Zeus, Thor, Jehovah-- FAITH keeps us going!

[Randall_Oelerich]

No I am not here to save anybody (I am too lost myself, no compass, can't even start a fire with a flint!). But it is Sunday. And rainy, gloomy, dark, cold. At least here in northern Minnesota.

It strikes me that FAITH is a huge part to successful writing, something I proved again to myself today, a concept I reinforced-- as I added a new scene today that was initially going to be a transition scene of a sort, but ended up being a really scary scene with elements never done before, that really is elevating my act one setup.

I prefer to call first drafts vomit drafts, and man o man does my vomit stink! But the only way to get the damn screenplay written is to give myself permission to write utter crap (after first spending a great deal of time structuring)! Keeping the FAITH, believing that the story and screenplay will get better with iterative tweaking and rewriting, adding new scenes, cutting, blah blah blah. So I was just curious if others share my faith, worship Courier-12, in hopes salvation?
--randall

 

[Eric Boellner]

I sacrifice multiple lambs daily to Courier 12. Sunday's never been a good writing day for me, though. Maybe I should change up my sacrificial offering on Sunday and hope for better results...

 

[Ted Spencer]

Finished barfing out the first script draft today of a short I've been struggling to find time for for a while (been in the treatment stage for months). Sundays can definitely work for me...

Now it's on to the rewrites end edits...

 

[texvanwinkle]

It strikes me that FAITH is a huge part to successful writing, something I proved again to myself today, a concept I reinforced-- as I added a new scene today that was initially going to be a transition scene of a sort, but ended up being a really scary scene with elements never done before, that really is elevating my act one setup.

(after first spending a great deal of time structuring)!

Faith always rests on some foundation, and when it comes to writing, you've hit the nail in the second quote. It's not a given, obviously—it's deceptively easy to come up with a bad plan—but it's far easier to have faith that even your initial draft will be reasonably tight, coherent, and affecting, when you've done your homework on your story. I don't believe writers who say they don't plan what they write. It may not be written down—done in the their head as they go along—or it may be put on it after the fact in revisions, but eventually the river needs banks or it's not a river. It's just a lake, or worse, a swamp, going everywhere and nowhere without direction.

If you've done that work ahead of time, well—"well" being the key word—your story will be solid, and yeah, I think you can have faith that, so long as you don't lose that heading, it will continue to get better. It's just a matter of executing it to the best of your ability.