With Little Things finished and released online, the time has come to set our sights on the next Broc Glic project. I don't want to give anything away about the plot, but it's an idea Mark has been playing with for a while. He started working on a script a couple of weeks ago and approached me with a little experiment.
I was one of the first people to read the script for "Little Things" and gave Mark fairly extensive notes on it over a few months, which was the sum total of my involvement in the writing process. This time out, Mark suggested that he and I try co-writing. I was dubious to say the least, and thought the resulting argument would make him reconsider asking me to be his daughter's Godfather. In short I expected abject failure, but figured what the hell, it could be fun so Mark sent me his first draft.
It's turned out to be a really productive process. As I said before Mark and I discussed the script of "Little Things" extensively over a few months. Mark took a lot of my ideas on board, modified some and rejected others out of hand. This being said it was very much Mark's work that I helped with. This time when he mailed me I butchered the script. I completely rewrote the first scene, dropped the final one and redefined the main character entirely. I used ideas that Mark had already vetoed. My draft fixed some problems in Mark's script, created problems that hadn't existed before and highlighted problems that existed in both.
With both Mark and I both invested in the writing process we were able to debate about character motivation, style and probably most importantly, what was being achieved with each scene. Shorts are tough, you have very little time to play with so you have to be into the whole brevity thing. I didn't like Mark's final scene at all. I thought it was too long, had too much dialogue and introduced too many new characters. I removed it completely and integrated what I thought was necessary for the plot into the scene before (which had already been heavily rewritten). My ending didn't work at all, the tension peaked too quickly and necessary character exposition was lost. So the last scene in neither draft works, but looking at both it's clear what needs to be achieved in a rewrite. We had a brainstorming session yesterday and may have a solution.
Thus far the co-writing experiment has been a success.
More thoughts on this are very likely to follow.
Comments welcome folks.
