unraveling.

Like the title?

That’s what I’m naming the screenplay.

Finally, finally, I have an outline that I can work with. I started by writing sixty pages furiously, and then realized that my plot was unraveling — and not in a good way — with each ensuing word.

Back to the drawing board, I’ve been freaking with index cards. They are my friends. I love the patriotic stripes.

But after three weeks of playing cards, and not the ones the have in Vegas, things were becoming cumbersome.

This afternoon I threw away all my index cards and started fresh. I labeled each blank card with a beat (hook, catalyst, act breaks, midpoint, finale, etc.), and shuffled them into a mixed-up order. Then I took more index cards and wrote what would happen at each turn of the plot.

Randomizing order freed my mind to think furiously and more creatively than I had been. And in half an hour (technically, three weeks plus half and hour), voila! The plot.