The Musical, draft one.

And the first draft is complete. There's a long road ahead, but the first step is taken. While I'm in the happy post-first-draft haze, I thought I'd post some thoughts about the process.

From a story perspective, this has been one of the hardest scripts I've ever tried to write. At once, I felt I had to address familiar conventions of musicals, and familiar conventions of the crime/mystery genre. It's hard to say where the script places the most emphasis, but I'm trying draw on both, while also setting it apart.

To make things slightly more difficult, the mystery of the story isn't one that the protagonist uncovers, but rather, it's what he's trying to hide, and why. Various complications and theories cloud the issue, but overall, what I find affecting about the story is connected to both its simplicity and its ambiguity. Early on, I made a set of rules that I wanted the script to follow regarding how its story gets told. They are, essentially, a set of "do"s and "don't"s that I believe will keep the project on course, defining its level of reality and storytelling aesthetic. Now, I'm wondering how I'll regard them in further revisions.

I'm aware that my own preferences in the mystery genre might clash with the mainstream - I always think the best mysteries leave some ambiguity, whether it's an implied loose end or just a point that's open to interpretation. I've tried to do that with The Lady in the River, and I'm wondering whether it'll be a bump in the road in the script's development, or even the reception of the final script. We'll find out. Not that it gets anywhere near Raymond Chandler levels of complication and confusion (read/watch The Big Sleep, where a notably absent plot point nearly becomes a meta-joke), but I'm expecting the story structure to come under fire over the next few months.

Finally, I tried to orient several scenes around the music I know, and made guesses at where music that I don't know could be inserted. I'm predicting that this element will undergo the most changes, as it's the area where I'll be doing the most collaborative work (I think).

Okay, enough reflection for today. I'll try to follow up on this post before long, as I've recently had a bit of a hiatus from Reactionary Meter.