I had been outlining and fleshing out the idea for a Western for nearly 6 months. I felt I had good backstories and motivations for most of the characters, even delving down to tertiary ones. There were still scene transitions that I felt needed more work, and I wanted a better understanding of my main character — I think I had a clear idea of his outlook on life, but there was still the inner workings of him as a character that I think needed a little more development.
As I mentioned three weeks ago, I decided to do something that in retrospect I acknowledge was jumping the gun.
I decided to start working on a first draft.
I wasn’t going to use the software that I currently had, called FadeIn. I liked the application, but without a subscription, which I didn’t have, if I printed it to PDF for submission, it would print out (Printed with a Demonstration version of Fade In) at the top of each page.
So, I decided, because it was still a first draft, and the most primitive of first drafts, that I would be writing it all down in a notebook. To me, this still wouldn’t be an official first draft, that wouldn’t happen until I got a new screenwriting application, but I just wanted to start getting something down on the page. And I already had a clear idea on how the opening sequence to hook the audience would go.
In the hopes that as I was writing, I would discover the last few nagging details about the story, small like the transitions, big like the details of the main character, I set to work.
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