"Allen Bridge" blog #14...

I'm fast approaching the end of the first version of Act II, with one more 'chunk' left to do for it, and the current page count is 84. I've got room to breathe in Act II, which makes a nice change from the very first version of Act I, which was overlong by 14 pages originally (it's now overlong by 4 pages). I plan to extract some stuff from there and put it into the beginning of Act II, as well as trim further, however with Act II - in addition to tightening - I'll be looking to explore some more, particularly adding in lots of small details and nuances along the way. The sort of things you can't always weave in when you're doing your very first pass.

For the first time on this project, I did a writing session at night. So far I've only written in the afternoons, and I used to always write at night - which is when my mind is at its most open, and when I'm not going to be interrupted by anything - however for this project I haven't been doing that for some reason. Anyway, it was a key scene for protagonist Miller that I wrote last night, part of a double-whammy (even triple-whammy) closer for Act II, and I'm really pleased with how it came out. I'm especially pleased with how I was able to translate very specific body language and actions from what I saw in my head, onto the page. It ended up being a very dramatic sequence, and it features the only time we hear a voice on a phone.

Until this point, any phone conversations have been totally one-sided - I intended it to be this way, because we are within Allen Bridge, and I wanted us to have a sense that we're trapped there, and it also adds another layer of mystery ... what are the people on the other end of the line saying? However, in the scene I wrote last night, we finally hear a voice coming from outside of the town - that of Susie - and we hear it for a very important reason.

I'll stop there though, lest I spoil anything. Suffice to say, I'm very pleased with last night's session and aside from basic tidying, I can't imagine I'll do much re-writing to that particular scene.

There's just one more 'chunk' left to write before the first version of Act II is complete - at which point I'll have a brief pause in proceedings, as I'm starting work on a new educational DVD project, and all the files for the first of the three planned films are ready to go. So it'd be a convenient time to have a brief pause, before resuming with a re-drafting of Act II, in the lead-up to the Act III sprint to the finish line.