I've been meaning to post some comments on the progress of the romcom I've been writing for my director, but I've been spending all my spare time just writing the thing.

I just finished it. Yes. Just about 30 seconds ago. So now is the perfect time to update you on how it's been going.

We hit a snag over a major scene. This is actually the scene that starts the end of Act Two. It's the big emotional crisis scene that precedes the depression section that leads to the final showdown. In "Bridget Jones" It's the scene where Mark and Daniel have the big knock-down, drag-out fight all over the street and in the restaurant.

I wanted the scene to go one way and my director wanted it to go another way. Without giving away any of the details (because that would just make it all so clear), he wanted the scene to end with something the male lead would use as internal motivation and I had planned to end it with something that would be external motivation. He had an excellent point. It's always better to have your characters move forward on their own. Yes, their reasons for moving forward always come from things that happen to them: external motivators. But these external forces should inspire decisions, not leave them without a choice.

So I changed the scene. But I had also used it to uncover a secret that one character was keeping from another. My director didn't want me to do that. I felt it would make the scene stronger. Then he said revealing the secret was good, but it had to happen closer to the end of the story.

I had only sent him a rough draft of the scene itself without putting it in context. When I explained that it would come near the end of the second Act, things fell into place for him. So we ended up with a stronger scene with better motivators for the characters and the big surprise for the one character.

There's another scene during the first Act that we ended up going over and over and over for some reason. It didn't really strike me as a pivotal scene in the set-up when I wrote it, but it turned out to be, because we each had definite ideas about how and WHY it should play that way. My director wanted me to switch the dialogue between two characters. It didn't make sense to me until he explained it from a man's point of view. The characters are both men arguing about a "code" that exists between guys. When I got his point, I sort of switched the dialogue, but tweaked it a bit more than that.

So it's been an interesting process. I'm really looking forward to finally being able to get some feedback from the reviewers at Triggerstreet.

Wish me luck.