Or maybe I should say, Brendan is...except he's being difficult. I know I wrote a bit where he sees Joanna in a Wellworths store in Derry, looking at new records with her girlfriends, and he winds up buying a single of the Johnstons' "Banks of Claudy" because she and her friends listened to it. But damned if I can find it in any file, anywhere. And it's driving me nuts.
So I'm going through every version I've written of A Place of Safety...and finding I saved a lot of the same Word docs 3-4 times in different folders. No wonder I can't find anything. I'm about halfway through them...and also sorting out other docs that I want or need as well as finding old emails to a couple of men in Derry...and step by step and shifting only the items necessary over to a new folder. Then the rest will go onto an external hard drive and away from my laptop, so as to minimize future confusion.
What's positive about this is, I found a couple of details I'd forgotten about and added them into the story...like when Eamonn brings home a pistol and Brendan takes it apart to hide it from him. And an outline redoing a part set after he returns to Derry, where he's arrested by the RUC and interrogated.
A far more important arrest happens later, when the British find out who he is, and the two were clashing as being too similar. I needed space between them but there'd be no excuse for that. If the Constables couldn't get what they wanted from him, they'd hand him over to the Army. Plain and simple and wrong for the story. I was close to dropping it, but couldn't figure out how to get the followup moments to work without that setup.
Well...somewhere along the line I'd worked that out and it actually makes a lot more sense, now. And carries a greater emotional impact. I hope. I don't think I'd have remembered it had I not been digging for that bit.
I finally had enough and needed to clear my brain...and iron, so I watched Ball of Fire, with Gary Copper and Barbara Stanwyck. It's a romantic comedy using Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs as its basis. She's a nightclub singer in love with a mobster; he's an English professor working with seven other professors on an encyclopedia. When she has to hide out, she horns her way in on them to help Gary Cooper with slang...and upends everyone's lives...including her own.
The script was by Charles Bracket and Billy Wilder and it was directed by Howard Hawks. For some reason, what Howard Hawks did with this movie so angered Billy Wilder, he started directing so no one could ruin another one of his scripts. I like what Hawks did, so have to wonder what Wilder would have done differently.
Though I doubt it would have turned out as well, to be honest.
So I'm going through every version I've written of A Place of Safety...and finding I saved a lot of the same Word docs 3-4 times in different folders. No wonder I can't find anything. I'm about halfway through them...and also sorting out other docs that I want or need as well as finding old emails to a couple of men in Derry...and step by step and shifting only the items necessary over to a new folder. Then the rest will go onto an external hard drive and away from my laptop, so as to minimize future confusion.
What's positive about this is, I found a couple of details I'd forgotten about and added them into the story...like when Eamonn brings home a pistol and Brendan takes it apart to hide it from him. And an outline redoing a part set after he returns to Derry, where he's arrested by the RUC and interrogated.
A far more important arrest happens later, when the British find out who he is, and the two were clashing as being too similar. I needed space between them but there'd be no excuse for that. If the Constables couldn't get what they wanted from him, they'd hand him over to the Army. Plain and simple and wrong for the story. I was close to dropping it, but couldn't figure out how to get the followup moments to work without that setup.
Well...somewhere along the line I'd worked that out and it actually makes a lot more sense, now. And carries a greater emotional impact. I hope. I don't think I'd have remembered it had I not been digging for that bit.
I finally had enough and needed to clear my brain...and iron, so I watched Ball of Fire, with Gary Copper and Barbara Stanwyck. It's a romantic comedy using Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs as its basis. She's a nightclub singer in love with a mobster; he's an English professor working with seven other professors on an encyclopedia. When she has to hide out, she horns her way in on them to help Gary Cooper with slang...and upends everyone's lives...including her own.
The script was by Charles Bracket and Billy Wilder and it was directed by Howard Hawks. For some reason, what Howard Hawks did with this movie so angered Billy Wilder, he started directing so no one could ruin another one of his scripts. I like what Hawks did, so have to wonder what Wilder would have done differently.
Though I doubt it would have turned out as well, to be honest.
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