I had this project so carefully planned, every moment, and every twist. That was the plan I threw out when I has halfway done and then deleted most of my pages.
Every day I sit down to write, I solve my own mystery a little more. I ask myself, why did they stop construction on that building? Why is an apartment building in a warehouse district? I put it there because I needed an abandoned apartment overlooking a warehouse, but now that it’s there, I have to figure out why it is there, and this leads me deeper into the mystery … and out of it. I reworked some interesting details of my plot by forcing myself to answer these questions. It’s great fun when even the writer doesn’t know what’s going to happen next.
The characters have certainly evolved before my eyes. Corynn was supposed to be a vague love interest for my protagonist, providing him with asylum and a moral dilemma as a married man attracted to a prostitute. She was supposed to break down and finally give him important information after he rescues her. None of this is actually going to happen. Corynn will ultimately be in minimal scenes and it’s her mere existence, not anything that she does, that will be important for the plot. My protagonist, Jeffreys, was supposed to be a strong, handsome action-hero cop. Insert favorite sexy movie star here. But it turns out he’s round around the edges rather than rough. He’s too out of shape to catch the criminal he’s running after. And his adherence to the rules isn’t just a simple noble trait. It makes him a bit of an ass sometimes. Finally, Grayson, his cop friend, was supposed to be a slimy dude who turns out to be a pretty evil son of a bitch who ruins Jeffreys’ life. Well, that won’t work. Jeffreys is, if anything, smart, and he’s not friends with slimeballs. Grayson bends the rules and breaks them when he should only bend them and he does turn on Jeffreys, but it is Jeffreys who brings about his own downfall, and Grayson is just a corrupt man in a corrupt world trying to do what’s best for his family. Too bad Jeffreys won’t do the same.
I’m better than halfway through this beast, and it’s still a wild beast that needs lot of taming, and my time at the keyboard is like time running up a mountain in hundred-degree weather. Barefoot. Carrying an elephant. But really I can’t wait to see how this story will end.
The real bitch of screenwriting is it all has to fit in 110 pages.
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