I finished One Nation (as you’ve probably read all week), and now I’m in the reflection process. My producer will be about two weeks behind me, and then I’ll start getting all the “What is this mess?” notes. Great thing about working with a producer like M. T. Postupak – he gives you the notes in a polite and funny way that encourages you to fix it.
The feeling I have today is about the flavor of the series. By this I mean, when you make spaghetti, the spices you add completely change the flavor of it. For instance, I use Ragu sauce as a base, then I begin adding a pinch of salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and both Parmesan and Ricotta cheeses.
Without mentioning specific scenes or plot points (Because you have to wait and see it, and I’m not giving away the story!!!), One Nation now has a flavor to me I couldn’t see before. It’s finished, and even with re-writes, there’s a flavor to it.
M. T. Postupak told me what the theme was, and once I began writing it, the story took off in directions of its own. Once the story is done, you see how all of those individual scenes you wrote combine to create a certain feeling or story.
Try this as an experiment – watch a movie you know, and omit an entire section of the movie. For instance, “War of the Worlds” without the basement scenes. How does that change the overall flavor of the movie?
I’ll be starting re-writes of this soon, but now that I finished this project, the overall feel of it must be maintained. How do you do that?
Every word you change must reinforce the overall feel. Every scene you cut, you have to now decide, “how does this change the overall flavor?” Every scene you add must steer the story into that same flavor range. To use the spaghetti analogy, it’s got to have the garlicky oniony taste. If I add sweet to it, it now has essentially left that flavor range. You do this by cutting a scene if it’s steering it from the flavor range – or if you replace a scene, it’s got to have the same onion taste or garlic taste so that overall, the taste range is the same.
Cut, write, add – all to maintain the flavor.
