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Turned in a first draft on an outline on Thursday & got minimal/mostly positive notes on Saturday. Yay! Sun, doing the rewrite, I hit a wall & realized that it's b/c large parts of my B story do not quite make sense. I rebroke the story, pitched it Mon, got the go-head. More yay?
It's an easy swap, putting in the new version of the b-story. Same number of beats, same landing point at the end, should be easy to plug it in. I say, "You'll have it late today or early tomorrow."
Reader, it was not an easy swap. It changed the entire timeline of the episode.
Reader, it was not an easy swap. It changed the entire timeline of the episode.
Every time I came up with a fix on the timeline for the B story, it threw the A story out of whack. When I fixed that, the B story went screwy again. At some point, I'm thinking, maybe the cure is worse than the disease. But thing is, that original B story still makes no sense.
Spent about ten straight hours on the rewrite yesterday. Still not done. Still out of whack. Each step I take gets me closer to something good, but also reveals a new problem. 10am, I tell my bosses I need a couple more hours. I just turned the damn thing in. THREE PAGES LONGER.
I'm pretty sure it's better. I think I like it better. I'm a fast writer & faster rewriter, normally; having to work this hard on an outline rewrite is new for me. To be fair, the episode divides its time between two worlds I knew nothing about when I started. But still. Rough.
Now, I'm not complaining. This is my job. I get paid nicely for it and I love doing it. (Well, I love having made television. Getting there is not always the most fun part of it.) I share this to let you know that every show & every episode is different, & a new learning process.
This is the 14th episode of TV I've outlined as a professional. And every show has a vastly different way of doing it. And it always takes you by surprise how much you have to learn & change, b/c you keep thinking you know what you're doing now. It turns out ok! But it's a TRIP.
Honestly, it can get kind of demoralizing midway through. I always think of that moment on ER in Love's Labor Lost when Bradley Whitford shouts, "Why can't you deliver this baby?!" b/c at some point part of me is always yelling, "Why can't you write this story?!" at myself.
Anyway, I tell you all this because many of you are writers, and many of you are pre-pro or early in your career, and I need to tell you, as more accomplished writers have done me, that some of these feelings do not go away. It's knowledge that's both depressing & comforting.
Depressing because I'm sure you hope, as I do, that one day you will not have such crises of confidence. Comforting because at least now you know you're not alone. To quote another line, this from the pilot of Friends, "Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You're gonna love it."
