I felt I was getting close to having everything in my story. I felt I had a good parable of Good and Evil in the package of a Western. I felt I had incorporated a good lesson in how people work with one another, and how those who were most effective in doing so got their desired results. I felt I had some really good set pieces and turning points for the story that would act not only as tent poles for the plot but could really stick with the audience.
But I still had the nagging issue of having a main character who was more reacting to everything in the story instead of being proactive with it. And unfortunately, further outlining wasn’t resolving this. Doing so was only making me fill out the scenes and sequences with more details.
It was getting to the point where I felt my outlining was basically writing entire scenes. I was reaching a point where I found I was holding myself back from adding anything more.
And yet, I still wasn’t resolving the issue of making the main character more of a driving force. He would be essentially manipulated into doing the bidding of others, would be both aware of it at times, and unaware of it. The true manipulation was going to be insidious, as this story’s main conflict was really between two parties, neither of whom were the main character, but who they were caught between.
Each day I was putting down more and more ideas until I got what I thought was a great idea. Why don’t I just start writing the screenplay. Sure, there was still this last major point that needed to be worked out, but I thought maybe once I got going, I would find the character’s deepest motivations, and it would allow them to be a driving force where they needed to be in the script.
I didn’t know then that this would be the beginning of a mistake.