The Right Thing

Here’s an important fact that you’re going to have to learn to deal with if you’re writing something: During the writing process, whether it’s writing a book,  a movie, or the excuse note for being late to class, things are going to change. This is life. We come up with ideas, we toss them up, we shoot them down and start over. It’s sort of a literary skeet shoot.

But it is during this process when the magic happens. We find that when we throw out ideas, some stick to other ideas to form a whole new one. Other ideas might hover for a while, spawn new ideas, and then find themselves shot down while their children prosper. And some ideas are so good on their own that they just can’t be shot down at all. (Of course, these ideas are rare by the standards of most, and almost nonexistent for me.)

During the writing of this screenplay, we had a character that developed into being the leading lady’s father. I liked him. He was the ideal dad, and I really thought he would fit the bill perfectly. However, during a peer review (which is SO important in this stage!), a few plot holes were revealed that were in part due to this man being her father. So a suggestion was offered: Make this other character her father, and make the character in question a family member, such as an uncle, etc.  The solution was perfect – it closed a major plot hole, opened up potential for more great dialog, and solved virtually every problem that we found in one fell swoop. There was only one minor problem – I didn’t like this at all!

The problem is that I fell in love with my characters as we dreamed them out. To me, they had already become real people, and you can’t just go around changing the lives of real people. This man had to be her father, there was no other way I could be happy. And so I hemmed and hawed and pouted about it for a while. But eventually, I put on my directors’ cap, and reminded myself that if a director is so in love with his vision for the film that he can’t change it, that film is almost certainly going to flop. So I took a breath, thought about it rationally, and realized that indeed, the advice I was given was right. The scripting has been changed, and I am thankful for the peer input.

In your filmmaking, if you find yourself getting so attached to your ideas that when other people tell you they’re not working you shut them down, take a step back and give everything a fresh new look. Maybe they’re right. Maybe you do need to change your main character. Maybe you need to cut your favorite scene so the crowd doesn’t fall asleep. That’s life. Make the changes you need to make, and if all else fails, remind yourself that there’s always the director’s cut version, or at the very least, bonus features on the DVD

Peace!

-Jim