunkering down for the writers' strike. There's a hiring freeze, and few production companies are reading new work.

Yikes.