Script 2 - Finished

Last night, around 11pm, I finished my second script. It's a story about a baseball player with immense talent, struggling to find his way to the major leagues. Right now, I've titled it Knuckle Ball.

I'm not really as satisfied, at this moment, as I was with the first script. Of course, the first is a shorter and "neater" comedy...so I think that's to be expected.

This was a story that I think begs to be told. I put some personal experiences in there, and I also included some aspects of the lives of people I knew playing baseball in high school. I'm not sure if I told the story correctly, but I think there's definitely a good story in there somewhere.

I think it needs a lot of work, still. Wanting to get into the head of the protagonist, I used a narrator. And, honestly, I think I relied on him way too much. A lot of that "inner monologue" is going to have to turn into dialogue at some point, and hopefully a lot of the rest can be transitioned into picture when/if the movie is ever filmed. I just don't think a narrator can have as big a role as he has in my movie.

I also struggled a bit with some of the B-story elements...my protagonist's life off the field. How much to go into it, and frankly, how that would work. There are parts that I would like to add, but there are probably parts that really need to be cut.

But it's 180 pages long...almost exactly. That's 3 hours, and this movie shouldn't be 3 hours. That probably means that 40 or so pages would need to go...but I'm sure a lot of it can be removed. One aspect I struggled with was repetition...there were milestones that I wanted to hit, and the "filler" might have become repetitive. Honestly, I don't know.

So now I come to the rough part, where I let some of my close friends read it and critique it a bit. While it's rough (and even cheesy at parts), I'm hoping they can see some value in it. Because, like I said, this was a story I've wanted to tell for a while. And I have a feeling it's the most marketable thing that I've written so far.

So here's to Knuckle Ball. Or whatever it eventually gets titled.