First Draft of Constant State of Panic

I finished a first draft of Constant State of Panic this morning. The second act now comes in around 27 pages handwritten, which I think will run about 40 pages typewritten (I’ll find out on Monday, at my Rhombus playwrights group meeting). I have a feeling that there’s a bit of expansion yet to go, and I can’t say that I really understand the ending completely. It could be that the whole thing feels too forced. I’m not sure. It did end up falling within the parameters I set up, at least some of them—four actors, unit set, mostly unit time and place. Maybe that’s too limiting. I’m not sure.

My goal was to complete the second act in May, and it feels awfully satisfying to have gotten there. Sure it’s (very) rough, and it could be that this last ten pages is complete crap and I throw it out. I just can’t know for sure yet, but I needed to get to this point, and plugging away for an hour or two every day did the trick. This is a script that I started four years ago and could never really get together. Now at least I've got something to pick apart and rewrite and attempt to figure out.

(Who knows, maybe I'll get a new version of my new novel done this year after all. What a concept.)