LATE Late March 2026: 6 Goals Accomplished

Another writing goal accomplished! And I snuck this one in just before March was all done with! This one is labeled as Write 2nd Draft of Script (Gun) because I like writing in halted speech patterns… and I was working with limited space. But to lengthen it out here where I got some extra leg room, the goal was to write the 2nd draft of my script, “Son of a Gun.”

I had come up with the idea last year, completely by accident. A good deal of my ideas come to me this way. I get a spark of an idea, the oxygen fans it into a flame, and then I am envisioning good portions of the idea. And I have to at least write some of them down so I don’t forget them. This one, I became so enthralled with the idea, I stopped what I was doing (playing video games) to write down the ideas… and then the ideas kept coming… and I kept writing. I was laughing at my own ideas like a madman. Characters and scenes were coming to me and I was full-on in pre-outline mode.

I know what you’re wondering. Did I get back to the video game? Yes, eventually. I got in some more playing time, but I halted with the game for a good half hour to write out these ideas. And then I was so excited about the idea, I had to jump into actually working on it right away. Usually with ideas that come to me like, I write down all the ideas so I don’t forget, and then I say, “I’ll get to this at a later point.” And it goes in my invisible queue. But sometimes I’m so overtaken by an idea, I HAVE to work on it.

That was this. Son of a Gun. I came up with the rest of the ideas, the characters, did the outline, and wrote the first draft over the next couple months. I won’t get into too much about it, but it’s a comedy… an outlandish comedy. Some of it I knew was so outlandish, but that was part of the appeal, so I decided to push the limits even more with it. That’s part of the appeal of it… it’s ludicrous nature.

I finished the first draft and was happy. I worked on other projects, and then I wanted to get back to the second draft after some time. I did just that in the past several weeks. A lot of times I reread my first drafts and many jokes still hit, some not as hard, some spur on chuckles, and then I see how some jokes don’t work. I can remove them, fix them, whatever. And this isn’t just for jokes, just any portion of the script at all. But even my scripts that I think are really funny, I usually don’t make myself laugh too hard with them. I imagine the scene in my head and it’s funny, but that’s usually the extent of it.

Occasionally, I laugh out loud at my own joke. I promise, I usually don’t do that much at all. It has to be really good. Well, I was doing that a lot with this one, which made me feel like I really have something. Of course, it’s still just my own opinion, but still, I made myself laugh pretty hard. And I also made myself do the, “Oh my God” through a laugh. Like I said, I pushed the limits. I wrote in a way I don’t always write because I wanted to really go outlandish. It’s got a bit of shock factor, and some really… let’s say… unique language. So, I hope it stands out.

Overall, I was really happy with the script but it needed some tweaking, of course. Some jokes dragged and were meh, so I removed them. I added a couple scenes, I trimmed, I fixed up quite a bit. The rough draft was 115 pages and I got it down to 110, which is my sweet spot. I had also recently gotten a great tip about script writing, how you want to write it in a way where people can envision what you’re saying, but unlike a book or short story, you’re not trying to explain every detail. A book or short story, that’s the end product. With a script, you ideally want it to get made. Which means actors and a director need to see it, like it, but also feel they are able to put their flair on it. They need to feel they can contribute, add their own artistic presence to it.

It’s an interesting balance to try to achieve. You want to paint a picture, but you don’t really want to finish it. You want it to be complete, but you want a good deal of white space left for another artist to come in and add to it. Maybe you outline the horizon in the back, but you don’t color it all in. I knew this to some extent before, but the advice I got really drove the point home.

What director sees a script that has every detail spelled out, and then wants to work on it? They don’t just want their name on it. They want their style on it. There needs to be room to work with it.

I actually got the advice for a different script and I wound up doing a 3rd draft for that one, but it is advice I will carry with me for all scripts. And it helped me to eliminate a lot of unnecessary stuff from the script. A lot of extra description that is great for a story… but too much for a script.

So, I slashed that 115-page action-comedy down to 110, tightened it up, polished it, and now it’s good to go. I may enter this one into some script competitions. At the very least, I think it is extremely unique and might be a calling card for me, even if no one wants to make it. But if they want to, fantastic. I left a lot of white space for another artist to fill in.