Bright Freedom

I started on a new movie script this week. My other projects: My Most Difficult Case and Then the Phone Rang are hanging fire while I get some other people involved. I wanted to get to work on something, so I went back to a project, called Bright Freedom, which I’ve been playing with off and on for a long time.

I’ve been stalled on the story because I really need to do a lot of background research to do a proper job of it. I kept finding excuses to put off the research. I did manage to determine that the basic premise of the story is plausible. I decided that was good enough to start writing. I will still need to do more research before I can do a final version of the script. I think it may be easier to do the research once I have a draft of the script. I hope that doesn’t sound like famous last words.

I am not sure if I want to make Bright Freedom into film in the end. Right now, I see it as a development exercise. The more scripts you write, the easier it is to write. I also believe that the quality of my writing will improve. It will be a challenge because the protagonist is not only a woman, but is a woman from a very different culture than I’m familiar with. That is the reason why I expect that I will need to do more research to finish it. Either that, or find someone to collaborate with.

Someone told me I made my female characters more self confident, strong and independent than they should be. I’m not sure if that is true. The protagonist in this story isn’t someone to wait around for a big strong man to come save her. I’ve meet people like her, so I think that is realistic.

I got about halfway through the outline this week. I am doing a more detailed outline than I did for Then the Phone Rang, but less detailed than what I did for The Anger Trap or my detective story. I expect it to take longer to write. I am also confident that the first draft of the script will come in longer. Certainly closer to feature length than the other projects I’ve done.