Artwork tonight was uncredited, but I believe it’s Angus McKie.
I had a writing session tonight just before bed, and the doubts! They come out once the work is done and I’m just sitting and reading! Is it too long? Does it make sense? Is this thing I was really excited about when I wrote it *actually* work? Sigh…
That’s what’s rolling around in my head, y’all. I still across the board love the new work I’ve done. I guess I just worry about it all fitting together now. How is the overall pace of the pilot now? The integration of these new ideas? Mostly pace, actually, the more I think about it. This fucking thing is 20 pages too long for a normal hour-long pilot, and it’s 10 pages short of a feature-length pilot. THAT’S concerning to me.
At the end of the day, it actually may make sense to just leave this thing as a feature-length shindig, to be honest. It’s a sci-fi pilot. There always SO MUCH in terms of world-building that has to be covered…it’s not like a cop show where you know instantly the world these characters exist in, their job, and the forces they’re fighting again…you know, because it’s REAL LIFE. Sci-fi is completely different. None of that can be taken for granted, even if you are using a contemporary reference point for your world…say, the FBI for shits and giggles…the FBI in space, in the future, is completely different. You have to establish its function and place in this future world. So, yeah…there are many, many examples of sci fi pilots that needed two hours to get everything set up.
So, that’s good at least…and I’ve kind of accepted that’s the direction this pilot has gone. Now, it comes down to clean act breaks. Instead of four, I need eight. At least. Those act breaks keep the pace up, remind the reader where we are in the story…sign posts, as it were. Even the novice script-reader can tell just from the act breaks if something is dragging, and the *experienced* reader will be paying particular attention to them. So, I suppose that’s my new task with this thing over the last few days of the month: streamline what I have into a nice format.
I guess what I’m saying is I feel anxious about that. Squeezing this sprawling story into the appropriately up-tempo and streamlined boxes. I worry I won’t be able to do that. But…I shouldn’t. I’ve done it before. I can do it again, I guess.
And, I have to keep in mind that somebody reading this thing for the first time, not knowing what’s coming next (unlike myself) will have a completely different reaction to pace. Things always happen much faster in the mind’s eye when one doesn’t know what’s coming next.
Anywho, that’s all for tonight. It’s past 1am, so bed time. It was a good off-day today. Watched the A’s lose, got my work done early in the morning, and took a nice long nap before walking the pups with the Ho, and we filmed it to cut together for the youTube channel. So cute!
Good night!