Another Way To Breathe

A few weeks back in one of my newsletters, I did a How I Write Scripts Right Now post. In the mails, I the step by step script things seemed more than a little crunched, so I figure I better lob them up on tumblr to be easier to read and just be in the writer advice tag..

The text below is the intro, and above are the notes on each step of the process.

I woke up to see G Willow Wilson talking about her script process on twitter. Go read. She’s mainly talking about Full Script versus Marvel Method, but the bit which caught my eye was this.

“I used to go straight through and write polished dialogue at the same time as panel descriptions, but that really takes forever. Often I find I have a better idea about how dialogue should sound after I’m done writing panel descriptions.”

This is basically the opposite I way at the work. In fact, at the moment, my method is more like a 3D printer just building up layers of work all over the place until the whole thing is complete. The “at the moment” is key – I’m aware I’ve changed up my methodology a bunch over the years, and still alter my methodology when I need to find another way to write.

I thought I’d show you how I write scripts at the moment, in a hypothetical form.

Blahs is a short hand for better dialogue. And this is gleefully unproofed, written raw. This is not a script I would ever hand in.