Writing a screenplay should be so simple. It's just answering a simple question: what's a movie I have never seen that I would really like to see? Then answering a series of more specific questions: what are some likable characters; what are some unlikeable characters; what are their respective goals and what relevant obstacles can I place in their way to try and prevent them from reaching those goals? Then bookend it with: where does it begin and how does it end? Then just start at the beginning, keep answering "and then what, and then what," and end at the end.
Easy.
Impossible! Literally, figuratively, metaphysically impossible! I want to do it, I try to do it, I've done it before, but due to forces unknown and unseen it just isn't happening. I'm wracking my brain to figure out why this is not happening, and I've narrowed it down to two possible conclusions: either I lack the necessary discipline or my story sucks.
And I know I don't lack discipline.
So why does my story suck? If I knew that, I'd fix it. Right? Wouldn't I fix it? I figured out my main character was blah, and I fixed that. So that's all I need to do, identify the problems and fix them. If I could just go through my screenplay and systematically pull out those aspects of the story that do not work and replace them with those that do I would be able to write this thing. I'd also be the greatest screenwriter of all time.
It's too hard. Not because I don't have good judgement - like most people I believe that I possess the greatest taste in movies, better than anyone else I know. It's because I am stubborn and I don't want to let go. The impetus to this whole script was this idea of wanting to write an alien movie that's scary and funny. I wanted the aliens to be microscopic instead of big, disappointing monsters and I wanted them to inhabit us like parasites and in so doing force on their host an eery kind of niceness. Then, for some reason, I liked the idea of a pregnant woman getting into a very bloody fight with one of these things. This practically writes itself!
But then it got hard. The timeline doesn't make sense - a nine month timeline for an alien thriller? It should take place over mere days or even hours. And why do the aliens make everyone they inhabit act really nice; because they think their blending in, to throw people off, because they increase our levels of serotonin for some reason? And my defamed scientist who discovers what's going on, why if he's such a jerk would he be the one spearheading the movement to stop these things? What does he care? It just doesn't work.
And that's why after hours on hours on hours of sitting at my computer I am still stuck in the first act, making little progress and then erasing it because I know how bad it is. I'm so stubbornly committed to my initial ideas about this story that I've paralyzed my creative thinking and am unable to significantly change the circumstances of the plot. Part of me feels like scrapping the whole idea and just moving on to something totally different. But I don't think that's going to help, since the story itself may not be the problem. Maybe I'm the problem.
This in between stage is really annoying. I'm a good enough writer to know when something is just awful, but not good enough to know how to fix it. The option this leaves me is to try a bunch of different things hoping that at some point those ideas will stop sucking. This is not ideal. I hate it, in fact, and all the more because I know this will be a long, stupid stage of my writing life that won't soon be over but it will eventually lead me closer to becoming a better writer.
Aliens are going to make me a better writer? Yes.
