4 posts tagged “script frenzy”

I had this idea for Script Frenzy this year to do a kid story.  I liked the idea of using furry animals (mostly because they're fun to drawr, not that drawring is part of it) with the subject of going to school.  This is from the middle niece being not so hot on school and I would like to make it feel like a neat thing or whatever.

Then I thought "Oh, geez.  School is great innit?"  "Yeah.  School's great" isn't very interesting.

Remember, I normally write things with lots of blood-loss.

Then I thought the protag could deal with nerves about making friends and going to school and just about the time he's settled, he has to change schools.  That traumatizes a lot of kids (and who doesn't want to traumatize fictional children and/ or small, furry animals)?

I don't know.  It's lame and I seriously am not sure I can crank 100 pages of dialogue out of that.  I might have to fall back on mass carnage.  Oh, and "Squeek" is the name of my protag, a guinea pig.

Script Frenzy, the screenwriting sister-project to National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo), is moved up to April this year.

I swore I'd not participate in nano 07 because how many speed-writing contests can a girl on a 6 day schedule do?  Oh, no.  I'm feeling the urge.  I logged in and you know, the site is so much fucking nicer than Nano's, esp. from 07.  Yuck.

They say they're going to completely over-haul themselves -I'm back to talking about SF again and I hope they don't f it up, too.

Oh, in case you're interested the short spiel is:  100 pages in screenplay format in 30 days.  That ain't so bad.  Or is it, really?  Screenplay is different from prose, yo.  Mwahahahaha.

The Divine Ms. M is joining Script Frenzy (link in sidebar) and very nicely asked about The State of The Plot for CS.

I'm ambling around a bit.  I had a beginning that was firm (to my mind) because I had about 8 beginnings

prepared before June.  I wrote one opening scene and then deleted it and started afresh to write about 10 pages.  Seeing the 12th page looming, I got spooked since several of my prepared plot points had already been negated or no longer made sense.  My ending wasn't exactly firm, either.  "Kill the father" was my idea and a friend said, "No! That's too easy.  You have to make him lose something dear to him."

It made sense that Russel Rowden had to be a much stronger person in his community.  The first idea on that was that he owned a lot of land but laid low because he's a scum-bucket.  Now, he's the biggest land owner and a self-proclaimed "sheriff" (not by law).  I also had to come up with some characters that I hadn't planned on and then turned around and killed off some people before I had planned.  And others were left standing, who I thought would be gone in act I.  You never know...

You see, I'm in a state of plot-fidget.  -my own term, I rather like it

I didn't study writing in high school or university (or literature beyond one intro class) so, my foundation isn't what a lot of other Nanowrimo or SF participants have.  That's okay!  There are a lot of participants who are 13 years old--this is supposed to be fun. -well...

I bought and read (our library is atrocious) 3 books in the "Write Great Fiction" series:  Dialogue, Structure and Plot, and Description & Setting.  The last 2 mentioned, I took seriously and did all the exercises within!  That was after doing my first nano-ette (it was the fake one in July).  That one showed that I could use some pointers and I think it was worth the brain effort of those exercises!

Typically, I'm a non-plotter, but I'm trying to convert myself.  What I end up doing is following a 3 act structure (sort of) and try to make sure that I have a "zinger" or grabber from 1 to 2 and 2 to 3.  The rest either comes to me or I force it out.  Also, a great thing about Nano and SF is you're NOT supposed to edit.  You just plow through.  Don't listen to the inner critic.  If you wake one day and think, "All that I wrote yesterday screws things up.  I don't want that," then you just start writing what you wish you had written and count all the words (even the part you know you don't want) toward the word goal.  This isn't school.  It's supposed to be fun and it's supposed to help us break the inner critic from silencing us or putting us down.  -that bastard  Later, I'll wish that I saved that opening scene, the first one.  I felt kind of cocky the first day, what can I say?

There are loads of people who try to make their stories completely nonsensical and that's great, too!  It's whatever you have fun doing or that feeds your soul/ makes you feel alive.  Some people jump off bridges with rubber bands attached to their ankles.  I dive into Never-never-land.  We're all kids here.