using every scrap

Never throw away that first draft.

I never throw anything away, actually.  There's usually a rolling frontier in any document in process, a place marked by five asterisks, where the roadwork is being done and things are being steamrolled and, yes, built.  After those * * * * * there will be cuttings:  any line that felt too good to destroy, but had to be excised, any passage where The Writer went off the rez and scripted something bizarre, any bit of bad indecision or fumfering that couldn't be finessed.

The first draft of The Kill House, it seems, was done in 2023.  I don't remember it being that far back, but then I don't remember writing 3/4s of this draft, so what the christ.  It wasn't a very good script, but there were some ideas, and there were some skits that could be salvaged.  And there was an ending.  An ending that came out of nowhere, really, that felt legit because it was a betrayal of audience.  I didn't know where the instinct came from but it felt right, so that's where I ended it.

And that ending was very probably why I couldn't forget The Kill House, or put it aside.  So today, after some thorough hard drive archaeology, I finally dug up the original 2023 script and copypasted the verbatim scene & stage directions into the finished Kill House.

Now it's fuckin' done.

Time to draw the bastard.