Going backwards or forwards?

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure which I'm doing at the moment. I attended a tutorial session to get feedback on my animatic yesterday, which was very helpful and I got some great advice, but acting on it... I'm not quite sure how things are going to work out.
Basically I was advised to try writing the narration from a different perspective, namely have it as a memory of Warren's, and we are hearing him remembering the events. Interesting to go back to this idea, as that is initially what Doyle was doing when the story still featured him and not Warren. This is all in the pursuit of shortening the amount of dialogue and making the film a little less pretentious, as I have a style of writing that is, frankly, a bit up it's own arse (you can blame grammar school for that). Unfortunatly, on trying this approach, I've ended up not only with a longer script than before even after several attempts, but it is more difficult to sympathise with Valerian, which is an essential aim of the film.
So, I'm kind of stuck in the mud at the moment and not entirely sure what to do about it. I've been doing occasional test animations (hair, smoke, cloth etc.), which is all very fun and should help in the long run, but it's frustrating when I can't proceed with the actual story and animatic, which is essential to have a good solid base for before I can go looking for a composer. People also seem to find the new voice I have for Valerian to be too cold, posh and unemotive- naturally there was always going to be a rpoblem because I could not give the actor feedback during the recording, but this is rather discouraging, as I thought his performance wasn't that bad and sounded pretty much exactly like I imagined Valerian to be.
So, here's hoping that people can help me out in tomorrow's seminar session/a thunder bolt of inspiration strikes me on the way to Boots. Low on paracetamol and motivation, it's hard making a film running on empty for either. Ah well, it's all downhill from here!