Well thanks to some great feedback on the latest screenplay from several of you, including pointing out weaknesses that I didn’t want to see or just didn’t see, I have shifted scenes around, added new scenes, and made plans for altering the purpose of other scenes. In the process I discovered one major storytelling and character consistency flaw that no one saw (If he always avoids problems, would he really have gone to the doctor that early on? And if he did, doesn’t that ruin the potential for rising tension in making the audience wonder what’s wrong with him?).
In other words what was supposed to be just a minimal pass third draft (in other words, making sure the characters don’t all sound alike) has become a major rewriting process. I’ve finished the new outline though, which is part of why I’m writing about this at all.
Given that I’m weaving several different threads here, I wanted to be sure I spaced them apart well and yet had them tie together. So I pulled out the slug lines for all the scenes (exp. INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT) and stuck them in a new text file. I then stuck a one word label at the end of each to describe which element it represented (exp. COUPLE, or ALISON, or ASHES). That helped a bit, but still not enough, so I applied a random color to each line. That made it much easier to see at a glance, if I had two scenes from the same line too close (or too far apart).
I still couldn’t get it though. So, copying it all into another new file, I cut the slugs, leaving just the labels. (I kept the file with the slugs visible too, just for reference.) By reducing each scene to just a color (for visual clarity) and a single word (for mental clarity), I suddenly had a grasp on the whole film and could shift the pieces around until I worked out all the kinks.
As it is now rather late, I’m not sure I explained that process as well as I should have, but I’m too tired now to fix it if it needs it. Hopefully the idea will benefit someone, if not, I’ll at least have it here as reference next time I find myself lost in a rewrite.