I normally hate (and avoid) doing character prep, but I'm forcing myself to do much more for my GOYOQ idea, and so far I think it's actually helping. Gonna be important for this, because it's kind of a heist movie, and I don't want it to be one with a team of cardboard cut-outs surrounding a fleshed out protagonist... In fact, the more experienced I get as a writer, the more prep of all kinds I do, and the more I value it.

Debbie, two things. First I think it's great you are pushing yourself to explore prep-writing as it really is a standard feature of almost all professional screenwriters' approach to the craft, if for no other reason than sheer necessity brought on by due dates. If you have 10 or 12 weeks to turn in a draft, you want to be as confident as possible when you type FADE IN that you know what the hell you're doing with the story. Second, here's a tip you may find helpful: Embrace curiosity. Especially with your characters. Interview them. Sit with them. Let them write monologues through your fingers. If you are at all a social person and enjoy getting to know people, this is very much in that spirit. And the thing is, by simply engaging your characters in 'conversation,' it can humanize prep work. It feels more like a mystery, each character's life revealing itself bit by bit as you press them with questions. Suddenly you realize you got all this amazing amount of content just by being curious. If Curiosity [the spaceship] can land on Mars, curiosity can guide you through character prep!

I have also started spending a lot more time on development. And what a difference it makes! I used to start with an idea (or sometimes even just an image), draw a very loose outline (with maybe 3-5 main plot points) then go with it. The end result, so unimpressive, made rewrites too daunting to even begin to know where to start. It ended up being easier to start again from scratch. The particular story I am working on at the moment started with an idea. But this time I didn't stop there. I turned it round and round to find the story inside the idea. It went from broad comedy to supernatural film noir to dark comedy to... I found a thousand stories for it but none of them excited me. It was never quite there and I couldn't put my finger on it. I gave up. Pretty much the day after I gave up, I was given the opportunity to do some edits on someone else's script. She'd spent two years researching it. This was a godsend, there was gold in that script and in the short time I had to sink my teeth into it I fell in love with it. I became so passionate about it I had to ask myself, why can't I feel as passionate about one of my own screenplays? Two years of research... Now back on the story I'd given up. I decided not to give up after all. Try again. I turned it round and round. Still couldn't get it right. Until finally it dawned on me. I was thinking about my villain's motivation when I realised he was much more interesting than my hero, so I switched. I made my villain my protagonist. And everything made sense. I am now roughly 65% into a treatment. I could have easily taken one of my earlier ideas and made a vomit draft and then forget it in the back of my hard drive but instead I have found a story that I am passionate about and am excited to share. I am more patient and will not type Fade In until I have nailed that treatment. Developing the original idea has made me look deeper into what it is that I want to say and helped me find the best way to express it. Hopefully.

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That's great! Seriously, it's amazing how much more exciting writing a story is when it's a story that pumps you up. I've been anxious these last two or three weeks because I felt like I should've been writing pages, but once I got into the development I got REALLY into. I can't stop. I'll text myself ideas while I'm at work. I hope I don't get fired. I can't wait to write, but I know I need to. I hope your treatment and script turn out fabulously.