The verdict is in...
Topic: The Script
After steathily dropping off two scripts where Rob works (he had gone home to feed their dogs), I waited with anxious anticipation all day to find out what everyone thought of the first draft.

Rob had called me last night to let me know that Barb and our DP were in his living room reading the script. As I would find out later, Rob took off work today to read the script and finish the business plan.

After e-mailing our DP a question about a knife he had shown me at his house, which happened to be the exact length of the one described in the script, his response included a "great job on the script" comment. He also said "I think we have something special here."

But it wasn't until hours later that I heard from Rob. All of my fears that they would not like what I had done with the story were put to rest in about ten seconds. He said that they were gushing (his word) about it. I could hear the excitement in his voice ... he was elated to be spearheading this project. He had said to me once that because of the short timeframe that they had to follow, they were counting on me (no pressure) to deliver a solid first draft. I can't explain in words -- and I'm a writer -- how good it felt that I came through for him. And in a big way, apparently.

I expected him to focus on the death scenes or the creepiness or the finale as what they loved most about the script. But Barb, who is not really a slasher fan, said it was the characters that stood out. That I had done a great job creating engaging characters, with dynamic relationships. That the banter between them was great. I was relieved to hear this because I had always been concerned that my characters -- in all of my scripts -- were not three dimensional, that I had no real concept of what that meant. I always figured that my characters would be somewhere between 2D and 3D ... so I would be happy with having characters who were 2.5 dimensional.

So there you have it. Getting the script done early will help them immensely. My next deadline is to finish a second draft -- which may very well be the shooting draft -- by August 15th, which was the original deadline of the first draft. I could do it much quicker, but I'm going to Phoenix next weekend and the following weekend, we will be returning to the location so that I can adapt some of the scenes to where we'll actually be filming, which was my request.