Minutiae

Here is what the bumper currently looks like:

(Remember, the front of the Nissan Altima that hit was completely trashed.)

The estimate I got today from the auto body shop guy to repair the bumper: $2500. The moral? Don't hit a Mercedes, or don't be insured if you do.

Speaking of photos...here are photos of me and of Laura sacking out on Sunday.

Today I spent working on Act III of the Rewrite Script again.

As I told Linda on the phone today, "I knew every word in [my Thesis Script] backwards and forwards. I am at the point now where I haven't the slightest idea of what's going on in the Rewrite Script." I've written Act III 4 or 5 times already, sometimes with small differences, sometimes with very large differences.

(One of the worst things that's happened is that I've fallen in love with one of the characters, who used to be secretly working for the Bad Guy. I don't want him to any more. Linda and I hashed out some ideas on how I can still use that surprise but keep him a Good Guy--she likes him too.)

How can I have a story that barrels forward for 2 Acts so well grind to a halt in the last Act? Well, for one thing, I didn't have the ending planned out before I started writing. Never do this. Always know your ending--for a screenplay at any rate. For poems, short stories, even novels...make it up as you go along. But screenplays are about structure and audiences expect certain things when you tell a story.

One of my handicaps is that my main character is a young woman, and there are certain things that women are not allowed to do:

• In a movie, a woman cannot plan to kill someone--it has to be spur of the moment, and it has to be self-defense. The most egregious example of this was The River Wild, in which Meryl Streep gets terrorized by Kevin Bacon for 2 hours and when she gets a hold of the gun fires it into the air...instead of into his head, like she should have. It's only when Kevin (yet again) lunges at her to kill her that she shoots him.

• A woman cannot knowingly seduce and then assault a male. Linda's script is about the degradation and humiliation of an upper-class woman, who has to learn to fight back. In one scene, the Bad Guy (who we have seen be bad over and over and over again) starts to rape her. The Main Character gets him off balance by beginning to seduce him--and then she pokes his eye out.

  Every single male reader has told Linda that the Bad Guy must rape the MC before she pokes the eye out, and the eye-poking has to be in the heat of the moment--she can't plan to do it. (No female reader has told Linda this.) Linda thinks this is because male readers are really frightened of the idea that women can be cold-blooded and plan to attack them like that, because women have such power over men sexually and men are frightened of that. Who knows.

  (I love the idea that the premises are just given that a)men rape and b)women have no way of fighting them off. Yes, that was sarcasm.)

Linda also pointed out that my Bad Guy is not bad enough--or rather, the way that I made him really bad doesn't jibe with the rest of the stuff I have him do. So I have to rethink how I'm going to show that he's a Bad Guy--do I go for the really violent and bloody stuff, or do I make him more subtle and understated?

The problem with making him understated is then I can't kill him--you can't just go around killing anybody, you know. I don't know how readers feel about Bad Guys going to meet Justice instead of their Maker, though I'm sure that will get me labeled "quirky" and "possibly worthy of an independent film."

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

3 miles. I became extremely nauseous mid-run (very unusual) and I got a huge side stitch, much more severe than usual. This is what I get for taking 3 days off? Perhaps I'd better get over my weather wimpness post-haste.