2025 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge: Day 23

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

Scott Myers

23 Mar 2025 • 4 min read

Photo by Drazen Nesic at Unsplash

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

Zero Draft Thirty: Day 23.

Write an entire draft of a script in September — 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. It’s based on a story concept I came up with late last year and it may be the strongest comedy idea I’ve ever worked on. Now to take it to the next level.

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. 5,100+ members strong.

Today’s Writing Quote

Don’t be afraid to start. And more importantly, don’t be afraid to finish.”

— Chris Sparling

Today’s Inspirational Poem

Aristotle

By Billy Collins

This is the beginning.
Almost anything can happen.
This is where you find
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.
Think of an egg, the letter A,
a woman ironing on a bare stage
as the heavy curtain rises.
This is the very beginning.
The first-person narrator introduces himself,
tells us about his lineage.
The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.
Here the climbers are studying a map
or pulling on their long woolen socks.
This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.
The profile of an animal is being smeared
on the wall of a cave,
and you have not yet learned to crawl.
This is the opening, the gambit,
a pawn moving forward an inch.
This is your first night with her,
your first night without her.
This is the first part
where the wheels begin to turn,
where the elevator begins its ascent,
before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.
Things have had time to get complicated,
messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.
Cities have sprouted up along the rivers
teeming with people at cross-purposes —
a million schemes, a million wild looks.
Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack
here and pitches his ragged tent.
This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,
where the action suddenly reverses
or swerves off in an outrageous direction.
Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph
to why Miriam does not want Edward’s child.
Someone hides a letter under a pillow.
Here the aria rises to a pitch,
a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.
And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge
halfway up the mountain.
This is the bridge, the painful modulation.
This is the thick of things.
So much is crowded into the middle —
the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,
Russian uniforms, noisy parties,
lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall —
too much to name, too much to think about.

And this is the end,
the car running out of road,
the river losing its name in an ocean,
the long nose of the photographed horse
touching the white electronic line.
This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,
the empty wheelchair,
and pigeons floating down in the evening.
Here the stage is littered with bodies,
the narrator leads the characters to their cells,
and the climbers are in their graves.
It is me hitting the period
and you closing the book.
It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen
and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.
This is the final bit
thinning away to nothing.
This is the end, according to Aristotle,
what we have all been waiting for,
what everything comes down to,
the destination we cannot help imagining,
a streak of light in the sky,
a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

Beginning. Middle. End. Three Act Structure. It’s innate to Story. Hopefully, as you continue to write your script in the Zero Draft Thirty Challenge, you’ve got Act III in view up ahead.

Today’s Daily Dialogue Inspiration

I have dedicated the 2025 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge to memorable movie dialogue. Today: Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

“When I was a little kid in the old country, my mother would warn me, ‘Don’t get too close to people. You’ll catch their dreams.’ Years later, I realized I misunderstood her. Germs, she said, not dreams. ‘You’ll catch their germs.’ I want you to know something, Tucker. I went into business with you to make money. That’s all. How was I to know… if I got too close, I’d catch your dreams?”

I may be the only person I know who saw Tucker: The Man and His Dreams. I always remembered this exchange: “You’ll catch their dreams.”

For those of you who have caught the screenwriting bug (read: germs), you know what it’s like. You’ve caught the dream.

Once I discovered screenwriting, I knew this was it. This specific form narrative storytelling. That’s been my dream for nearly 40 years.

Before you start writing today, I encourage you to go back in time. Reflect on when you discovered screenwriting.

Allow yourself a moment to revel in the sheer excitement and joy you felt … when you caught that dream.

Then … go write

For your chance to win the Dalton Trumbo Award, post something inspiring, here on the blog or the Facebook group.

Now Zeronauts …

Allow yourself to indulge in your dream …

And so inspired … go write.

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