The Script Is Done

The script is done. Final draft, locked.

Locking a draft is a different thing than finishing one. A first draft is a story you're still deciding on. A final draft is scene numbers that don't move anymore, so a schedule can get built against them and every department can start pricing this thing out for real. That's where it sits as of today.

What's next is the shooting script, and it's a different kind of pass than anything before it. The story is done moving. Every scene, every beat, what happens and in what order - locked, as of this draft. What's left is dialogue, line by line, making sure every person in this says exactly what they'd actually say and nothing they wouldn't. I'll have it Saturday.

I went back through the whole thing this past stretch with a harder eye than usual - not looking for new ideas, looking for the places where a scene was doing half its job instead of all of it. A character whose grief never got a line. A beat that told you something a picture should have shown you instead. A mechanism that needed to survive someone asking 'wait, how would that actually work' out loud in a theater. Fixed what I found. Some of it was small - one sentence. Some of it changed how a whole act moves.

Here's the honest thing I didn't expect going in: every ingredient in this movie has been used up on its own a hundred times before. The doomed young love. The mentor who turns out to be compromised. The friend who dies paying off a debt he never should have owed. The kid who finds a home in the last place anyone would've bet on. None of that is new. Put those pieces next to each other specifically enough - a real city, a real decade, a real building with a real reason to be worth more burned down than standing - and something that should read as familiar doesn't. I'm not going to pretend I saw that coming. I just kept following the specifics until it stopped feeling like the version of this story you've already seen.

The novel's about a week out now. Same story, but prose asks a different thing of it than a script does - anything that worked because of what a camera could just sit on has to work a different way when there's no camera. That's the tightening I'm doing this week. Not new plot. The same story, said right in a form that isn't the one I built it in first.

Here's where things stand:Novel - about a week outAudiobook, full cast of voices laid over the soundtrack - before mid-AugustTeaser trailer - December 25

More as it's actually done, not before.

The Theme Song: "Don't Give Up on Love"

The theme song is done - "Don't Give Up on Love," a duet with Jasmine Maist and Marty Gregg.

Nine tracks got you there. This is the one the whole soundtrack was building toward - the song that plays under everything, start to finish.

I wanted this one tied 100% to the characters and the story, not written as a single to sell the movie. Every line traces back to something that actually happens on the page - the rooftop, the pie dish, "be good." The music's job is to support the film. Not market it.

It's in Bb major at 65 BPM - same key and tempo as the rest of the couple's music on this album. The final chorus modulates up a key. That's a first for me as a songwriter - I don't think I've ever earned a key change by the end of a song before. This one does.

A music video is planned for Valentine's Day.

Lyrics below, and you can listen right here.

Verse 1Up on that rooftop, we watched the sunset burnColors bleeding gold across the Akron sky in turnStars slowly whispered as the city slipped awayWe fell asleep together, woke to a brand new dayYour head upon my shoulder, the world so far belowIn that quiet moment, I knew I'd never let you goPre-ChorusTwo hearts crossing lines that the world said couldn't beChorusDon't give up on loveHold on through the fire and the rainDon't give up on loveSay "Be good"... instead of goodbye againFrom the stars we counted to the dreams we'll chaseOur hearts will find each other, no matter time or spaceDon't give up on loveOh, be good, my love... don't give up on usVerse 2That old pie dish still lingers like a promise keptNever made its way home, just like the words we never saidI never brought a soul up to that ledge beforeYou opened up my whole world when you walked through the doorI still feel you searching for my window in the nightNow every road I take, I take with you in mindPre-ChorusI've never brought anybody up here...But you brought me... into foreverChorusDon't give up on loveHold on through the fire and the rainDon't give up on loveSay "Be good"... instead of goodbye againFrom the stars we counted to the dreams we'll chaseOur hearts will find each other, no matter time or spaceDon't give up on loveOh, be good, my love... don't give up on usBridgeWe fell asleep as two... woke up as oneAnd even if the morning tries to steal the sun...This love is endless... it's only just begunFinal ChorusDon't give up on love!(Be good...)Hold on through forever and a dayDon't give up on love!(Be good...)Our hearts will light the wayFrom that rooftop sunset to the dawn we made our ownYou'll always be my shelter, I'll always be your homeDon't give up on loveOh, be good, my love...Don't give up... on usOutroBe good...Don't give up on love...Be good...Forever...▶Don't Give Up on LoveDuet with Jasmine Maist & Marty Gregg

The video comes next.

Act One Is Done

Act One is done.

I know this story. I've known the shape of it - the people, the tapestry being painted, where it all ends - for years. Writing it down this month hasn't felt like discovery so much as transcription.

Act One covers the same span most first acts do: what got taken, and what got found instead. Christopher loses his father to a fire in Cuyahoga Falls and gets pulled from it, barely, by a friend who had no reason to go back in for him. A month later he's handed off to an uncle in Akron who didn't ask for this and doesn't pretend otherwise. And somewhere in the middle of that - a neighbor. A basketball court with its own laws. A roof that isn't his, on a night that becomes the one thing in the whole act nobody's trying to survive.

From the script - dialogue as chemistry with zero exposition:DONNAI've never brought anybody up here.She says it like it's nothing. It isn't.DONNA (CONT'D)(a beat, then lighter)You know, most people return a pie dish in under three weeks.CHRISTOPHER(caught)I was going to.DONNASure you were.She's smiling when she says it. Three weeks of almost-knocks and almost-nothing, and neither of them is bothering to pretend otherwise anymore.(c) Keith Adler. All rights reserved, existing and future.

From the script - a nickname that isn't really about basketball:AARONAlright, Larry Bird.He says it laughing, not mean. A compliment dressed up as an insult - the highest kind he gives out.CHRISTOPHER(a real smile - first one in the whole script)I'll take it.AARONYeah. Alright, Larry.He says it like it's already decided. It is.(c) Keith Adler. All rights reserved, existing and future.

On the AI question, since I brought it up last time: the adversarial pass isn't there to invent anything for me. I already know these people. What it's actually for is making sure I don't shortchange them - that a supporting character doesn't quietly become a function just because I ran out of scene to give them real interiority, that a quiet character's silence still reads as chosen and not just underwritten. It's already caught exactly that kind of gap a few times. The story is mine. The job is making sure everyone in it gets to be as fully realized as the two people the title is about.

For anyone curious how the cast is actually shaping up through Act One - nothing from Act Two or Three here, just what's on the page so far: Christopher and Donna are both doing real work. He's built almost entirely through instinct instead of speeches - the things he notices, the things he can't leave alone, the things he doesn't ask for. She's got the best lines in the script so far and more agency than anyone else in it - she's the one who decides things, not just receives them. Lawrence gets remarkably little screen time and does an enormous amount with it in the space he's given. Aaron might be the most purely fun dialogue in the whole act - a real rival, a real friendship, earned entirely through play, no favors involved. The uncle is more specific than a minor character usually gets to be - uninvested without being cruel, which is a harder note to hit than cruelty would have been. And then there's a car that pulls up along a fence line for about twenty seconds, driven by a man who says nothing and means something. Not saying what yet.

Here's where things stand:Shooting script - two weeks outNovel - before mid-AugustThe duet, "Don't Give Up on Love" - before mid-AugustAudiobook, full cast of voices laid over the soundtrack - before mid-August

More as it's actually done, not before.

The Soundtrack Is Complete

The soundtrack is done - ten tracks, start to finish.

I'm not going to get into what each one means yet. Some of these will land very differently once you've seen where they sit in the story, and that's exactly the kind of thing I don't want to spoil before the film is ready. More on that later.

Here's the track list:

1. Last Night2. Donna - The Love Theme from The Saga for Donna3. Welcome Home4. Christopher's Theme5. Irreplaceable6. Meet By The Courts7. The Price of Truth8. Dawn9. End Suite - Theme from The Saga for Donna10. Don't Give Up on Love (duet)

Nine of the ten are up on the Music page right now. Go listen.

A word on why the keys land where they do. Bb major is the couple's key. It's the Love Theme, it's Christopher's Theme, it's Irreplaceable, and it's where the whole album resolves in the End Suite. Anything that's really about the two of them together lives in Bb. The minor cues - Last Night, Welcome Home, The Price of Truth - are close relatives of that same Bb, not a different world. Just that world gone dark for a scene. D major belongs to the town itself: Meet By The Courts and Dawn share it, and it's deliberately not the couple's key. The tempo does the same work the keys do - it climbs through the middle of the album, then drops all the way to 62 BPM for The Price of Truth, which is exactly as slow as that title should feel. And the duet closes everything out in Bb at 65 BPM, the same key as the Love Theme, because by the time you hear it, that's exactly what it's become.

I know the story, the characters, and their arcs. Having the music finished means writing all of it - every scene, every beat - is going to be even more satisfying than it already would have been.

Here's the plan from here:Novel - end of JulyScript and pre-production planning (locations, characters, props) - end of AugustNovel released under Creative Commons, with an audiobook - end of OctoberTeaser trailer - December 25

That order is backwards from how I built Young Cop. There I wrote the novel first, then the script, then the music, then went back and enhanced the novel once the film's version of the story was fully locked. This time: music first, then the script, and the novelization comes last.

The Novel Is Underway

I started writing the novel today.

So much to come.