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I had mapped out a gripping opening sequence for the new screenplay I wanted to write. Being a Western, it was going to center around a group of men looking to apprehend a notorious outlaw so that they could collect the bounty. Of course it wouldn’t go smoothly, resulting in a shootout.

This sequence worked great. There would be a buildup to the shootout, as the men were preparing and then closing in on the outlaw. While they were doing so, the dialogue was going to give shape to the story, not only for their current objective, but how this was going to fit into the context of the world I’d set up, laying the foundation for the rest of the plot to play out. There would be references to towns and characters that would be introduced later, and hints at what their goals would be.

It would also introduce two of the main characters, as well as a secondary character that would play an important role throughout the story. The two main characters would be the outlaw, and the man who caught him, and the secondary character would prove to be an obstacle to the main character at multiple times in the script.

The shootout would be deadly, which would establish how much of a force the outlaw was. The outcome of the shootout would then also have an impact on character motivations and the actions they’d take as the story played out.

The main character’s introduction would give insight into who they were as a character. The audience would get a sense of them not so much in the actions they took, but how they performed those actions, which I felt was essential in understanding the character.

The secondary character, along with the supporting characters, would be providing the heavy lifting for the world building I mentioned earlier. There would also be hints, in their dialogue, descriptions, even actions, that would establish their current mindset, something that would establish the foundation for all the things they did afterwards.

The scene itself was one of conflict, and would lay the groundwork for future conflicts.

The writing felt good too. Applying the advice I’d gotten from my second script consultation for Dig Down, I made scenes crisp, establishing the point of them and then getting out. In the pages 11 handwritten pages of this first draft, there were 24 scene changes.

And these pages were in a looseleaf notebook, which already were smaller than the page of an actual script. And as I said in my previous post, I wasn’t formatting it like a normal script, as I was only using half the length of the lines so I could write notes in the other half. So, for an opening sequence where I wanted some action, which could afford to last a couple of minutes, and with a page of script equating to about a minute of screen time, I felt the pace had come out well.

Things were feeling good.

I didn’t want to use the Fade In screenwriting app because I didn’t want ‘Demo’ to appear on the top of every page when I printed out, whether on paper or to a pdf. Sensible enough. So what did I use in place of Fade In?

Did I use another screenwriting app? That would also be sensible…but no.

Did I use Word or some other writing program? It would be a hassle trying to constantly set the margins throughout the screenplay to shift between the default and centered based on actions and dialogue, but it could be done.

Also sensible. No.

I started my first draft in a notebook. Pencil and paper.

While this wasn’t the most efficient way to do this, in fact there were several better ways to work on the first draft, it was a viable option. So, then, did I at least lay out the pages like a script, the same way that a screenwriting program would do it naturally? Way before I had ever gotten Fade In, I had drafted a screenplay this way to get a rough approximation of how it would look in an official script.

No.

Instead, I wrote everything on the left side of the page, and in the left margins, would note whether or not this was an action, or whose dialogue it was. And my writing never crossed the center of the page. My reasoning for this was so I could note the importance of what was being said or done in the actual screenplay. This way, I could use actions to hint at an underlying character trait, or have dialogue help give shape to something about the world, whether it was explaining something about a character’s goal or obstacles, or give context to one of the many conflicts.

It was nowhere near the ideal way to draft a script. But it was alright. It was only a first draft.

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.

I was charged when I woke up with this new idea for a story. So much so that I did something I normally didn’t — I jotted down the concept immediately. Normally I don’t react at all when a fresh idea pops into my head, no matter how much it excites me. My reasoning for this is if I can’t remember it two weeks later, the idea wasn’t as great as I initially thought.

But this one got me to sum up the premise on a stack of index cards I keep in my room by my bed. And I was writing down the concept for the two characters, an idea popped into my head for a third one.

I felt that I already had the heart of the conflict set, with two characters making opposing claims and the story would revolve around who was lying. And I knew right away that if I added this third character, and the concept I had for them, that central conflict would still be there, but it would add a whole other layer to it that would turn the story on its head.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to add it, but I found it extremely encouraging that I was already building on the idea of the story.

Around the time I was starting to loosely draft the Western I had been brainstorming, I had an idea for a new story. This wasn’t uncommon — a lot of times ideas are coming to me most frequently while I’m already working on one.

The idea was also for a Western, and it hit me when I woke up in the middle of the night. I don’t think I had a dream per se that carried over once I woke up. But there it was, waiting for me all the same.

The concept was just so vivid to me, even though the idea itself was just a couple of sentences — it definitely wasn’t a story at that point, but held the promise of one.

The idea was this — there’s an outlaw that’s known throughout the frontier territories by name alone because of the terror he’s wreaked, the heists he’s pulled off, and the bodies he’s left behind. The price on his head is constantly being raised.

One day, a corpse is brought in, and a bounty hunter collects the small fortune for bringing down the most wanted outlaw. The news spreads, until its well known that the rogue is dead in every corner of the country, that its safe to venture out West again.

But long after his reported death, more than enough time for the word to get out, stories emerge, from multiple frontier towns, of their run in with a man claiming to be the slain outlaw, and the heinous acts that followed.

And the idea ended by posing a question: Who’s lying?

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.