Discard manipulation...

When the story is good and strong, it is possible to play around it, write a scene which is all wrong and out of place and it will add a new dimension to the film and character. It's like when playing jazz, having a good melodic line and establishing it well then playing it with some off notes thrown in. Sounds great!

Then you read your draft non critically accepting everything and bingo you've touched on something. This is something you could never have done thinking about it. How to go from here? Manipulation has been discarded. Only natural unfolding of the story...

Letting it happen...

Structure vs letting life play out. Narrative vs a receptacle for observation. Unresolved endings like in life. In life we think things are written vs things are forming and more often chaotically. Can we accept this chaos and bring it into the work?

I am reworking the screenplay and finding unexpected things. The writing process should free the writer rather than restrict her or him. If one were to put aside the objectives, plot points that one had laid out as one wrote the first draft and one reads it preferably after a period, something new emerges.

One thing is clear, the process cannot be hurried. If we hurry it, it becomes an exercise in craft. And too often that leads to predictable work.