characters

Just…a little bit…more!

Maximum Z adventure, characters, loglines, outlines, radio, story, writing group

As I’ve stated before, one of the great things about where I work is that sometimes there’s so much downtime between reports, I get to work on non-radio stuff.

Especially scripts.  I don’t know why, but more often than not, I’m more productive in the studio than on my couch or at the desk in the home office.  Crazy.

Since the past two days were holidays, I worked the 5am-noon shift.  Amazingly, there isn’t a whole lot of traffic during the morning of major holidays, which means I had a lot of time to work with.

Which is what I did.  Oh boy, did I.

I was able to bring my laptop in yesterday, with the intent of getting something done with LUCY.  I like how the first act is developing, but it feels like it’s >this< close to being where I want to be.

Earlier in the week, I had worked on inserting the sidekick angle. So far, not too bad.  Still need to work on that opening sequence though.

But I was able to expand a bit on the first ten pages, fleshing out Lucy and the sidekick a bit more.  Based on suggestions from the writing group, I slightly altered what happens at page 10, and was able to edit out some extraneous scenes between that and page 17 (or at least what’s supposed to be there).

The rest of the first act also came together.  While I like the way it’s going, I worry that the sidekick doesn’t have enough to do.  But everything is still in the early development stage, so there’s still lots of time to fix this and that.

My goal today was to try and venture forth into Act Two (which I have a good idea how it’s going to start out), but there were two things bothering me:

-what happens if Lucy fails?  It has to be something really big.  Something majorly important. I have a few ideas, but nothing that really says “this is it!”

-While I have a connection between Lucy and the main antagonist (thanks again, writing group!), I need something in there so logical to allow/enable Lucy to go after him, that there’s no doubt that’s what she needs to do.  This is quite an obstacle, but I bet I’ll come up with something sooner than I think.  I’ve done it before.

In the meantime, I may start working out the next sequence or two, just to see if I can make things connect smoothly.

Besides, I’m doing the midday shift two days this coming week, so you just know I’ll get results.

-Going against my better judgment, I entered the logline contest again, this time with an entry I’ve never tried before.  I have my doubts, but you never know.

Right after I did that, I looked at my logline for LUCY and realized it’s just okay.  It doesn’t grab you.  That’s something else I’ll work on this week.  I want it to be so kickass you can’t help but think “that sounds so AWESOME!”

So for now, the toil and drudgery continues…

Nice

Maximum Z adventure, Cat Ballou, characters, Hollywood, movies, plot, screenwriting, script doctor eric, story, treatment, Uncategorized, westerns, writing group

Do you remember the very last Calvin and Hobbes?  I don’t have it handy, but it talks about all the possibilities that await you/us out there.  How metaphoric.

That’s how LUCY is starting to shape up.  The more I think about what I could do with this, the more positive it feels.  To quote Steve Allen, this could be the start of something big.

No, really.

The writing group came over last night.  If we were able to stay a little more focused, we’d get a lot more done.  But I digress.

There were only five of us, and everybody ‘checks in,’ which means they give a little update as to where they are with their material.  A status update, I guess.

So when it came to me, I explained how I was abandoning BABY LIKES JAZZ because of my inability to write comedy, then explained how I came up with LUCY STEELE.

It got a positive, enthusiastic response.  Which was awesome.  They liked the concept, the story (such as it was) and the potential.  All of which I am also excited about.

I started compiling a list of everything that could possibly be connected with this story, including whatever I could think of regarding westerns, trains, post-Civil War America, and so on.  Not surprisingly, the list keeps getting longer.  Although I don’t plan to use everything, a lot of it could factor in somehow.

I feel like I’m on the cusp of having a plot-point outline done; still needs some fine-tuning.  Once that’s ready, I’m hoping a lot of it falls into place.

I’ve also been trying to figure out supporting cast, but I really want to have fun with this, so I may let my imagination run wild on this.  For some reason, the idea of a medicine show huckster-type character popped in and won’t go away.  That could work.

And a bounty hunter.  And a handsome authority-type figure (US marshal/cavalryman/etc).  Still working on those.

I’m also reminded of how much I enjoyed CAT BALLOU, which is also one of K’s favorites.  An often-overlooked western-comedy with the surprisingly-funny Lee Marvin and a catchy theme song.  I think I’ll have to watch that again to get a better sense of a female protagonist up against tremendous odds.

Once I get started, I suspect writing this may be as fun as DREAMSHIP was.

Not to get ahead of myself, but maybe this could be THE ONE that does it for me.  And that would TOTALLY AWESOME.

Of course, I have to write the damn thing first.  Well, one step at a time.

-Once again, I did not win the logline contest.  Ugh.  I’m seriously considering giving up entering.  Or at least giving it one or two more tries, THEN giving up.