Yeah and Okay
My interest in scriptwriting continues.
I have been taking a Rosetta Stone (no, not the drag queen) approach to grokking the encoding of the standard script structure by purchasing scripts that have already been made into television shows and/or films. In this way, I have been hoping that my grasp catches up with my reach, that I understand how the sparse nature of a typical script page can flesh itself out into well-known and even well-loved entertainment.
So far, so good. And the so-best so-far have been the Season 3 and 4 scripts from The WestWing, or at least those written by Aaron Sorkin. The scientist in me wants to design the proper experiment, maximizing the certainties and aiming the control elements so that the variables under scrutiny can be observed, so that the results can produce evidence, even proof.
Dry, I know, but I learn by analogy. I memorize by visuals. I extrapolate by simulation. My gifts of simultaneity, of context-switching, of continuity come to bear when I write pieces that are considerably longer than a blog entry or a technical treatise. These things animate not in any miraculous way; instead, they simply do. Like breathing. Like being horny and dispatching with that need. The thousand things I think about; the free resources and bandwidth to suppose a thousand more.
Walking while dreaming-up, dreaming-up while writing, writing while inhabiting each and every character, inhabiting the story while walking. Walking while chewing gum.
I come to understand the script as a time-based index card: just enough information contained in it in order to serve the story, usher the tale to its fate. It is I, it is we who explode these few clues on a page into a compelling narrative.
It's the screenwriter's job to decide which scribblings and peckings should appear in the miserable economy of words of a screenplay.
The turgid prose of my typical first draft is already groaning at the impending abnegation.
...
On another note, the warmest wishes for wonderment to the dogpoet while he's in the UK and Amsterdam. I'm jealous as hell, as I still miss the Netherlands as much as ever. The bastard better bring me back the stroopwafels I asked for.