The great wide open

An vast stormy ocean, the sweltering Sahara, the gaping grand canyon, the black silence of outer space...

Starting a screenplay is like standing at the edge of one of these incomprehensibly large spaces and then deciding to cross it. You don't know what you'll find, or who you'll meet, or where your next meal is going to come from. The number of possibilities is incalculable - besides I've never been good at math.

The advantage with a screenplay, I guess, is that as long as you can imagine it, it can happen. Not quite like being in the Sahara and wishing an icy cold bottle of water would appear. But it's scary nonetheless.

I'm at that stage now. I've got the basic idea down. I pretty much know where point A is: let's call it the western edge of the Sahara. I know where I'd like to end up: somewhere east of Cairo, on the Red Sea. But how will I get there? And where will I stop along the way?

Come to think of it, I'm pretty good at travel planning, so why is it so hard to commit to a certain route for my characters?

Today I've started filling in some of the blanks. I've put Sharpie to notecard and pinned a few ideas to my board. There's a long way to go, but at least I'm not staring terrified into a black hole any more.

Slacker excuses:
I think I sprained my toe playing ultimate.
I've become addicted to Veronica Mars.