Screenwriting: Backstory baking

I’ve got around 2 weeks left to get the second draft of If We Aren’t Married completed before my friend Coops’ birthday. It’s the first rewrite I’ve done of any piece of work I’ve written and it’s not as hard as I thought it would be. Writing new scenes has given me a chance to improve the plot, give more depth to the characters and the overall structure of the screenplay.

One challenge I have come up against in the past few days is balance and getting the right quantities of backstory and present story in the screenplay. In the first draft for some reason I thought that everyone knew my head. So the reader would instantly know the backstory of each character. In the first draft Ed had a discussion with one of Jen's brothers, however this was the first appearance of her family in the screenplay and I assumed that everybody knew the backstory and why they were estranged. So I ended up writing a strong scene explaining what had gone on before.

The problem I’ve got now is making sure that there is a limit of how much backstory there is, before it overtakes the present day story. And also how you display it, which has proved tricky. For me there seems to be only one way that backstory can be shown and that’s through a flashback. (If anyone has any other ways please let me know.)

With Coops’ initial feedback (of getting rid of the Halla and Olly plotline) I reduced the number of main characters from 6 to 4, and this has proved a little troublesome sometimes when it comes to balancing each couples’ plots, and making sure there is equal distribution of each couple’s plot so it doesn’t side with one couple. This factor in particular is a continuing problem. However maybe once I’ve written all the scenes, it might be easier to play around with the order. When there were 3 couples in the screenplay, I’d always use the third couple as a way of balancing the distribution of the other 2 couples plots.

When it comes to character development, with adding extra backstory scenes, the characters have developed in different ways. With Jake and Sydney, their struggles are from the offset physical and happen around halfway through the film (currently) and with Ed and Jen, their struggles are more emotional and are established at the start of the film. I like the contrast in how each couple have different types of struggles, and when I started writing the screenplay this wasn’t initially how each couple would be. So I like how each character is growing and developing from what I first came up with.

In summary what I’ve found this rewrite is it reminds me a lot of baking and getting the right quantity of ingredients in the mix. You need just enough backstory to make the story rise, but put too little and the screenplay falls to flat. And it’s the same vice versa, put too little present day story and too much backstory and then your screenplay just wrote rise as it’s just not moving anywhere.

Over the next few days I’ve got one more important scene to write and then it’s just a case of seeing what scenes are still a decent standard from the first draft to include in the second draft, and make sure both plotlines with each couple are fully developed. I don’t want anything ending up half baked!

Screenwriting: Mistakes and opportunities, journeys and destinations

Last week I made a couple of really long round trips, and both involved mistakes. I made a minor mistake at work and this resulted in me driving to Bristol to do damage control (but because of where I work and having signed the secret service act, I can’t say what it was.) I’m someone that makes mistakes, not a lot but a fair few. I seem to make more mistakes then most but I learn from them and I’m hopefully constantly improving.

The main thing you get from mistakes is that you won’t make the same mistake again, but on these two occasions I actually got more from them; a chance to be creative.

As I said in my previous post I’ve started doing the rewrite for ‘If We Aren’t Married’ and the writing I’ve done so far has gone well. The journey to Bristol gave me an opportunity to think over a few key points that Coops had said in his notes; these were the back stories for the premise of the film, showing how one of the character’s new girlfriend is good for him and how the ending could be changed after getting rid of two characters.

So on the way to Bristol I thought through how one of the backstories could extended into the present day of the plot and how other parts of one couple’s narratives could be improved because upon reading through the first draft there are parts that are two dimensional.

With the way back from Bristol I thought about the other couple in the story and how the new girlfriend had an effect on things, and instead of thinking of ways she was good to the guy, I ultimately thought of how things would finish between them.

On Friday I went to my friend Hayley aka Rock’s hen do in Chester. I left at 2.30 and my phone said it would take 3 hours, but because it was a Friday and Google maps deciding to take me on and off the M6 toll road I ended up arriving at 7.30. The main part of Rock’s hen do was a party boat and guess what time the boat set off at…yep 7pm! I literally missed the boat! The mistake there was not thinking about Friday rush hour traffic (which Charlotte informs me starts early afternoon.)

                                            Rock and I at her Hen Party

With the trip to Chester after realising I had missed the boat the big question of ‘what if’ came into my mind. What if there were two people that missed the same party boat? And so with the Chester journeys I started to think of the funny things that could happen and how it could work in a film.

I didn’t think at the start of last week I’d end with a lot of miles driven, a new screenplay idea and different things to add to a second draft, but it just proves that sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.