If last week was any indication, some of you are probably considering submitting pages by tomorrow night's deadline, but you haven’t yet sat down to knock them out. Maybe you’re refining an idea in your head. Maybe you’ve even got a couple of ideas, and you’re not sure which way to go.
Here’s a suggestion: Don’t over-think it. You’ve probably only got room (not to mention time) to introduce one good, new element. Maybe a new character or a new set of circumstances. Take us someplace intriguing, then hand the baton to the next writer. If your draft isn’t fully realized or perfectly executed, I can help clean it up before we post it Wednesday. That’s partly what that two-day delay is for.
Remember, we’re still early in the story. So far, this week’s entries tend to expand on situations we've already seen: the nature of Russ Napolitano’s relationship with Celeste, the capabilities of Sydney’s car.... That’s important stuff, and we’ll get to it in time.
But we’ve already introduced that part of Napolitano’s world. I don’t need to know whether he’s sleeping with Celeste right now. What I would like to find out, or at least get a hint of, is where his big conflict is coming from. Maybe not this week, but in the next two or three at the most, we should see what some screenwriting teachers call “the inciting incident,” something that brings this story into focus and sets it on a clear path.
It might involve an existing element -- Celeste, Sydney's car, the money in the tunnel -- or it might be something new.
I kind of hope it is.
