contemplative
pegkerr I'm going to ramble about the writing project I started a while ago in hope that it'll help me move it forward. I have this awful habit of starting such things and not finishing them that I'd like to change.I haven't worked on my screenplay for a while.
I'm bogged down in what I think is the second act. Up to this point, I've introduced our hero, a laconic martial artist who acts as vigilante protector of a neighborhood of a big city, the plot-driving character, a programmer who worked out a link between computer networking and quantum tunnelling that opens a huge security hole (a big problem in this cyberpunky setting), and the villain, a capital-C Company man who's in charge of security and, having become aware of this new problem wants to shut it down by any means necessary.
The villain and hero are connected by past events, as all good heroes and villains should be.
Action to this point has been setting up the problem and introducing the characters. It was followed by the complication of a rival company coming after the programmer as she took refuge in the neighborhood protected by the hero. This led to an extended action sequence of glorious violence.
I know that where I want to go from here is to a Seven Samurai kind of climax with our hero holding off the villian and his Company goons long enough for the programmer to implement a scheme to steal enough Company information to keep the neighborhood safe from their evil machinations. Our hero can then die the tragic/heroic death he deserves.
So I need a bit of transition between those parts. Something to tie the programmer to the neighborhood so she'll want to help rather than just scampering to parts underground to avoid the Company. (Which wouldn't work, she'd be hunted down as a major threat to their security. So maybe evidence of how the neighborhood could protect her if she helped? Hmm.)
The last bit I wrote was the info dump about her programming feat that feels heavy and flat and needs to be cut. I'm leaning toward doing more hand-waving about what she's done as it likely isn't necessary for the progress of the plot, at least not in a screenplay.
