It’s 80 degrees in January and as much as I’d love to be playing outside, I’m inside trying to finish my new pilot. I stopped for a while this week to finish reading a couple novels I’m sure I’ll talk about at some point (and to work on a novel I’m also kicking around...that old writer’s ADD). I guess I was also feeling a little discouraged by the pilot and had to set it aside because it’s waaaay too long (ah to be J.J. Abrams and get 2 hours for a pilot…not that my family drama needs 2 hours but I could probably use it).
Anyway, I know I’ll get through it, and make the cuts I need to make, but I think what’s harder than running too long right now is feeling a little lost at the end of my episode because my original outline falls apart a bit near the end (i.e. it degenerates from lovely little summaries of each scene in each act to a list of things that I know happen in roughly the right order in the last 2 acts). And didn’t I just mention how important outlines are? Well, they are, and this proves it. Shame on me. Now, here I am, stalled on finishing my first draft because I have to go back and fix the original outline.
But, let’s not dwell on that. Instead, how about some resources for writing an outline? Don’t know how to write an outline? Everyone has their own preferences, but I think the library section of John August's site has some excellent outlines of his own work (film and TV), and if you’re a baby screenwriter and haven’t heard of Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat beat sheet you really should check out that site (and read the book!). Not that a screenplay has to hit every single Save The Cat beat right down to the page (I’ve heard some people say they dislike this because it’s so predictable) I still think it’s a great resource for anyone starting out who needs that guiding hand to get through a screenplay (and isn’t that all of us, at some point?).
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