Early March: Four Goals Accomplished

Hello, March of 2025! Nice to meet you! So far, you're looking good, as I have accomplished another one of my writing goals I've set for myself for 2025. That's four total now!

I'll admit, this one wasn't one of the tough ones. But it did need to be done, and if I didn't set my goals out for myself, I might've dragged my feet on it. This list of goals is really making me commit even more, so I started this one up and got it done in less than 2 weeks.

I had written this script a while back and then had revisited it, revised it, and landed on a nice second draft. But I knew it was going to need another pass. It had even been a while since I finished the second draft, over a year. That's probably more time than I would usually want to leave a script or story before revisiting it, but I do like to leave them alone for a while before returning to make edits. As I work on things right now, I am literally doing that with the rough draft of my novel that I finished last month. I want to revisit that with fresh eyes, that way I can be more critical of it and see its flaws. So, that was what happened with this script.

It had been plenty of time since I had been working on this script so right away I saw the repetitive pieces, repetitive lines of dialogue, and the jokes that didn't quite land. It's a comedy, so it is supposed to be funny. In case you didn't know that about comedies. I oftentimes just write how I talk, how other people in my life talk, how people in the real world talk... and people curse. So, that means that usually when I write, if it's a script, it's Rated R. This was my first time consciously attempting to make something PG-13. Which by the way, it's not so hard, it's just something to be mindful of. You know, you're still allowed some shits and damns and asses and what not... but I'm pretty certain you only get one fuck.

Example: Billy Madison. PG-13. You got your shits and your damns and your asses... and then when Billy listens to Miss Lippy's story about the puppy, and he expresses his anger with the main character of the book for giving up so easily on finding the lost puppy, he says, "You get your ass out there and you find that fucking dog!" It's the only one. You got to make it good. You got to make it count.

However, finding the proper placement for the one and only Fuck was not at all the focus of my third pass at the script. I already found its home, and it had been living there since Draft 1. I needed to tighten the script up, punch up the jokes, make sure it had everything it needed. I realized it was missing some things, so I needed to add to my script. But it was 108 pages and I didn't want it to get much longer, if at all. 108 pages is a good length (1 hour and 48 minutes) but ideally new writers shouldn't go over 110. And even trying to keep it under is even more ideal. Judd Apatow is well-known, so he's allowed to make comedies that are strictly over 2 hours. Brand new writers, not so much.

But what's great about my writing... well, it isn't great, per se, but it was great in this one instance... is I am wordy and repetitive. So, I did a pass through and cut down everything I didn't need, all that extra stuff. Like a good ab workout... I tightened. Got that sucker down to 105 pages... and I really didn't even change much. THEN, I added what I needed. Extra joke here, extra scene here... voila! Added what I needed, new length of my script... 107 pages.

So, as if by magic, I added the missing elements from my script and cut a page off the total length. This job wasn't about outlining, creating characters, writing everything out... it was just about taking the existing script and polishing it up... but I'm still proud of the fact that I added elements while subtracting pages... a page... because that's probably the perfect outcome I could've hoped for.

So, now, this script is ready. I believe I will be entering it into an upcoming contest. And it's another finished script to add to my arsenal. 5 total now. I have a few others in various stages, but 5 that are completely... complete.

And I have 4 goals accomplished for my 2025 Writing Goals. And it's only early March. Feels pretty good.

As I have already gone over my allotment for a true PG-13 piece, I will have to finish this one off in classic Rated R style.

"Time to fucking celebrate, fuckers!"