Writing Teenage Bodyguard - A Screenplay

The Writing Process - Issues About Writing - Part 8

If you're looking for writing technical issue information, skip this section. If you want to know about the actuality of writing for some people, hang in there….

I’ve been writing this screenplay all week. I’ve also been marketing. Because certainly now a days writing is marketing. You have to be your agent, manager, writer, everything.

It’s stressful. Writers should be protected, like any artist, to be able to write, to create wonderful, and horrible universes.

But, we’re not.

Writing is one thing.

Marketing it, claiming to be the greatest, but in an honest and verifiable way (otherwise, you’re just wrecking your possible career if you’re trying to build one), is an entirely different thing.

I’ve always been pretty tough emotionally. I’ve been trying for decades to fine tune that for purposes of writing good stories. Whatever I choose to do I seem to do well at it. So….

So my head is half here, half in my high school years, my military years, my post military ones, college ones, several relationships and marriages

 I had to have an evening with a few glasses of wine to unwind while I write, after a long week. Rough awakening and rough night sleep. But I've always had some allergy issues and this time of year is rough. Or can be.

I'm at page 63 now, on Saturday night, most of the way through draft two. I came up with a list:

DRAFT one - write it

DRAFT two - massage, add details, clean up, continuity, fix name continuity.

DRAFT three - usual and continuity, tense, names, cars, dates, make inserts and SUPERS as SHOT:

Carbone’s guys \decade parts - date format -year first - 1974 or August 14, 1978 day last if needed

Other character parts formatting - Saturday, February 2, 1974 with day first

DRAFT four - polish [this is as far as I got before sending it off]

DRAFT five – rewrite after the prodco agrees and the producer tears the script apart with reasons of too many scenes or characters, not enough money for the proper sets, location issues and can it have a puppy in a scene somewhere?

DRAFT six - polish again

So far so good. But I'm giving second thoughts to Quentin getting involved. I'm wondering if this isn't turning into something else. Also, I'm worried about making the main character (me) seem too unrealistic. I remember when I was younger telling people all the stuff I've done, many times people didn't believe me. So in the screenplay, my character has to have the abilities he needs and then some, but what is too much? Right?

NEXT MORNING

One thing I'm noticing about writing your own film about your own experiences, especially if it’s something from long ago that requires things like research. It saturates your being. I normally have dreams about a project I’m working on. When I wrote Death of Heaven, let me tell you, that was some interesting dreams. But on this project, one that involves my past when I was 18, involved the mob, it gives up some real interesting dreams.

Because, it’s not only a stress inducing situation, just writing something a production company is waiting on, and your own desires to get it done and sold and produced, but also, the context of the story is not only a bit stress inducing (figure, a wise guy runs into you on the street and kicks your ass then shoots you in the brain pan, stress inducing right, for a little while anyway, painful too, I’d assume).

When I write fiction the dreams are superficial, if anything. But when writing about yourself, these dreams can go deep, down into the past in the root of your brain and pull from your inner self. So that I’m kind of happy to wake up. Leads to my getting up and writing furiously sometimes.

So, enjoy the benefits of my night terrors.

Just kidding. I’m having a blast.