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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.

After all this work I’d been putting into the planning of my new story, there were still some aspects that still needed some work. Two of the major areas that still remained involved my main character and the plot.

Using the six essential questions had really shaped out a lot of the story, and I felt I understood the philosophy of my main character and where they fit into it. He was a hired hand, for essentially any job that paid well enough, but never accumulated much wealth. He would take on tougher and tougher jobs that paid higher and higher, just so he could treat himself to a taste of the good life. It led him to take on dangerous jobs, including going after wanted men, because pursuing this line of work and getting the payoffs was better than putting in the honest work where you made just enough to survive but never actually enjoyed living.

What I was having a small challenge with was having this philosophy come out in the best way during the story, in a way that had the most impact on the story. I felt the cast of characters, even down to tertiary ones were leaving their mark on the events that were taking place, but that my main character, while not being a passenger, he was definitely capitalizing on situations where he could, but he wasn’t having as big of an impact on the story, at least as it was being framed in the outlining process, it was more just moves happening around him and to him that he had to react to and use to his advantage.

The other aspect was the plot itself. I felt I had reached a point where I knew what all of the big moments were going to be in the script, it was how these story beats were connecting that I felt wasn’t coming together as well as it could. Most of the time, the situations and predicaments I was putting the main character in were temporarily being resolved just by writing a scene in which he escaped.

I was exploring these bridge scenes deeper and deeper as I was outlining, only as I was doing so, I found I was just filling out the scenes with more and more detail. It wasn’t really what I was setting out to achieve though.

I was just looking for that last little bit of the story. It’s that last little bit that really brings the story together.

I was getting into the characters and the world I was creating. So much so that each time I was sitting down to outline, I was essentially creating the entire interactions that were making up the scenes. I felt I had reached a point where the only thing left to do was write.

Despite these urges to just start, I felt I was still teetering in a state of limbo. I felt that although I had a strong sense of the characters and what needed to happen, I felt some things were still missing. The first was that although I knew what plot points needed to happen, I didn’t always have the bridge scenes to get from one to the next.

I also wanted to make sure that if I was writing a Western, that it would have the tone and atmosphere of one. When I’m starting a project that is genre specific, for instance, I like to read and watch stories in that genre to make sure that what I’m writing will be infused with that same type of feel. For example, before I sat down to write Lock the Doors, part of my outlining was watching horror movies, specifically ones in the Friday the 13th series.

I feel this is a vital part of writing that you don’t always see in stories, but if you’re trying to attract the audience of a genre, they’re coming in expecting that type of story arc and tropes. You can definitely add elements from other genres into it, but when doing so, its important to make sure that it fits with the established genre.

I had a couple Westerns around the house, namely The Man with No Name trilogy, and while I was preparing for a second marathon, I started listening to some Westerns on my runs by Louis L’Amour and Elmore Leonard. I also ordered a collection of 10 essential Westerns to watch as I prepared to start a first draft.

I felt I was getting close.