Scene workshops

One of the better exercises I do in class, I think, is a week devoted to scene workshops, which is this week. I have each student submit their longest dialogue scene. We workshop it and almost always end up with a stronger, shorter scene. I hope to show how incredibly efficient the film narrative form is. Sometimes the change is quite dramatic: a slow talky 3 or 4 page scene becoming a tight powerful one page scene. Almost always, the student "gets it" and hopefully uses the insight to rewrite the rest of the script.

So today I go through their scenes and "edit" them ahead of time so I don't have to do too much thinking on my feet. A lot of work but a full day to do it.

Earlier I rewrite the new splay and emailed it to my agent. I think the ending still needs cranking up. I have a very hard time writing "Hollywood" endings. Definitely my weakness as a commercial screenwriter.

If I get the workshop stuff done early, I hope to do some work on the novel later.