Act III - The Anvil Nears

92 pages. 18 days. 5 pages a day (roughly). Act II is in the can. All 92 pages of it. Yeah it went long, so what of it? What I hope to learn from this is how to best construct an outline that resembles an actual story. I failed this time out, but next time maybe I will have the knowledge and foresight to construct an outline that yields only an 89 page second act (baby steps to the act break).

Now it's on to Act III. The good thing is that Act III is fairly concrete in the outline. The bad thing is that I really want to get this puppy done before I go on vacation (next Wednesday), and so I hoped to get a draft done by this Saturday. I need time to unwind and relax before this cruel mistress of a vacation is upon me. I plan to write all night tonight and tomorrow. If I can write “FADE OUT” before 10am on Saturday, I will count myself lucky.

Once done, I will hand my first draft over to my good friend Ryan, who will do me the honor of suffering through it for a read. I’m not afraid to let him read my stuff at its worst because he already knows that I not write good. So he will read it, and he will weep, and I will promise to use verbs… again, and after all of the crying and writhing is over, we will go back to being friends, but I’ll have to go on knowing that my words have killed just a little part of him. Somehow, I will.

But it gets better. Ryan will most likely be the very first person to read it. And when I mean first, I mean first as in before me.

No, I don’t read my stuff as I write. I might glance over the previous day’s work, but for the most part I don’t like to dwell on the past. So, I’ll write and I’ll leave those particular dogs to their slumber. Ryan can wake them up, cuz I want no parts of those mean SOBs. Truth be told, the real reason I probably do all of this is so when I give him the next draft, it will be exponentially better, and my merely mediocre script will seem like it was shat out by Charlie Kaufman, and I will be temporarily restored to literate status*.

*The opinions of my subconscious do not necessarily reflect the views of the host Tom entity, and will be denied by said entity if questioned.