It’s official, I’ve completed the first draft of “40M”, my cross-genre SciFi/Horror/Thriller that goes into production this summer, and I have to say, I’m definitely getting faster at it. I conceptualized this film in about two months and wrote it (cover to cover) in about 14 days. That’s a personal record.  For those of you who may not know, every writer generally has their own unique process of developing and writing out their screenplays. As far as I’m concerned, I like to have EVERYTHING worked out ahead of time…  I’ll start with a basic story/idea I like, develop a bunch of characters and bio’s and then get back to how to conceptualize the story itself. Since I’m also a director, I have a tendency to imagine everything visually, I basically construct the entire film in my head (and on dozens of pages of hand-written, scribbled notes to remind me of specifics) before I ever actually sit down and write a single word.  By doing it that way, the “conceptualization” stage is what ends up taking up the longest time, but the great thing is, once I’ve got the characters and story all visualized in my head, sitting down to write it all out on paper just comes naturally, and spitting out 90+ pages in a week or two isn’t out of the question.

So… now we’re on to the notes process and bundles of joyous re-writes! (not too crazy about this part… but it’s important).

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