Look at my first draft for example. I started this around May of this year and here we are in August. Did some editing gigs and here I am back to the iBook. Hopefully before the summer is over I will complete it and then I’ll let it marinate a little while before I come back to do the real work, rewriting. This may not be the way the industry works but I’m a firm believer in the longer you work on a screenplay the better it will become. It will always be better. I’m not talking 10 years but a considerable time to make it right. What’s right? You’ll know. When the ideas are better than they were before. That’s better. The fact that I have let this project evolve on its own, it is taking me to places that I’m not sure sitting down and micro-outlining would have brought me to. A certain twist on my ending presented itself today that might not have ever happened if I went at a fast and furious pace. And yes, in my opinion, the ending is exponentially better.

Every project has different needs and to say a step outline is right for every screenplay you write just sounds misguided to me. I wrote myself some guideposts to get me to places in this story but I didn’t sit down and write out a list of 40-60 scenes. Some projects will need that kind of detail, they won’t survive without it – just not this one.

We all have theories. How does the first draft service the scope of your feature screenplay?