"Allen Bridge" blog #20...

Three-of-five 'chunks' in Act III have now been done - so it's all down to one big chunk and one little chunk. Current page count is 109, and right now I'm in the midst of the 'one big chunk' - the denouement of the script, the big tying together of various characters, themes and loose ends, that all collides at one point in dramatic fashion.

After that there's just a chilling coda to write, and then - of course - a tidying up.

This big denouement though, is a complex scene to write - so I'm writing it and re-writing it, each time adding new elements, because it involves the two main characters (and their back stories), another character who has become more prevalent throughout the script (and yet another character who has more of a background role to play at this very moment), flashbacks, and intercutting of scenes. So the method I'm taking is this - write a basic A-to-B of the scene for Miller, then go back and insert the flashbacks relating to him at that moment, at the same time as tweaking bits here and there.

Then, with intercutting, bring in Ryman arriving at the scene and coming across what's going on, at which point it all ties together. So rather than write the scene in a trudging manner as it would appear on screen from-the-off, I'm writing it in layers - one layer at a time - which not only keeps the momentum going, but it's also far more effective in keeping it intelligible.

It's quite exciting, because although I know how it's going to end, it's seeing exactly how it all comes together that will prove to be quite interesting for me. It's the difference between basically describing a scene, and then viewing the scene in its actual entirety.

So all-in-all it's going very well at the moment.