Sunday, February 01, 2009

In Reading again

My migrant lifestyle continues. I'm back at the flat in Reading, once again reduced to Rubbish Internet(tm). The trip down was appalling, there were engineering works between Oxford and Reading so I thought I'd go via London again.

Next time I'll go to Oxford and use the bus replacement. The Virgin train to London was fine (as previously mentioned the trip time is too short and the table uncomfortably high but never mind that). I then had to negotiate the Underground, half of which was closed due to engineering works. Then I got the slow train to Reading from Paddington, because I was too impatient to wait a further ten minutes for the fast train.

Progress on Unit X? For various reasons I was very tired and didn't feel up to creating new content so I thought I'd read through what I'd done so far. So I did a bit of editing, which means I was chopping out dialogue, cutting back action descriptions and generally making the whole script shorter. Thus making it harder to reach my target. Then I came to the place where I knew I needed to change one scene and add a related scene, so I did.

It was a Joss Whedon moment. I'm a fan. I needed to get over a piece of information, I was going through various ideas of how I could achieve this and then I thought: How would Joss write this scene? And it came to me. What he does is throw the script headlong towards a cliché and then makes a sudden left just before he gets there. (The scene in the crypt with Ethan Rayne is a classic example - I did search to see if this was available on YouTube, but I got my own description coming up on Google instead.)

I'm not sure this scene (and its precursor) are as good as they could be yet, but they'll do for now.

Anyway the end result is that the script ended up being a page longer (with the bits taken away and the bits added) so I'm now on 60%. Go me.

This is going to be a stressful week. Not only am I starting my new contract at Paramount Comedy tomorrow, but I should find out whether the BBC want "Winter" turned into a script (which would be my first commission if it happens), and perhaps we'll hear on Red Planet this week.

Hopefully I'll finish the first draft of Unit X as well, I'm happy to report the characters are beginning to become real for me now which makes the writing and editing considerably easier.



What's on the turntable? "Orange Crush" by R.E.M. from their Greatest Hits - sometimes tracks just don't mean anything.

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