I'm actually devastated right now, because from one day to another I felt like the main plot of my play/musical didn't fit anymore and so today I decided to re-write it. Thank God, I can keep some of the songs I composed - three years of hard work are not completely wasted. Has this happened to others around here, too? Have you thought "I cannot go on with this plot" while writing?
Screenwriting : The horrors of re-writing by Sara Juno
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Multiple times. Worst case, you learn something and gain experience. Best case, you find elements you can reuse!
It happens to me all the time... I've actually turned it into a small side project. I'm doing this thing, where if I feel like there are other attributes about the screenplay I send them into contests to see if anyone puts my weird plot movies in quarterfinals. Just for a laugh or to like discover something special in my work I might've underestimated. Because maybe it's not weird plot and it's actually creativity.. Then like I win a contest, get my strange movie made and then turn into the next Wes Anderson for doing something different... but nah, so far... all my strange little scripts don't make quarterfinals. But yeah, I've decided 2020, enough being a tortured artist with like weird habits and ideas... it's time to pitch my good scripts. They gather dust while I keep trying to win an oscar for thinking out of the box. Not anymore...
Yes.
Silver lining - it usually gets better every time.
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Yeah - more common than not. Jus' keep on truckin'.
I had to re-write one so thoroughly a while back that I had to rename it.
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It's painful and heartbreaking. But I try to tell myself it will make my work better and, ultimately, it will make me a better writer. I was in an option agreement a few years ago with a producer on one of my scripts and every time they sent it out to companies for consideration, they got back notes of varying degrees on how to change it. The trouble was, sometimes it would come back with "no, we're into creatures now" or "no ghosts in China" and so I would get back notes from my producer to make these fundamental changes to the work. I had to struggle with what was their motivation, what was their end goal, and what was mine. And this happened every time they showed it to someone they were trying to get finance or co-production happening with. So, this is a bit different to your position Sara, but it gives me some insight into what you are experiencing. However, it seems like your motivation to re-write came from within so, even if it hurt at the time, I think it shows you are a writer of integrity because you didn't shy away from the hard work. Well done! Best of luck with it all!!!
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Hi Sara: I have a hard time ripping up a script too. Others don't. The great mystery novelist Raymond Chandler used an approach he called "distilling." (He was an alcoholic.) He'd write a first draft. Then he'd decide which parts of the first draft he wanted to keep. Then he'd write a second draft, incorporating the parts from the first draft that he'd decided were keepers, and repeat the process until he'd gone through more drafts and was satisfied with the end result, until he'd distilled himself another classic. Scripts aren't nearly as long as novels. One day maybe I'll try this.
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Hemingway rewrote a first chapter 119 times until his publisher stole it and sent it to print.
Rewrites are great. You are a better writer at the end of the script than you were at the start. Why wouldn’t you want that better writer to have a look at your work.
Just don’t fall into the Hemingway trap. At some point it is done.
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Rewriting is 'painful and heartbreaking'; how so? Screenwriting is rewriting - many times over. My humble opinion is that if you find it 'painful and heartbreaking', then you outta go find something else to do.
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I would counter that, Doug Nelson, with the suggestion that if, like any art, there isn’t doubt, despair, heartbreak and pain, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it? Sara Juno speaks of that long slog we are all familiar with. I envy the writer who can, after three years of writing a project, come to the realisation they have to fundamentally rewrite the piece without some degree of pain. Pragmatically, we know this is required of us as writers. But we humans are not always pragmatic; us writers even less so, I might venture.
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Rewriting is the easy part. If you're slogging through a plot, that points to plot trouble. Best to go back to the outline at that point and get on track.