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.