Writing Pilot in Three Days (FAIL)

Yes, fail. How one goes from writing seventy-five (that's 75, 7-5 or five and seventy) in three days to only getting through twenty one (21, 2-1, you get it) is beyond my understanding. Or is it? Surely there's a logical explanation, or at least something I could come up with that sounds reasonable.

There is.

Writing is rewriting. I say it over and over, I write it down (and rewrite it - ha! Ha?) but it doesn't quite make its way into the deep recesses of my psyche. The first time I wrote the pilot (see here and here), I was driven by the idea of finishing it. By any means necessary. Even if it sucked. And it did.

This second attempt was different. I wanted something more, something meatier, classy. I threw out everything I felt was gimmicky, plot-wise, and did my darndest to let the characters be likable or hate-able, and let that drive the story. That, my friends, is a lot harder to do. For me.

I'm a plot person. I like a lot of stuff going on, and I like it all to be happening to my main man, or woman. I'll never write a coming-of-age, or a complicated romance, or a subtle adult drama, or a subtle anything for that matter. Two people talking over coffee is my personal worst nightmare scene situation. I want running, jumping, exploding, throwing, laughing and blood all over the place all the time. At the same time, if possible.

This, however, poses some problems when putting my characters into the plot. That's right, that's how I look at it: I have to cram these people-things into my awesome story thing to make the awesome story things happen. So, clearly we can all see what's wrong here.

People don't see movies because of plot; they go to watch characters. These characters have to do something, but essentially we're just there to watch them, to root for them, to feel the things that they are feeling. You could make a movie out of someone buttering toast for two hours, as long as you made it clear that their commitment to the perfect toast was a life and death issue to them. And it should star Liam Neeson (just a suggestion).

Where was I going with this? The point I'm trying to make here, and subsequently force into my pea brain (at first I typed "pee brain" and I was like "that doesn't look right"), is that characters have to exist before the story does. You've heard it said that life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you react to it. That's your story. Ten percent explosions, running, jumping, laughing, screaming, punching, blood spatter and ninety percent character choices.

There's a reason this is difficult. There's a reason most writers give up and never write. There's a reason that I only got twenty-one pages finished in three days, and a reason why each of those pages was intolerably painful and probably complete garbage. But writing is rewriting is writing. Keep saying it, and keep doing it, and one day it will make sense.

Maybe.

No, definitely. Think definitely.