J. Mitchell Lane

Anyone who has ever written anything can tell you that you will always come to a point where either you don’t know what to type next, or will scrap what you’ve spent the past few days, weeks, months, or years writing because it doesn’t meet up to the standard for yourself that you have in your head. They could also tell you that it’s probably the most frustrating thing in the world to have something appear different on paper than it does in your imagination.

I have been working on the rewrite for the FAULT series for the past few days and finally was able to lock down a process that works for getting the image in my head onto the paper while staving off writers block at the same time.

FAULT has seven main characters. That’s right. Seven. My normal process for writing a story is to just sit down and write until it’s either all on paper or I get frustrated with the outcome. Since seven minds is a lot of information to store inside my fuzzy big head without it exploding, this process doesn’t work very well at all for FAULT, and I decided that this time around I would try a different approach.

Every story has to have something for it to be interesting. You already know what this is: conflict. This time around I mapped out a very simple journey that each character needs to go through in order to keep things interesting for you, the viewer. It just so happened to be the same number of steps as the number of episodes I was planning to write before the pre-production process begins. Keep in mind this is for the overarching storyline, not for the storyline of an individual episode. Here it is:

1. Sanity / Insanity (Confusion / Status Quo)

2. Degradation / Growth

3. Crossroads / Choice

4. Journey

5. Final Reaffirmation or Retraction of that Choice

6. Sanity / Insanity (Confusion / Status Quo)

Several of the steps have multiple sides to them. These can be easily varied depending on the character in a way that makes the journey for that character most captivating and develops the most connection with the viewer. They can also be varied to prove a point (hopefully through viewer-character connection rather than preachiness)

I’ve started developing the specific journey for each character individually while keeping in mind that they need to stay tied together. Once the “chart” for each character and the question their struggling with answering is complete, all that’s left is to drop the story into screenplay form. Since everything is already mapped out, the plan is for the dialogue, the subtext, the characters actions and the rest to feel much more complete and whole that just seven characters that whimsically came out onto a page, even if whim does play a part in the planning stages. Hopefully it will feel like all of the character’s journeys tie together.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing. It seems to be working for this particular storyline and writing has become much easier, but I’m not sure if it applies to all character journeys.

What do you think?

I just wanted to take a second to update everyone on how FAULT is coming. The shoot back in February went well, and I’m in the process of making a few big decisions for it. This started off as a television series idea, but may be taking a few turns. I’ll update you all on what the turns are as soon as the plan comes together and I’ve made the decisions, but for now, enjoy the final cut of the scene we shot out of context.

I always say it, but yes, I am horrible at being consistant in sending out e-mails, or posting updates about what’s happening out here in Los Angeles, so here it goes. Hopefully this is the last “what I’m doing in general” posts, and I’ll be able to get to the specifics consistantly without months in between the posts.

I’m getting extremely excited and motivated about producing Fault. There is so much that can be done with the concept (both from a plot point of view, and from a message delivery point of view). It could end up serving as a tremendous launching point for a variety of different moral subjects that I’ve been itching to cover in some way. That usually leads to me diversing into 10,000 different screenplays because of the messages that I want to get across. This idea looks like it will allow me to focus on one plot while at the same time addressing several extremely different points and messages.

So, Fault tends to occupy a lot of my thinking time, because there’s a lot that needs to be decided when it comes to how certain points will be approached, and whether or not they’re actually approachable. I tend to think everything is approachable, but some of the concepts may just need to be introduced more slowly than others. Needless to say, if this actually takes off, and I don’t have a lot of people angry with me by the time that it’s finished, I haven’t done my job right.

But then there’s everything else.

The past two months or so are almost a complete blur to me because of everything that’s been going on. For a month and a half, we were ramping up to shooting a nine page section of the script, so that took a lot of mental energy. At the same time there’s the 40, 50, or 60 hour a week full-time job which takes up a lot of time. Once you add in Church, starting a business, starting to get involved in politics, and attempting to have a social life, you end up with one very confused Jeremy that’s running around with no idea which way is up… or down.

There is a lot that I want to say when it comes to Church, but I think that is probably going to come out in book form (longer than this book-length post), so i’ll save that for the ‘specifics’ that I’m going to get to later. Same goes for Politics. I’m really hoping that I stay consistant and actually get to posting about these things, because I’d really like to hear what other people think on the subjects as well. If I don’t continue post, feel free to pester me. I’ll deserve it.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Me and a couple others are going to be taking a road-trip out to Colorado at the end of the month to see the play that basically my entire family will be in, so I’m pretty excited about that. Oh, and I’m sure we’ll get in a couple days of snow boarding. No, this isn’t California snow, and it’s not North Carolina snow… or Georgia snow. This is the real thing. I like the real thing.

If you’re still reading this by now, I’m thoroughly impressed, so I’m going to let you go do something much more important than reading my blog. Good night, and beware the furture blog posts that may be lurking around the corner.

We had a chance to go through the footage and start the rough-cut process this week for the pages we shot on February 28th. I thought it would be great to post some screen captures and get some feedback. I had a few frames exported so I could upload them for you to see in all their pre-color correction glory.

Let me know what you think!