boring writing stuff while i watch football and the emmy's

I've finally hacked my through to a solution on hammering out the treatments of my stories in a fashion that doesn't have me creating temporary solutions that, without a doubt, wreak havoc in the scriptwriting stage - but to be more specific, the problems come when revising.

For all these years I've created unnecessary problems for myself when it came to revising my drafts and finalizing my ideas; when I would write my treatments - and subsequently my first drafts - I would half-ass it when it came to filling in holes in the story. I'm not speaking of plot holes, but rather the simple A,B,Cs of the story. For instance, when I came to a point where it went like so:

Okay. I know what I know in the next scene between these two characters, but I know I'm missing an action beat. But since I don't feel like figuring this out, so I'll just move on. .... Damn! Does this sequence fit with the rest of the story? Does this character arc even seem realistic? IS the theme clear?

These were all questions that have plagued me with every story has has made it to the revision stage. And this is only because I hated so much to bring my excitement for the story to a halt in order to focus on a seemingly minute detail (I know, right? I've previously considered the clarity of theme as a minute detail! Shame on me!).

Now, I don't think this is so much a problem that occurs that the Treatment stage, but more of something that occurs in the brainstorming/spitballing/whatevering stage. I think it's had something to do with me going directly from Idea to Treatment. That is, I never spent much time thinking about all the little details within the acts, so my treatments simply became an extended version of a simple idea, and not a more detailed and intricate execution of said idea.

Does that make sense? Probably not.

Ah, hell.

So what I'm doing this semester is hammering out a screenplay from start. A western in the style of Leone's flicks (especially Duck, You Sucker), as well as The Wild Bunch, Rio Bravo, and The Searchers. Thematically it's closest to Ford's Searchers, as it's a study of institutional racism the Old West.

The key this time around is that I started with just the vaguest of ideas of how I wanted to tell the story. I knew how it started, and I was pretty sure I knew how it wanted end. I had an idea of the main characters and the settings. I had a nice sense of the style I wanted the picture to express. And not much else...

...but I'm taking a lot of time to flesh out the little details one at a time as they come until I have a treatment created organically. The first time through it was one page. The second time it was about three. The third draft was six. I've made two attempts at the fourth run-through, but

started over because I stopped to figure out the tiny little details of just one sequence.

It feels pretty darn good.

Told ya. Boring writing stuff.