adventure

Boldly swinging into new territory

Maximum Z adventure, animation, comedy, horror, notes, perseverance, persistence, productivity, rewrite, science fiction, screenwriting, script, script doctor eric, writing , , , , , , , , ,

george jungle

As the shelter-in-place continues, I hope you and yours are staying safe and healthy.

I also hope you’re managing to be at least somewhat productive during these trying times. When all of this started, my initial thoughts were “Woo-hoo! I’m going to get SO MUCH writing done!”

Yeah, no.

I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home, but there’s also all that standard around-the-house-type stuff that needs doing, so while Writing Time is a thing, it’s just not as abundant as originally hoped.

Not that I haven’t been making progress.

-Working on the rewrite of the horror-comedy has been a real eye-opener, especially on the comedy side. Looking back at some older scripts, my idea of comedy was mostly slapstick situations and characters making clever comments. With this one, I’m forcing myself to use those less and focus more on developing funny scenarios that work within the context of the story.

-After something like two, two and a half years of jotting down ideas for it, I finally decided to start mapping out the story for an animated concept. It’s still in the early stages, but I managed to nail down the plot points – including an out-of-the-blue idea for one of the main storylines that feels perfect AND really ramps up the conflict.

-Blew the proverbial dust off some notes for an older sci-fi project in need of a rewrite. Some of the comments made quite an impression, so I’ve been squeezing in some work on applying them to the story – along with some significant changes to give it a thorough overhaul. Still some work to go, but it’s a good starting point.

-Honestly, not much attention has been given to the sci-fi adventure, but it’s still on the latest version of the WIP list.

All in all, hoping to have at least two, maybe three of these as ready-to-go drafts by the end of the year.

Another bonus of working on all these newer projects is re-experiencing the joy and excitement of writing. It’s one thing to go back and do the umpteenth draft of the script you’ve been working for a long time, and definitely another to create new pages for an idea that for the most part is just seeing the light of day.

I tolerate the necessity of the former, but fully embrace the thrill and exhilaration of the latter.

Even better – when they’re ready to go, I can contact my stable of savvy readers and be able to start off with “New script. Whattya say?”

Exciting times, chums.

Hope your writing output-during-quarantine is also coming along nicely.

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New direction? Yes, please.

Maximum Z adventure, conflict, development, rewrite, science fiction, screenplay, screenwriting, script, story, storytelling, writing , , , , , , , , ,

baby driver 2

Despite some unexpected delays in working my way through the revision/rewrite of the outline for the sci-fi adventure spec, progress is still…progressing.

Took a lot longer, along with a significant number of “how about…?”, than I wanted to fine-tune the first act, but I did manage to do it.

Which means I’m working my way through the second act, and thanks to several previous drafts, I’m able to cherry-pick from all of it and forging ahead, and the midpoint is comin’ up fast.

I thought all I’d need was to do a little more cutting-and-pasting and keep pushing forward.

But all the new developments in the story I’ve come up with to this point have now created the need to really shake things up.

Which means more changes.

Initially, a bit of a daunting challenge. I’m always resistant to this sort of thing.

But as has happened many times in the past, the more I weighed the options, the more it seemed necessary to implement those changes. Plus, if I tweaked a few things here and there, not only would it significantly add to the hero’s story, but it also created a whole bunch of new potential conflicts.

How could I resist such a temptation? Besides, I’m already behind where I was hoping to be by now, so what was a little more time spent on it?

Since then, I’ve been busy jotting ideas down, filling in a few blanks here and there, and changing this around to that. All the fun stuff.

What’s great is that the story is still for the most part the same as I originally planned, but, as is usually my experience, slightly different from the initial idea.

Can’t wait to see where it goes and how it all works out. Watch this space.

Footing finally found

Maximum Z adventure, Buster Keaton, characters, comedy, determination, frustration, horror, pages, perseverance, persistence, science fiction, screenplay, screenwriting, script, short films, spec, story, writing, writing process , , , , , , , , ,

keaton wind

Well, that was fun.

After what seemed like endless attempts, I finally came up with what is hopefully a solid beginning for the sci-fi adventure spec. Or at least the first ten to twelve pages or so. If I haven’t grasped you in my yarn-spinning clutches by then and have you begging to turn the page, I’m in trouble.

But with all those previous drafts at hand, along with heeding the guideline that the events of the story need to KEEP PUSHING FORWARD, it all (slowly) came together.

And to make sure I wasn’t deceiving myself, or working with a “Eh. Good enough” mindset, I took a short break (to work on another script, of course). A quick perusal upon my return showed that, yep, it still works.

Finding the right beginning was truly the biggest obstacle. I wanted to really put this world on display, along with better establishing the main characters – primarily the hero and the villain, along with the supporting characters. Numerous options were explored, but none seemed to fully fulfill my requirements. The journey to find that solution was a long and frustrating one, and it was tough to not get annoyed.

But I held on and kept trying, over and over, finally hitting on a solution. Even though the rest of the story looms, I couldn’t have moved forward without reaching this point. Fortunately, most of it is pretty set in place, so hopefully it won’t take too long to work through it.

Quick addendum – during one of my moments of downtime working on this script, I saw several “scripts wanted” listings that were asking for low-budget horror. Last year I cranked out a first draft of a horror-comedy that wouldn’t be too tough to trim down the number of locations and characters so as to make it cheaper to produce. Figure it’s worth a try.

-Writer/filmmaker/friend-of-the-blog Venita Ozols-Graham has put together a crowdfunding campaign to produce a filme version of her award-winning psychological thriller short script WHO WANTS DESSERT? Donate if you can!

Dismantle, reassemble

Maximum Z adventure, characters, draft, editing, emotion, rewrite, rules, science fiction, screenplay, screenwriting, script, story, storytelling, tone, writing , , , , , , , , , ,

home crew.gif

Sometimes when you’re working on a story, you just have this feeling that the way it’s being told is the way it should be told. It just feels right.

Even though I’d made some good progress with the ongoing revision of the sci-fi adventure outline, something still seemed…off. What I had was good, including several scenes that now felt necessary, but as a whole, not quite there yet.

As I’ve mentioned before, I keep all the previous drafts of the outline and script on file –  you never know when some of that text will come in handy. The recent work on the current revision was accompanied by another tab on the screen containing the previous draft, serving primarily as a sort of roadmap to help guide me through this latest effort.

Despite telling myself that this new draft was supposed to be different from its predecessor, its siren call was a bit stronger than expected. There was just something about it that couldn’t be denied. Not to say that the newer version was no slouch either.

Parts of this one work, and parts of that one work. Why not combine the two?

Sure, this even-newer draft might occasionally take a somewhat unorthdox approach in how the story’s presented, but by gosh, I still like it. “Rules of screenwriting” be damned.

There’s nothing wrong with cherry-picking parts of the new draft and incorporating them into the previous one where applicable. Of course, it would have been nice to have come to this conclustion a few weeks ago, but sometimes that’s just how it works.

What’s really nice is that for the most part, save for a few problem spots, the previous draft is still pretty solid on its own. Nothing serious, and some of these new elements look like they’ll really rectify that.

Based on some extremely helpful notes, another factor that’ll help this time around is putting more of a spotlight on the characters’ emotions. Even in this kind of story, with all of its fantastical and extraordinary elements, it’s important to show how the characters are still people.

Lastly, all the time I’ve been working on this story, I’d forgotten how the initial concept and earliest versions were all written with a certain kind of tone in mind; something to really convey the vibe of what story of story this was supposed to be and how I wanted it to read. Somehow that aspect’s diminished over time, and I plan on re-introducing it for the next draft.

This is gonna be fun.

Bit of a mishmash, but it works

Maximum Z adventure, ambition, determination, draft, food, patience, perseverance, persistence, rewriting, science fiction, screenplay, screenwriting, script, spec, Uncategorized, writing, writing process , , , , , , , , ,
goulash
Try it. You’ll like it.

The overhaul/revision of the sci-fi adventure outline continues, with some significant progress being made – especially over the past few days.

There’ve actually been a few rough spots just to get here.

One being letting go of how the previous drafts started out, story-wise, and not letting those details affect the new one.

Another has been being able to present important and relevant details and backstory without things being way too expository.

Still another has been figuring out how some, but definitely not all, of the story details could be reorganized, restructured, pretty much rebuilt from the ground up but still have it all work within the context of the story.

It’s been quite the challenge, but the gears have been constantly and consistently turning during the search for a solution.

Took a while to get there, but looks like it’s yielding some results.

But first – a little background info.

I make a point of holding onto previous drafts of outlines and scripts, because you never know if part of it will come in handy for a future draft.

Thus was the case here.

There were sections of the story that were going to stay, but some others simply weren’t a solid fit for the new draft – but there was something about them that still worked and that I wanted to keep.

Getting them to that point took several attempts, approaches and revisions. Took a while, but I got there.

Despite being a slow and somewhat drawn-out process, the new story is gradually coming together. I’m not one to impose deadlines on myself, but once I get all of this a little more organized, the outline should come together relatively quickly.

I like the idea of having a completed first draft, possibly even a revised second draft, by years’ end.

No pressure, but we’ll see how it goes. Probably helps that I’m really enjoying putting this one together.