Lucy Steele

I excel at multitasking

Maximum Z Lucy Steele, outlines, screenwriting, zombies

(I wrote this on Saturday, but didn’t get to edit it until Sunday.  Apologies for the delay.  Since I haven’t seen a lot of the nominated films, I won’t have an Oscar post, but do plan on watching the ceremony.)

I did the midday traffic shift yesterday, which gave me the opportunity to work on LUCY. Some of my most productive days are when I can work between reports.

I wanted to streamline the current section, which is basically everything after the midpoint. I also wanted to see if I could fit in my Irishman subplot a little sooner, resulting in payoff either by page 75, or into the final quarter of Act 2.

I was able to cut 3 scenes, for a tentative total of 24. If that seems high, keep in mind that more than a few are less than a page long. I have a tendency to overwrite during the outline phase. I throw it all out there: action, dialogue and a lot of notes to myself (Why does she do this?, what happens next?, expand!, etc)

A member of my old writing group once asked how I was going to get everything I had in the outline onto the page. I see the outline as a guide with nothing written in stone. And if I think a scene is too long, I’ll edit it down until I think it works.

My goal for this week is to get past the page 75 twist. Fingers crossed.

Movie of the Moment: K is a huge fan of zombie flicks. For those unaware, she grew up near Monroeville, PA, where the mall is from the original DAWN OF THE DEAD. She even has a Monroeville Zombies t-shirt from Kevin Smith’s company.

We watched the French horror THE HORDE, courtesy of Netflix. It has a great premise: a team of cops go into a gangster’s high-rise hideout to exact revenge for a fallen colleague. Then the building is attacked by zombies. Both sides team up to get out alive.

It was…okay.  Generous helpings of overacting, angry acting, repetitive dialogue and too-fast editing. I was under the impression there was lots of gore, but there wasn’t (at least for me). I was more squeamish when one guy kept slamming a zombie’s head against a cement post. That was due more to the sound effects than the visual.

They never really explain how the zombies came to be, but there are some mysterious explosions off in the distance soon after the beginning. Our theory was it was some kind of virus bomb-detonation thing.

I enjoy a good zombie flick, but there really seems to be an overabundance of them lately. We need a new genre!

Go Into The Story wrote earlier this week about the sale of ZOMBIE PET SHOP, which would be animated and family-friendly. Seriously? Wouldn’t it be easier to just make a new batch of SCOOBY DOO episodes?

Say when

Maximum Z analysis, Dreamship, Lucy Steele, outlines, plot, screenwriting, ScriptQuack

Rain has returned to the Bay Area, which means another 4:30 to noon day for yours truly, followed by an appointment in the afternoon, which means no physical work on LUCY.

Mental work, though, is another issue.

I printed out the outline pages I have so far, and realized something I haven’t noticed in a while: I have a lot going on in this story. And when I say a lot, I mean Faulkner-on-a-roll lot.

There will be lots of editing when I reach the end, but I have to stop myself from doing it now. It probably doesn’t help that I keep putting more stuff in and expanding and creating more storylines. Just trying to tie it all together. Honest.

It’s getting more complicated, despite my efforts to have that not happen. I know I’ve mentioned the number of scenes per section of Act Two, and it’s still too high.

I look at well-done action films (DIE HARD, RAIDERS) and there is no fat to those stories. Everything serves a purpose AND moves the story forward. Me, I got too much fat in mine. It slows things down.

I need to start swinging my metaphoric editor’s butcher knife and trim a lot of it away.

-Just a quick plug for script analysis service Script Quack, listed just over there on the right in the blogroll section.  I used them last year for DREAMSHIP and they came through with some fantastic feedback.  My original plan was to take their very thorough notes and do a rewrite for this year’s Nicholl.  Probably won’t happen due to all my work on LUCY, but definitely for next year.

While some places charge $200 and up for basic notes, Script Quack was only $99, which is a real bargain.  I highly recommend them, and I don’t get anything in return for doing so.  So there.

The benefit of taking a break

Maximum Z characters, Lucy Steele, outlines, screenwriting, Star Wars, story

Today was the first time I really got to sit down and work on the LUCY outline.  I’d been thinking about some of the minor hurdles I was trying to get over, which included what my bad guy wants and how that impacts Lucy’s story.

My page one is always the title, logline and plot point breakdown.

I looked at the logline, which has always given me trouble, and erased it.  I wanted something new.  Something that really encapsulates the story down to its bare minimum.  It took a couple of tries, but I came up with one that works.  I”ll probably change it again at least a few more times, but it works for now.

I looked at the plot point breakdown.  Something didn’t seem right.  The story’s there, but not the way I think it should be.  I change a few words here, add some there, and suddenly, it seems stronger.

And now into the outline itself.  Like I said, I’ve been struggling with the bad guy’s goal.  Then I realized I was worrying too much about the little things and not focusing on telling a story.  I wasn’t enjoying myself.

So one of my original plot points gets changed just a little bit.  The what is different, but the result is still the same.  And to make it that much better, changing that enables me to use it in a bigger, better way for Act Three.

So far, so good.

I’m still in the third quarter of Act Two, and realize I can flesh out at least two sequences, which really helps strengthen the story.  And I also discover I can change the setting of an important sequence, while also bringing in that much-liked rotund character from a few weeks back.

Like I said at the beginning, I really like how it’s all coming together.  True, there are a lot of details that have to be worked out for the rest of Act Two (escalating conflict!), and I started listing what needs to happen in Act Three.

Most importantly, it feels fun again.  Which is always nice.

Movie of the Moment: IT’S A TRAP!, Family Guy’s take on JEDI.  Fun, but the first two were better.  Some truly hilarious moments, but they seemed few and far between.  It’s a good thing they’re not doing these anymore.  It really seems to have run out of steam, which is even acknowledged in the opening crawl.

It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, they take on next.

That’s more like it

Maximum Z analysis, Black List, Lucy Steele, Murder of a Cat, outlines, screenwriting

It was quite a challenge, but I finally found a goal for my antagonist I’m happy with.  And even better, I didn’t have to change that much in the outline.  Sure, the opening scene is gone and now focuses on Lucy herself, but I think that’s for the best.

I had completely forgotten how both protagonist and antagonist should stand in the way of the other achieving their goal.  That really helped me figure things out.

Now it’s back into the quagmire that is the latter half of Act Two.  Good news on that front as well: I read over last week’s progress, and a lot of it still works.  So far, so good.

Once I get to the end of Act Two, and then figure out my way through Act Three, fine-tuning it may not be as difficult as I think (he typed with fingers crossed).

-As promised, a little more detail about MURDER OF A CAT, my most recent Black List script.  Like I said, I wasn’t that impressed.

It’s the story of a guy whose cat is murdered, and he works on figuring out the who and the why behind it.  I like the concept, but didn’t like the main character.  Can somebody please announce a moratorium on the now-cliched idea of an arrested development guy still living in his parents’ basement?  It’s no longer original, and I find them really annoying.

Honestly, he really reminded me of Ignatius J Reilly from A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES.  Which I didn’t like either.  So sue me.

And if I don’t like the main character, why do I care if he succeeds or doesn’t?

But that’s the problem.  Although I didn’t like him, I was interested in the mystery angle of the story.  He just happens to be the guy right in the middle of everything.  And adding to all of that, the main female character turns into a love interest.  I found her becoming attracted to him a little hard to believe.  Having them stay at odds throughout would have been much better.

I’m having a little trouble figuring out how this made it to the Black List.  The writing is…okay.  There doesn’t seem to be anything unique, original or (in my opinion) funny about it.  It wouldn’t surprise me if somebody read this and thought “Will Ferrell would be perfect!”

Who am I kidding?  Half of LA probably did.

Next up: I was going to read CHRONICLE, but I’m almost done with the book version of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, VAMPIRE HUNTER, so I’ll probably tackle the script soon afterwards.  That should be very interesting.

Getting there

Maximum Z animation, antagonist, Black List, Christopher Nolan, Lucy Steele, Murder of a Cat, outlines, screenwriting

The rain returned today, which means I worked until noon, thereby depriving me of about 2 hours of script work time, so there wasn’t much progress today.

But there was at least some.  And it may be more significant than I realize.

My problem was I had this bad guy connected to Lucy’s past.  In fact, he plays a pretty significant role.  I was trying to inject him into the story in a certain way, but kept running into obstacles of one kind or another.  And it wasn’t working.  So I tried another approach, even though I was worried it might seem a little cliched.

But it works better within the story.  So I’ll keep it for now, and see how things develop around it.

It’s supposed to rain all week, so the overall progress may be somewhat limited.  But this latest development is encouraging.

-I finally got around to reading another Black List script: MURDER OF A CAT, by Christian Magalhaes and Robert Snow.  I’ll have more detailed comments tomorrow, but for the most part, I wasn’t that impressed.

Movie of the Moment: Watched DESPICABLE ME with V.  I enjoyed it.  It was clever, original and never condescending, which I always appreciate.  And probably the first time I could actually tolerate Russell Brand.

I always find the best animation to be in the vein of the old Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons.  At first they seem geared towards kids, but a lot of jokes are there for the adults.  Surprisingly, this wasn’t nominated for Best Animated Feature.  It probably wouldn’t win, but at least it could have been nominated.

I also managed to watch INCEPTION over 2 days.  I liked it, but I couldn’t help but keep hearing a co-worker’s comments throughout in that almost everything Ellen Page’s character asks is for the benefit of the audience. “What’s a kick?”, “Limbo?”, “Whose consciousness are we going into again?” and so on.

I especially liked the whole execution of the dreams within dreams part, and each one’s relation to the one it was set inside, which I guess really was the whole second half of the film.

More than once I was thinking “How did they do that?,” but my DVD from Netflix didn’t have any bonus features, so I don’t know how they pulled off any of the special effects.  I’m fairly certain the fight scene in the hotel hallway was similar to the space station in 2001, complete with a circular rolling set.

While the story was a little hard to follow in some parts, visually it was stunning.  Christopher Nolan is definitely one of a kind, and it makes me look forward to THE DARK KNIGHT RISES that much more.

-I applied to a potential short-writing gig.  Zombies are apparently involved, which are always fun.