First ten

I hate the first ten pages of a new script, it’s just painful. All this setting up situations and characters, introducing people to the audience and, in this case, each other (which, by the way, are the worst kind of introductions to write “Hi I’m Bob, this is my wife Lena.” “Hello Bob, I’m Mental Von Pringlestein and …” oh, sorry, I’ve fallen asleep)- it’s boring, there’s no momentum and there’s too much choice in the dialogue.

The last ten pages are much easier, you’ve built up momentum during the script, you know the characters better and the deadline is hammering aggressively on the door, demanding to be let into the room. Dialogue is much easier at the end too, apart from knowing how the characters react to weird stuff, there’s also much less for them to say apart from things like:

“Look out!”

“Shit!”

“Ow!”

And

“Fuck me, his head exploded!”

For me there seems to be an exponential curve when writing a script: the first ten pages are horribly slow, one word a day kind of slow, and the last few pages flow out so fast I can barely keep up.

Maybe I should learn to type properly?

Yeah, that would waste some time.

Another issue I’m having, which is an oldie but a consistently fucking irritating goodie: one of the characters won’t behave. He’s meant to be an immoral, sociopath who does what he wants and fuck anyone else. He’s the kind of guy who uses no smoking signs to strike matches on (which is probably impossible unless you’ve got the kind of matches which go off spontaneously in your pocket) and he don’t give two shits about no one or nothing … including the fucking plot.

Twice now I’ve had him in a scene and he’s just fucking ruined it, he’s like a surly teenager who refuses to join in.

“Come on Brian, join in, it’ll be fun.”

“Fuck you, you smell of wee you old bat.”

And then he gets his cock out and pisses on the nearest infant. It’s just irritating, why won’t he fucking behave? The biggest problem he’s causing is people are going to start getting chopped up pretty soon and it’s pushing suspension of disbelief into the realms of fucking impossible to think he won’t be the first to go. If I had to spend a weekend in a remote, spooky mansion with this git I’d have knacked him across the face with an axe before we got locked in and the only car got blown up.

Seriously, what a cunt.

Oh look, it’s lunch time.