Alright, I knew my screenplay needed a rewrite. I'm well into it now. I have my multi-colored index card plot chart up on the wall over my desk. Green for interiors, blue for exteriors, red for turning points, and yellow for changes/additions.

There is yellow all over the place, BTW, and a few at the bottom I haven't been able to place yet.

They say after you finish a manuscript, you need to put it away for awhile. Well I had put mine away for probably six months.

I'm glad I did.

When I posted about getting back to it, I hadn't even read it through again. I even sent it off to Zen unread.

When I finally read it (about ten minutes after I sent it to him) I admit I was surprised to see just how bad the thing was. I would say that of about 95 pages or so, maybe ten were decent, possibly fifteen. There is so much dead end, wooden dialogue in there... My gawd.

I haven't heard back from Zen on it. One, the dude is self-admittedly busy and, two, having taken another look at it, it's probably burning his damn eyes out.

Zen, you don't have to confirm or deny... Okay, you can confirm if you wish!

Not only that, but I've spent several hours with a detective whom I wish I'd had the opportunity to speak with before the previous draft. Based on that research I've completely trashed most of the last third of the script altogether.

There are a few scenes I like. I like my scene with the two brothers in the kitchen after the drive-by shooting that kills their little sister. I like my scene near the end where the protag squares off with one of the antags. I like the scene with that same antag and one of the gang captains. That last one I may have to lose, though. I don't think it fits anymore.

But those are all tied together with some pretty mundane crap.

While I'm rewriting, I refuse to open the old script except to recall a character's last name or somesuch. I've only had to do that once so far.

I'm watching tons of movies and I'm reading scripts with good, snappy dialogue. Like Chinatown, Fargo, Reservoir Dogs, The Maltese Falcon, Get Shorty, and others. And I'm writing. Trying to make every word count.

I hope they count.