2023 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge: Day 9

One month. FADE IN to FADE OUT. Creativity meets Productivity.

Zero Draft Thirty: Day 9.

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!

As for me, I will spend the month rewriting a feature film spec script.

If you join the Challenge, I will be right there with you writing each and every day in March! Let’s do this together!

Download your very own Zero Draft Thirty calendar — designed and created by Steven Dudley — and track your daily progress!

On Twitter, use this hashtag: #ZD30SCRIPT.

Join the Zero Draft Thirty Facebook Group: Here. 4,800+ members strong.

Today’s Writing Quote

“The point is getting it all down, even if it’s crap or incomprehensible to anyone but you.”

— Warren Ellis

Today’s Inspirational Video

A video produced by the Writers Guild Foundation called Words:

It was released in 1987, the year I joined the Guild. I remember seeing it several times and it inspired me as I pushed myself to learn the craft.

Today’s Stax Music Video

I have dedicated the 2023 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge as Stax Music Month. Part of that decision is to honor one of the greatest record companies of all time (check out their history here). But mostly, it’s an excuse to feature awesome R&B and soul music to get you out of your chair, dance around the room for 5 minutes, churn up your creative juices, then sit right back down and write your ass off.

Today’s featured song: “I Thank You” by Sam and Dave.

Today’s Dalton Trumbo Award winner: Ingrid Elkner.

Over in the Zero Draft Thirty Facebook group page, Ingrid posted this:

I’m back inside an unfinished vomit draft (can you really call it that if it was started in 2018?), and I’ve hit the part that always blocks me: a set-piece.

My brain doesn’t know how to write it.

Yes, all action must stem from character. Yes, it must create conflict with the oppositional forces.

But none of that makes the mechanics easy to write.

I would settle for difficult.

But by the power vested in me by Grayskull (Zero Draft Thirty), I feel enthused to nut out this action sequence once and for all, and type THE END before April.

First off, I appreciate and applaud Ingrid’s courage to lay out in public a stumbling block she’s confronted in her writing process. That’s one of the wonderful things in being a part of a writing community: You can find support from other writers. For example, fellow Zeronaut Tully Archer suggested this:

Try shaking something up so your brain goes oh wait what are we doing? I’m sure it’s fine… like for example, write it by hand. or write it like prose. or writer it completely silly. It’s only a first draft anyway, no harm no foul if it’s pure insanity. It just needs to exist so you can come back and look at it later.

That’s the spirit. If it helps more, embrace that it’s not even a first draft. It’s a ZERO DRAFT! Put something down in writing, then move on. What you discover writing the script from this point on could inform how you rewrite the set piece when you go on to the next draft.

Let me add this: What does this set piece have to do with the Protagonist’s psychological journey? Assuming it pushes, prods, or provokes some movement in their transformation, that could also provide inspiration on how to shape the set piece to drive home that point.

Bottom line: Get something down. You can always rewrite it.

For the courage to share her concern in a public forum, the recipient of today’s Dalton Trumbo Award is Ingrid Elkner.

To learn more about Dalton Trumbo and his fascinating career as a screenwriter, go here.

For your chance to win the Dalton Trumbo Award, one given away each day during the Challenge, post something inspiring, here on the blog, via Twitter, or the Facebook group.

Congratulations, Ingrid!

For background on how the Zero Draft Challenge came into being and what it is, go here, here, and here.

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8

Now Zeronauts, Scamperers, Word Warriors, and Outlaws…

GET SOMETHING DOWN!

SPREAD THE WORD!

SCAMPER ON!