rewriting
i wrote The Absolution Protocol (feature | sci-fi thriller) back over the summer, and i had really struggled with breaking the story in the outline stage. i spent like, weeks struggling through act two and it was incredibly dispiriting. i went on a writing retreat in the woods and wrote Nothing, lmao. it was awful.
i eventually got something resembling an actual outline and a decent story out of it. writing the actual script wasn't hard, it was just trying to figure out the story up front that made it miserable. this is why we outline, folks.
anyway i ended up with a decent script that got a bit of interest, some good feedback, a few read requests, etc. i let that roll and started to work on Wet Food (which was a whole different experience) and essentially forgot about TAP.
then i got really depressed in october through the end of the year and i didn't write anything at all for weeks. it really felt like i was never going to write anything again and i was doubting that the scripts that i had written in 2025 were all garbage.
i forced myself to be Normal while my mom was here for the holidays, and it sort of worked, so i signed up for two different rewrite classes in january. i'm focusing on TAP for both of them, so, of course, i had to re-read it before i sent it to the instructors for their initial review.
i danced around it for a while before i actually read it. i printed out the script. let it sit on my desk. i spilled soup on it. i finally cracked it open. i read through it one morning and jotted notes on the cover page in pencil, then i let it sit for another day or two.
i decided that i wanted to re-outline the script, maybe even finish a rewrite before i send it off to the instructors (due by jan 14th. lol, lmao even). so i started off with note cards. immediately got frustrated by how slow that was going to be. switched to a fresh beat board in final draft. FD was, of course, slow and crashy. so i invented a template in canva. i played around with setting up the template Just Right before i finally started re-outlining.
all this to say i'm on day? two? of re-outlining and it's going surprisingly well. i am distractible as hell so it's going slow but it's going. i'm making some pretty big changes to the plot and structure and characters of the story, but i feel like it's working. i'm already into act two.
i do not think that i'm going to be able to get a full rewrite done by wednesday (lol, lmao what was i thinking), but i think i will have a very good outline to guide my rewrites once i get feedback from the two instructors next saturday and sunday.
tbh, i haven't really done Real Serious rewrites on a script like this. mm, that maybe isn't true. i did some revisions with La Mochila Express that were pretty major (and i am working my way back to that script mentally, also), but this feels different somehow. rewriting is hard bc it's so tempting to declare a script Finished and then move on to the next new shiny thing if people don't immediately respond to it. i think i should be a better writer and actually do some serious polishing on scripts if i want to get anything made. and it's annoying.