Only My Scriptwriting

Problems, One after Another

Problems, One After Another

I’m still working on my spreadsheet for my Water Wars scriptwriting project. Every time I think I have it figured out something comes up that ruins it. I have even thought of going to the fifty minutes an hour instead of the forty-five, from one hundred eighty scenes to two hundred.

In a way, from forty-five to fifty minutes is better. After all, my chances of selling this is to cable or streaming than the networks. Because it’s Science Fiction and mostly about ‘children’ it would probably fit better with a cable station or a streaming service other than a network.

Of course, I would like to see it on a network station. I would also like to see this Movie Introduction as a Feature Film before the television series. But I don’t think that’s going to happen either. That’s why, I may go with a fifty-minute per Part or Episode format. Fifty minutes does have some drawbacks too. One of them is the number of scenes.

With the fifty-minute format that means there are two hundred scenes. That means it will be uneven for the six main characters for this Movie Introduction and the television series. It will probably be only a scene or two difference. But it will be a difference. That’s not a big problem if the difference is for the main character in that Act.

Unfortunately, it’s not the main character in that Act most of the time. Especially, if the main character begins the Act and another one ends it. It’s the character that doesn’t start or end the Act that has more scenes than the other two. At least it has been so far.

That’s another problem I’m having. Whether it’s forty-five minutes or fifty minutes, my figuring points out the beginning with one character and the ending with the other. The ones with the same character beginning and ending an Act aren’t working well.

It's not the scene numbers that work against the character that begins and ends an Act, it’s the number of five and ten scenes that all six characters have. They are erratic a lot. I don’t mind a one or two-scene difference with my fives and tens. But these have been quite a bit more than one or two scenes. It’s more like four or five more.

Of course, I would like my characters to have the same number of fives and tens. But I’m having problems doing that, especially with the characters that begin and end an Act. I don’t know what I will do. The only thing I can think of is to continue trying to figure out this spreadsheet tomorrow.