Writing? A Screenplay?

I've fallen back on an old idea I had and I started to develop it a little last night. I started with character background and stuff, because I usually neglect that stuff and go straight to outlining. Even when I did finish that screenplay for class a few years ago, my focus was mainly on the structure...the act breakdown and all that jazz. This is a mistake. While I did finish a feature length script, and I felt that it was finely plotted, some of the dialogue and actions in the middle of act 2 and almost all of act 3 felt forced and hackneyed. Like everything happened to assure that the plot fell into place, rather than arising logically out of a sense of character. Still loved that ending, though.

This new script is completely different. It's a period piece (still a comedy, naturally), it will require a fair amount of research (ugh...I did some cursory research on the ol' wikipedia last night...but I'll have to go deeper than that. I may wait until I have a draft first...), but I feel confident now that I've got some of the motivations and themes down on paper. We'll see. I've got to start getting up earlier and just plain writing...