"The Peep Show"

Finally put my untitled peep show script to bed. Finished product stands at a well-polished 10 pages, exactly what I wanted it to be all along. I will probably eyeball it again for typos and the like, but the broad strokes are done, things that were bothering me are more or less taken care of. The honest fact is that you can torture yourself over these things until the end of time, but for the sake of your sanity you occasionally just have to say "done."

I think I am. I tried to give my female lead a little more personality, a nudge here, a curious glance there, a whole bunch of self-consciousness than some might expect from someone working in a nudie booth. It's much more subtle than anyone suggested, so she's probably not as good as she could be, but I feel pretty pleased with her.

There's always a fear with characters. As a writer, you tend to know a lot more about them than actually makes it into the final piece. When you're reading it, you always have to check yourself, ask questions like "am I feeling this because I know it, or because that information is in there?" I'm always thinking of other conversations, other stories for the same characters, so I'm especially bad about it. Or at least, I think I am. It's one of the many reasons I like getting fresh eyes on things, other people's eyes on them.

So there's that. I didn't change much at the end, but the transition into the big reveal is smoother now, I think, mostly thanks to some dialogue tweaks that happened more because I wanted to get it down to 10 pages, than all the different and new stuff I tried to tack on when actively attempting to fix it. I think that's funny, kind of unexpected, but it's also probably more common than I realize. Sweating a script isn't just about eliminating unnecessary beats, and killing one word lines - it's also about looking at what you have, and whether the repetition you employ [if you employ repetition... I can't imagine anyone wouldn't - good, realistic dialogue sort of demands it].

If anyone would like to see the finished product, I'll be happy to show it to you, and I'd love to hear what you think. Just message me, either here, via email, or on Facebook. It's not drastically different from earlier drafts though, so if you have read those, you might want skip this one. Still, I like getting people's reactions... this is a very reaction based project, probably the kind of thing I should have written in college. I picture it as the kind of movie, even though it's a short, that people walk away from arguing, sort of heated-like. I've definitely gotten some very impassioned responses to it. I love that. My script, the conversation piece.

The name I've settled on for it is just "The Peep Show." Simple, I know, but it's kind of transgressive, which catches people's attention, and one or two folks have said that would be enough to get them to see it. And besides, none of my other names really seemed to fit. "The Filth" or "The Filth and the Fury" or anything else, those were never going to make it, time to accept that.

So for now, it's "The Peep Show," short-subject, 10 pages.

Watch for the new label in posts.

I don't know what I'm working on next. Several possible projects. Good to have options.