the collaborative process: sharing a vision

Well, after several e-mails back and forth with my writing partner, I was beginning to be frustrated with his lack of excitement about any of my (obviously, of course) brilliant ideas. I really loved making each of the three main characters a different example of how selfishness leads to loneliness. I had several wonderful visuals.

He wasn't seeing the story, so I outlined how each of the characters would relate to one another - so that the story would come out of that. He finally saw the story but said that it seemed like a RomCom without the com.

Well, yeah. That would be a romance. And horror films (not slasher movies) often have a strong romantic element.

He's not liking this, or my description of the protagonist as a hedonist driven by her passions - he says that indie films need something "extreme" and that violence, not sex is what tends to appeal to people.

It's with this comment that I realize the source of the problem.
He had said early on that he wanted something that could be the director's and writer's calling card. So I was thinking of the auteurs I love... Greenaway, Kieslowski, Vadim. Visual, sensual stories about the human soul and the intersections of pain and love.

He was thinking of Tarantino, Rodriguez, and Roth.

Doh!

So what do you do when your writing partner has such a vastly different vision than you? In this case, he's also the man with the production company and the potential to make this script into a film... so what I do is change my perspective and do my best to take up his vision. I can do violence.

I'll save my artsy-fartsy ideas for my own screenplays.