Scott Myers’ excellent screenwriting blog Go Into The Story is worth following closely. Recently he had a post about stacking projects, that is working on several projects, and having others planned for the years to come.

This is something that we recently started with. In 2010 we have worked on two different scripts, writing the first draft of one, while researching the other, and so on. Scott Myers has some good advice on stacking projects, and just maybe we want to broaden our approach in 2011?

Myers’ first advice is to work on three different projects at any given time:

  1. Preparation on one project (research and so on)
  2. First draft on another story
  3. Rewriting a third story

So far we haven’t worked on projects simultaneously. We have assigned them a month each of work at a time, so while we’ve written second draft on one script, the first draft of the other has been in the drawer. The challenges of actively working on several projects at once can be several. Maybe you feel you can’t immerse yourself fully unless you concentrate on one story at a time? Maybe your writing loses momentum when you switch between projects?

Nevertheless, it can’t hurt to try. There’s something very comforting and inspiring about having future projects lined up. Any writer should challenge him/herself to developing their craft, becoming more productive, and mastering the different phases of a writing project. I know for us, combining research on one project with writing a draft on another could easily be combined. We just need to be structured in our planning, and commit to the time we need to invest in writing.

What we´re trying out now is to alternate as ‘editors’ on our projects. This means that we take the ‘paper work’ of one project each. This includes keeping notes at meetings, keeping track of edits and script changes, as well as keeping formatting and grammar top notch.

So, come 2011, maybe we’ll start lining up more than two projects at a time?