2018 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge: Day 28
One month. FADE IN to FADE OUT. Creativity meets Productivity.
One month. FADE IN to FADE OUT. Creativity meets Productivity.
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 28.
Write an entire draft of a script in March — FADE IN. FADE OUT. Or any sort of creative goal you have in front of you.
Feature length movie screenplay. Original TV pilot. Rewrite a current project. Break a story in prep. Generate a month’s worth of story concepts.
Whatever you feel will ratchet your creative ambitions into overdrive…
DO THAT!
To download your very own Zero Draft Thirty calendar — designed and created by Steven Dudley — and track your daily progress: PDF here, Word version here.
On Twitter, use this hashtag: #ZD30SCRIPT.
Zero Draft Thirty Facebook Group: Here. 2,900+ members strong.
Today’s Writing Quote
“Script gurus sell you their structure rules as dogma. Watching and liking movies tells you dogmatic rules are stupid.”
— Amos Posner
Today’s Poem
Larson’s Holstein Bull
By Jim Harrison
Death waits inside us for a door to open.
Death is patient as a dead cat.
Death is a doorknob made of flesh.
Death is that angelic farm girl
gored by the bull on her way home
from school, crossing the pasture
for a shortcut. In the seventh grade
she couldn’t read or write. She wasn’t a virgin.
She was “simpleminded,” we all said.
It was May, a time of lilacs and shooting stars.
She’s lived in my memory for sixty years.
Death steals everything except our stories.
While I suppose a poem about death is not something one would ordinarily consider to be inspirational, this is different. First, it’s written by the great novelist (“Legends of the Fall”), essayist, and poet Jim Harrison who died in his home in Arizona. He was 78 years old. Second, it’s a powerful poem which reminds us of two things: Each of us is born with an expiration date. And “Death steals everything except our stories.”
Stories transcend death. See if that doesn’t inspire you in writing your current story.
Today’s Loos Award winner: Donald Davis.
Posted in the Zero Draft Thirty Facebook group:
Just wrote “THE END” on page 103 of my #zd30script even though it’s just the beginning.
A reminder that writing a screenplay is an iterative process. That is, you finish a draft (one iteration of the story), then you do another (iteration). You improve the story through rewriting.
It’s great to hit THE END, absolutely. You should celebrate this victory. But as Donald notes, The End is “just the beginning”.
That may demoralize you, but think of it this way: A zero draft takes away the weight of expectation. All you care about is getting to FADE OUT, nothing else. The fact you KNOW you will be rewriting the story multiple should free you up with THIS draft to cut loose and explore your characters’ world.
For that piece of wisdom, the recipient of today’s Anita Loos Award is Donald Davis.
Three more days left. Go. For. It.