NANO: Day: 27

One of my favorite parts of Final Draft, the program I use to do my screenwriting, is the Statistics Report feature. It generates a report of all sorts of useful and interesting data such as Character A, who is supposed to be paired with Character B is actually interacting with Character C 12% more, or some such. It can also be deceptive- The report tells me that Father Murphy speaks the most with Byron, when in actuality, he's always with Tasha. And I know it's because A.) Byron questions him at length, and B.) Tasha's rarely alone and the program may read lines directed at her as being directed at Tyler or Geoff. The report tells me about what scenes characters appear in, so I can make sure no one is in the wrong scene-- or more likely where I typo-ed the scene heading! It also tells me that my dialogue makes up most of the script (Yay, as it should be!) and action makes up the next biggest chunk (and together make up roughly 91% of the script, lol!)

But the final element of a Stats Report is my favorite. It's the "Profanity Report". It tells me that I used the word "crap" once, "bastard" twice, "damn" twice, and "piss" once. That's all censor-proof, so I don't have to change it, but in an early draft, a report reminded me that although it was very fitting for Edward to refer to his son as a "piece of shit", since I was angling for broad audience and any channel, the dialogue had to change.

As of today, my outline, treatment, script, and leave behinds are finished, which just leaves editing everything once through on my NaNo to do list, and puts me at:

complete! The last 10% is the editing phase, so I am done with the initial drafting phase. But all my scripts get a thorough comb through before being set aside for a week/month/ sometimes longer before I do in depth editing. Always helps to get the brain cleared of what it 'expects to see' and actually looking at what's there. I also find it VERY helpful to print copies, changing the viewing format helping shake up what the brain 'expects' to see!