Golden Garbage Dump

Last year, I needed to crank out another original one-hour sample for a potential rep. Fast. I already had the show’s basic premise, characters, arcs, and theme in mind…but I knew I wouldn’t have as much polish time once I pounded out the first draft as I’m used to. And (as I’ve mentioned before) those rewrites are where I really find my scripts come alive.

So, once I hammered out that first draft, I opened up a special document where I’ve been stashing little pieces of awesome for close to a decade. Great stories I overheard, cool dialogue parted out from abandoned projects, unique characters I’d imagined but not utilized yet, etc. …it’s basically where I bury the babies I’m forced to kill – but plan on reanimating at the right moment.

I call this document my Golden Garbage Dump.

It’s a simple Final Draft file with a random assortment of the items I described above. But it’s proved invaluable time and time again. In this particular situation, I had a scene where a con man describes his admiration for “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” to another criminal. It was originally part of a spec “Leverage” I was working on at the time – but the show didn’t spark *any* interest from potential reps and showrunners, so I took it out behind the barn and executed all forty pages.

But I had to keep that scene – it was just too much fun to write (and read). My new project was about the same world, so I did some tweaking and voila – the scene was recycled into something I could actually use while saving me a grip of time.

The point I’m trying to make is, Don’t ever feel like you have to kill a particular element because it’s part of a failed project. Allow yourself to mine that pile of trash before discarding it. You’ll thank yourself down the line.