Other Eyes

There's a scene in Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis, in which the main character arrives on a strange planet. When he steps out of the spacecraft that brought him, he looks around at the vista before him, and all he see are masses of blended color; he can't make out any objects. Eventually, his eyes adjust so that he has a context in which to recognize his surroundings, but at first his brain is unable to decipher what his eyes are taking in.



When the first draft of my script came out, it wasn't so good. It needed lots of work, so for the second draft I moved all kinds of scenes around, wrote uncounted new pages and scenes, and generally changed the entire landscape.

I didn't give the second draft to any of my trusted readers, because I thought there were probably still things I could do to it. So whether you consider what I'm doing right now the second draft, the third draft or just another pass, it hasn't had anyone else's eyes on it since the sucky first draft.

Oh sure, I've given scenes to Greg, but they were just scenes, with no context. No one would be able to tell anything from them except whether they were well-written scenes. And I'm not just shooting for well-written scenes. We need a cohesive whole movie here, my friends.

Not only has no one else seen it, I can barely even say I've seen it. I've been so busy inspecting the details, moving single objects around, focusing on minutiae, that the thing as a whole is starting to just become a swirling mass of color. I'm too close to it to be able to see what it looks like.

So tonight the final pass should be done, and tomorrow I will get it out to the few who were unable to dodge quickly enough. Maybe if I get some other eyes on it, and get some distance from it myself, it will start to make sense again. And then: improve, improve, improve.