I'm pretty sure this is it for the teen movie thing. It's so frustrating to read when you get to page 20 and you're like, Oy! It's the same thing again!
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I actually feel, when I get to about page 200, that it's going to be a book after all! It never gets easier - when you conquer one problem, another one rises up to take its place.
Some people say that they read the first 20 pages, and then decide if they want to do the film or not. But, I have to read the entire thing 'cause anything can change in a script.
There's a point I set for myself, and it's an arbitrary point, when I think no matter happens, I'm going to finish that book. And that's when I get to page 100. I have to see it out.
Even now I try to make each page compelling for the readers to get absorbed in the book.
In fact I have a full page warning, right in the front of the book, that no one under the age of eighteen should read this book and no one should even turn the pages if they are sexually conservative or erotically deprived.
Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won't go back to page one, but I might go back to page fifty-five, or twenty, even. But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting.
And once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.
I try to read everything that's sent me - play scripts, movie scripts - but I've had to make a rule. If the author hasn't grabbed me by Page 25, the piece goes back with a note of apology.
As long as my face is on page one, I don't care what they say about me on page seventeen.
One of the joys of a really good book is that you're so into the world of the book, you forget what you're looking at is words on a page.