Only My Scriptwriting

With What Little Time I Had Today

With What Little
Time I Had Today

I know that I have been ranting and raving the last few days, trying to explain why I’m starting over with my Water Wars scriptwriting project. Why I will be doing it with my other scriptwriting projects: The Final Ritual, Skinless, and SpaceHorrors. I’m just not as far along with them as I am with my Water Wars scriptwriting project.

Unfortunately, it’s still up in the air with my Water Wars scriptwriting project. I still haven’t figured out my spreadsheet for this project yet. I’ve been working on it for the last few hours, and I haven’t found out why I haven’t done it yet. Every time I think I have the solution to my problems, something happens, and I don’t.

Part of the problem with today was the amount of time I had to work on these problems. It has been a typical Monday. From early this morning until almost the evening, my brother and I had things that we needed to get done today. As a result, I only had a couple of hours to work on this problem and spreadsheet.

I’m sure that I will figure out how to finish creating this spreadsheet. I just don’t know how long it’s going to take me to do it. Hopefully, it won’t take me too much longer to finish it. Once I do, I will be ready to start working on my single sentences and paragraphs for my Act Breakdowns, Story Outlines, and Scene Outlines.

All I need to do is figure out how I can cut my scripts in half without physically cutting them in half. Sometimes I think it would be better to just keep the scripts the way they are and combine the number of lines in a scene with their Scene Heading. I know that I can’t do that, though. It would be extremely hard to do, if not impossible.

Not only are there nine, eleven, or fifteen lines per scene depending on their scene number, but there are also twice as many scenes per script. One hundred and eighty scenes are just too many. Even ninety scenes may be a little bit more than it needs to be, but it’s not as bad as one hundred and eighty scenes.

I would like to write that ninety scenes were about average for a one-hour drama, but from what Shooting Scripts I have read so far ninety isn’t average. Some Shooting Scripts are close to ninety, and a few have been above ninety, but most of them have been well below ninety. A few have been very low. The lowest I have seen is the middle to upper thirties.

Of course, I know I’m not writing a Shooting Script. That’s what the Directors, Producers, and additional writers will do, but the way I write these scripts I consider them as Shooting Scripts without them being Shooting Scripts. After all, who gets the blame if a script isn’t well received? It’s not the Directors and Producers.

It's the writers who get the blame. Especially, an unknown writer like me. I know what will happen when I sell these projects. They will be chopped up and changed so much no one will know what they should have been. That’s one of the reasons why I joined Writing.com. So, that the world would know what my scripts should be.