Still Alive

With each revision, the story improves.  It's a frustrating, occasionally panic-inducing process.  Looking at the Post-it wall, there are few similarities between the story I started with two weeks ago and what exists now.  

This morning, after a day of banging my head on a third act that didn't feel right, I started sketching out five-sentence synopses of every possible ending variant that popped into my head.  After I had about eight, I started to zero in on something that didn't feel like a complete cop-out.  But the way things have been going, I'll probably wake up tomorrow morning and feel like today's additions were crappy.  Well, even if I only save five percent of each day's gains, that'll get me somewhere, eventually.

One thing I've zeroed in on is that this really is a love story.  It sounds like a simple thing to say, but I had to sweat for about a week before that was clear to me.

Another thing that I'm starting to notice is that a lot of movies (including some movies that I really like) get away with murder in the writing department.  Bad pacing, cliches, too much exposition, repetition -- it turns out that you can still make a successful, well-liked movie, even if your story sucks.  And the literary standards for sci-fi and action movies are especially low.  I feel like I'm already close to the middle of the pack, story-wise.  Anime films, especially, can fall into some weird, solipsistic navel-gazing B.S.  I totally understand the impulse, but nobody cares that you have deep thoughts.  They want to see stuff happening.

I don't know how long I should wrangle with this before I throw in the towel and start drawing (more importantly, I don't know how long I can afford to wrangle with it).

I said I wanted a learning experience.  Boy, did I get what I asked for.