Last weekend was the weekend I beat the last third of THIS IS YOUR EDUCATION out of my brain.  This weekend, my attention was turned to Receiver, and I blasted through 50 pages in the last two days and change!  All that stuff I blogged about on Friday - that's in there.  I daresay it brings out the sci-fi genre side of the story a bit more, while completely contributing to the drama and the human side of things.

Put simply, it's a much better movie.

It's funny.  Nickles and Anne both mentioned that Andy needed more to do, and I agreed completely.  Nickles brought up the visual aspect of giving him more outside play time, and I thought is was a bright idea, to help him slowly get trapped into the basement, and to narrow his world bit by bit...

At the same time, I actually wound up cutting scenes.  Act I takes place mostly in big rooms with windows, in cars, and such.  In Act II, the space begins to shrink, until the midpoint when he's underground for the duration of Act II.  Act III lets him out under a starry sky, as promised in his visions of the desert.

Andy does have one scene out on a field of grass, and it's appropriate that that scene should take place under a big sky...  At the same time, that's a continuation of previous scenes.  Like a lot of kids, Andy just doesn't seem to see the point in going outside until the end.  I think that's ok.

What I did need, and what I did find, was an alterior motive for Walter.  It's not a bad motive, but learning that Walter isn't completely forthright about his reasons for helping Andy do two things:  It casts doubt on Walter, which gives Andy just reasons for challenging him much more than he did before.  That gives Andy a whole lot more to do.  It also raises the stakes of all Andy's decisions considerably.  Andy might be wrong.  It totally took the story off it's rails, which I like to think were invisible before, and yes, which I have to acknowledge were there.

This is what the rewrite process is all about!  I moved a lot of scenes around, picked up on opportunities I'd ignored before, and wrote some great new stuff which may or may not need to be whittled down.  I'm really excited about this - which is probably why I didn't do much else this weekend!

I may come back to this tonight, but I think I should devote some time to supper, a movie, some grooming, meditation, and general personal maintenance.  With luck, I'll have this draft wrapped up in short order - I think the third act is in a very strong place, and while I have some additional conflict to inject, I don't expect it will demand the same kind of dynamite blasting I undertook for Act II.

Time for my very special chili tomato bisque over napa cabbage, and a film of my choosing.  Goodnight to all.  I wish you all a fantastic week!