The last few weeks have seen a marked lack of inspiration where this blog has been concerned, so for creative fulfilment I’ve had no choice but to write something else. With more scriptwriting modules looming next year, a screenplay seemed an appropriate project, and Warm Leather – the short story I wrote just before Christmas – seemed to be the perfect source material to use. Before it existed as prose, it had been a very rough short film, and now that the story has given me a better idea of where everything in it is going, I decided that it was time to redraft it in its original form.

In order for me to get at least one new draft finished, the script currently sticks as close as it possibly can to the story. I have removed certain lines of dialogue that feel awkward in hindsight, but otherwise I am simply imagining each scene as if there were a camera present. At this moment in time, I’m almost eight pages into a film that I wouldn’t expect to last more than half an hour if I was actually making it. That might not sound like a very long script, but as a general rule of thumb, one page equals approximately one minute of screen time – so the completed product should be around 30 pages long. Don’t forget that as I have an alarming tendency to procrastinate, eight pages is arguably quite an achievement!

As is the case with many other projects, I’m hoping that if I maintain some kind of routine, and write a little bit more of the script every day, I’ll have a draft done very quickly – something complete to show for my efforts if anyone asks to see it. Then I can re-examine it more closely, and make any initial improvements. That seems simple enough, doesn’t it? Surely I can stick to that plan…

Mason