Only My Scriptwriting

Fifty-Eight, the Hard Way

Fifty-Eight, the Hard Way

Usually, I have about nine to nine and a half hours to devote to my writing when I’m at work on a Saturday. That includes the time I spend doing my job at work aka watching cameras and doing rounds. Unfortunately, today it wasn’t quite that good. I only got about eight of those hours.

Within the first two hours before I start my first round, I usually get fourteen to sixteen single paragraphs and about five scenes written. Today I barely got three scenes and ten single paragraphs written. Why did I barely get ten single paragraphs written? It’s because I only got three single paragraphs in the first hour.

Why did I only get three single paragraphs aka one scene done in the first hour at work? It was because the Security Guard I replaced was still there. He was trying to get a ride home because his car broke down. And it took him just over an hour before he got that ride.

The Security Guard I replaced was also my ‘unofficial’ Site Supervisor. That’s not the reason why I only got three single paragraphs written that hour. It was because he’s a talker. We spent most of that hour talking. Mostly about how we only had a few weeks left at that post. The only reason why I got those three single paragraphs written was because he’s also a smoker and took a few smoke breaks.

It was really the first hour that messed me up earlier today at work. The second hour I got two more scenes and seven single paragraphs written. That’s about the average number of single paragraphs that I get written in an hour. It’s different with the number of scenes.

Today, the number of single paragraphs equaled two scenes. But that isn’t how it usually works, though. After all, I average three single paragraphs for most of my scenes. Four single paragraphs for my fives and ten scenes. Overall, it equals about sixteen single paragraphs for every five scenes. That does change every so often, though.

That doesn’t happen too much. But every so often I do have four or five single paragraphs instead of three or four in a single scene. It’s usually because of dialogue being exchanged between two or more characters. It isn’t always because of dialogue. But it usually is.

That happened earlier today at work. I had one scene that was five single paragraphs long. But I also had one that was only three single paragraphs long instead of four. So, it equaled out to be fifty-eight single paragraphs total that I did today. That included three Establishing Shots. That’s right. I barely finished Episode Two.

It's true. I finished writing the script for Episode Two, Not Hiding in Darkness. Unfortunately, it took almost my whole shift to finish it. As a result, I only got the Establishing Shots written for the Teaser Act of my third episode, Floating Weapons, written earlier today at work.