I wrote coverage on a script a couple of months ago. Without going into too much detail, it was an early draft of a coming of age story about a troubled teen who needs to turn it around in school in order to graduate, and through a series of events befriends an old man who teaches him not only what he needs to learn to graduate, but also what he needs in order to be a better person.

The coverage that I provided this writer led him to hire me to rewrite the script for him.

What will transpire on this blog over the next few weeks is a semi-daily diary of the rewriting process, and the issues, troubles and triumphs that I will inevitably have along the way.

The first thing I did the other day was read the coverage that I wote for this script. The feelings I had for it initially were that the story had a lot of potential from a thematic standpoint, and that was probably the best place to start when approaching the re-write. The challenge when rewriting someone else’s material, especially when they’ve hired you to do it, is keeping the spirit of the story alive and maintaining the essence of the story. With the thematic elements of the story more or less in place, I can focus on the story’s building blocks.

Through reading my coverage, I also realized that the two main characters need to be developed, and the storyline needs better structure.

The next thing I did was I went back and read the script. As I read it, I took notes on what wasn’t working, what needed to be improved, and where to start working on the fixes.

After finishing the read, I did a hero’s journey of the main character. What this did was help me see what the points of emphasis are in the story, or at least what they are and should be. In doing that outline, I now feel like I have a roadmap to get started on the actual rewrite of the script.

However, I’m not going to start the rewrite just yet. There is still more important work to do. The two main characters need to be flushed out, so I’m going to create character bio’s for each of them. I’m also going to do a more complete outline of the script, possibly even writing out the scenes on notecards and hanging it on a wall.

To my way of thinking, when writing or re-writing, it’s important to have the story entirely worked out before you start the actual writing.