I Finally Have The Story

Hello and welcome back. I know that it has been 2 weeks, but I swear I have a valid reason this time. But first, let me tell you how I got my screenplay idea. Remember about a month ago when I said that I had an idea about a thriller police mystery but I wasn’t really convinced? Well, as they say, let it go, and if it’s meant to be, it will come back. And that is exactly what happened. At first, I let go of this idea because although the conflict was strong and the philosophical ideas and themes it explores were really interesting to me, I still felt like something was lacking. Plus, I felt like I hadn’t given myself enough time to consider other ideas. And I knew for a fact that if I didn’t give other ideas a chance, the thought of what could have been would eat me alive. So that is exactly what I did; I spent over a month coming up with probably over 50 ideas (most of them were horrible or really simple concepts, but still). Of these, only a couple called my attention enough to dig into them, do a little outline, see if they had anything interesting. I spent a few weeks on each one but ultimately realized that, although interesting, they both were lacking in a strong central conflict.

At this point, my professor was impatient, and so was I, and so after more than a month, I revisited my original idea. And it clicked. I took a couple of rather small decisions about how I wanted to center my story more around the personal relationship between the two detectives, rather than a more political or grittier realistic version that I had first envisioned. What this did is help inform the tone, and it was the missing piece that allowed me to revive my interest in the story.

Think about it this way: I could have worked on the other ideas because, as I said, I found them interesting. And I'm sure there is a story there. But both those central conflicts were weak. It is basically like choosing to redo a whole house. In one of them, the only thing you keep is the carpet, and you have to demolish everything else, or a second option where you like the house but hate the carpet. Which would be an easier fix? But of course, whenever you are writing, it may not be so clear, but remember to analyze and identify the problem with a story before you throw it away, the fix you might be looking for may be simpler than it seems.

Where am I currently at?

So the reason why I took 2 weeks was because I wanted to bring some progress. And although I am still severely behind schedule, we have some advancement. Right now, I am centering on a couple of aspects. First of all, I'm doing my best to document myself about the whole process, how the police operate here, etc. Also, as part of this documentation, I’m looking at movies that I reference, such as Se7en, Knives Out, Agatha Christie books, even other media like video games, like A Way Out, just to mention a few examples. As well as interviews with people who can help me inform my character building.

Parallel to doing this, I am also making an outline for my story. I decided to divide it into 4 acts as it is easier to get a stronger second act, also my story has a pretty important midpoint so building around it, has been pretty helpful. Now this is where I am at now. Still behind, as I am supposed to be having a 30-point outline at this point (although I am nowhere near that).

So as you can see, it is a lot that I am trying to do simultaneously. Not that I want to, but it is what I need to do if I want to catch up to the deadlines. I am especially having trouble in constructing the whole mystery case. Obviously, it is a central piece to the story, but I really need to get it right, for some reasons that maybe I’ll reveal here later hehe. Anyways, it’s a lot. On top of that, I am also constructing both my detectives as characters, really trying to define their personality, but also their internal and external conflicts, as well as their character arcs.

How am I approaching the challenges?

As you can see, I have a lot of things that I am trying to juggle on my plate right now, obviously, it is not easy. And some of the “fixes” I'm doing might not be that helpful. For example, I might not go to my class tomorrow as I have the revision, and as I said before, I am nowhere near the 30-point outline that my teacher wants. I simply need a little more time. I don’t recommend you do this, but as I said at the beginning of these, I was going to walk you through all my thought processes.

Right now, what I need the most is to get my story to work. For that, I need my mystery to work and make sense. If I'm being honest, I'm not sure how I'm going to be doing this; for now, I have looked back at references so that I can see how they go about it. Also, I spent a lot of time today understanding and choosing my story structure, and although I don’t have every detail figured out, it has given me a roadmap. For now, the way I will approach it is simply to try and work backward; I know how it ends and some of the motivations, so I’ll start there.

Also, I will use post-its to have a physical representation of my ideas, so that I don’t have to keep it all in my head, plus I can physically move them around and try different combinations. I call this technique "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks."

I’ll keep you posted

I’ll see you next week, hopefully with a fully fleshed-out outline of my story. Hope you are liking these posts; as always, my idea is to give you unfiltered access to my process so that you can see how the final product comes about. If you find it helpful, please share it with friends and by all means, tell me if you want me to make a post about something in particular. I’ll see you next week.