You'll Never Be READY To Write

This is a theory I'm developing.

Unless you have a co-writer -- or, better still, a staff of writers -- I don't think we'll even have every beat mapped out the way we want before we start writing.

At least not at this level: "This level" being the amateur level.

I'm not a fan of the cat who just sits down and pounds out pages until the stack reachs 120. I believe that kind of writing is masterbation. Until, maybe, the 10th draft, that stack of pages isn't going to be readable -- even to its author! (He'll beg everyone he knows to read his script, but he himself won't sit down and read what he's written... I wonder why that is...) (Don't get me wrong, I've been that guy. I was him for about a decade!)

But I believe I'm discovering that if we wait until every beat is in place, we'll never sit down to write the pages.

I think the way this works is that we get strong characters, get a good working theme, get a good sense of Beginning, Middle and End, get a decent sense of what the Beginning/Middle/End are within each act, then we sit down and see where this all takes us.

For me, I think this is true because I prefer to cram as much into each story beat as I can. I'm insecure about wasting people's time, losing my reader. (Remember that decade I meantioned earlier?) So I never have enough to fill my structure as much as I want to.

However, with this half-hour audio script I've been writing, I find that as long as I'm aware of my central conflicts (that's PLURAL) momets arrise as the scene plays out, happy little surprises that make my story more interesting.

Like I say, this is just a theory that's forming in my gourd.

But it's not without precident. At the CS Expo 4, Joss Whedon said that his staff writers usually only need 4 Moments (dramatic beats in the Main Character's arch) and 4 Moves ("cool" moments; stuff blowing up; action type stuff).

Actually, I don't remember if 4 Moves was required at all. I'm thinking you've got 3 act breaks, so you probably want to have a Move before each act break, and one to at the Climax, but all I remembe Whedon specifically sying was 4 Moments.

But the point is, he feels comfortable sending his writers off knowing the Main Character arch will hit 4 significant and powerful notes.

Granted, I'm not a Whedon staffer. So I should make sure I have a little bit more going on.

But I believe there may be something about the natrure of writing that defies math, some stuff that we can only discover once we're INSIDE the world.

Something to ponder, if nothing else.