I had a gameplan for how I wanted to proceed with my screenwriting career. In the short term, I would be drafting a query letter for my script of Dig Down while I waited for the writer’s strike to get resolved. In the long term, I would be focusing on writing a new story with the sole intent of writing it as a screenplay first, instead of trying to adapt the story into a script format.
I felt it was a sound plan, and yet…I found that it was a struggle.
I don’t think that the source of these struggles was from the plan itself. It was a good way to bide my time while improving an already advantageous position. Rather, I think the issue was that I was trying to apply this to my adaptation of Dig Down.
With time, I started to see this with more clarity. Part of my plan was itself a concession that it would be a struggle continuing on with my script of Dig Down. I had recognized that there was a limit to how much I could do with my own stories in a new format. The feedback I’d gotten from the second consultation had called for a lot of changes to how I felt the story should go, most notably cutting down close to 20 pages from the script. While I felt that Dig Down should have a quick pace, I also believed it was more than just a bare-bones, typical 90 minute movie-going experience.
As I had noted in the May 6th blog post, the revisions to polish Dig Down into an industry accepted script were possible, but I didn’t believe I was the one to do this. I was too close to the story, held it close to my heart as the way I had originally written and published it, and it wouldn’t seem right to me making the level of changes that were being suggested.
It was a shame because I felt most of the query letter was in a way already written. From webinars I had already attended, it sounded like I was in a prime position to query and pitch to agents. The advice given in the webinars was that if you had placed as a finalist, with your script already vetted by judges and placed very highly, to go out and market it — pitch!
But I could also see that even if I generated some interest from agents, even studios, that similar – if not the exact same – revisions were going to be suggested, maybe even insisted on. And I’d be facing the same scenario I was looking at now, only delayed by a couple of months, one that I didn’t know I was up for because of how wrong it would feel for me to make, even if I did believe they would be necessary if I wanted it to become a film.
As I went over the scant few lines I managed to write for my query letter over and over again, I knew I had approached the inevitable. I’d reached the end of the road of how far I would be willing to take my script of Dig Down on my own.
If I was going to continue my screenwriting career, it would only be possible through the second part of my plan: writing a brand new story specifically as a script.