mystery

Three and a half scripts. No waiting.

Maximum Z adventure, blog, comedy, contest, coverage, creativeness, creativity, determination, editing, feedback, goals, jokes, multitasking, mystery, obstacles, productivity, pulp fiction, representation, rewrite, screenwriting, script, spec, story, storytelling, westerns, wine, writing, writing gigs
Keep your pants on. These things can't be rushed.
Everybody else, though, will have to wait. These things can’t be rushed.

Despite a few weeks to go, it’s safe to say that 2014 didn’t work out the way I’d hoped. I didn’t do that well on the contest front, and I no longer have a manager.

I’ve gotten over the thankfully-brief “woe is me” phase, and am now firmly planted in “How can I make this better?”

Like any smart and savvy writer, I’m thinking ahead and making plans.

-As much as I love my western, it still needs work. Beaucoup thanks to the legion of note-givers who offered up a lot of insight that really helped me out.

There’s a hill near where I went to elementary school. At the time, it felt like taking on Everest. Now, not so much. The idea of rewriting this script feels incredibly daunting right now, but as is usually the case, probably won’t be a problem.

A few ideas for changes have already popped up, with the hard part now to let go of what’s already in there, but that’s another blogpost.

-Another group of notegivers had some fantastic things to say about my mystery-comedy, and provided similarly helpful feedback. They liked the concept, pointed out what in the story needed work and had some great suggestions for potential fixes.

This one is going to be especially tricky (due to that whole mystery angle), but again, I’ll work my way through it.

Can’t explain why, but for some reason, listening to 50’s jazz and drinking a glass of quality red feel like they would be extremely conducive to working on the outline. I’ll let you know how that goes.

-As for the low-budget comedy, the story’s being kept under wraps until the first draft is finished. The big hurdle here is to just keep writing and not obsess over each joke. Darn my perfectionist nature.

-It’s been a while since it’s been mentioned, or even thought of, for that matter, but I don’t want to ignore my pulpy adventure. I managed to crank out a workable outline, but it definitely needs more fine-tuning. It’s more of a “whenever I get to it”, rather than a “I have to finish this!”.

So there you have it. My projects for the coming year. How many will actually be completed? Hard to say right now, but 3 seems like a reasonable number.

At this point, I’m not even entertaining the notion of contests. It’s really all about writing, editing, rewriting and polishing. Any money I would have spent on contest fees will go towards professional feedback.

I’ll admit I was hoping to have made some significant progress this year in terms of establishing a career, and in some ways I have, but you know what I mean.

If continuing to improve as a writer and honing my skills means a slight delay in getting representation, making a sale, and getting assignment work, then so be it.

I’m a patient guy.

Finding the positive in a negative

Maximum Z analysis, comedy, concept, creativeness, criticism, editing, feedback, goals, ideas, inspiration, mystery, obstacles, opportunity, problem-solving, productivity, scenes, screenwriting, script, sequence, spec, story, storytelling, structure, tone, westerns, writing

 

Converting something acidic to tasty and refreshing requires a little bit of knowing how
Converting potentially acidic to tastily refreshing requires a little bit of knowing how

Notes on both my western and mystery-comedy specs have been flowing in steadily from friends and trusted colleagues over the past couple of months, and the results have certainly been a mixed bag of opinions.

The general message is “Love the concept, solid structure, but ____, ____ and ____ needs work.” The individual comments, of course, are much more assorted. Happily, none are of the “This sucks! Do the world a favor and give up writing!” nature.

Show the same material to half a dozen people, and you’ll end up with half a dozen different reactions. And as you would expect, each one is helpful in its own way, especially if it includes something you may not necessarily agree with.

But here’s where it gets even better – take all of those notes and use the ones that you think make the most sense. Apply them to your script. Does it immediately read better?

Now let’s take it a step further, but this time with those comments you don’t agree with. What is about them that doesn’t work for you? Give ’em another look. Maybe there’s something in there worth using.

I got some great notes on the western, and one of the suggestions was cutting or at least shortening some sequences in Act Two. Of course, my initial reaction was “Not a chance!”

But this was defeating the whole purpose of getting notes – to make the script better. And me being so obstinate about it wasn’t helping.

So I read it again, this time with a more open mind. Would this work? Would it accomplish what I needed it to? The suggestion started to make sense. I’d already cut 12 pages out of this thing, so there was no reason I couldn’t trim a few scenes down. It wouldn’t hurt the story, and could actually improve it in terms of moving things along.

You get notes to help point out what’s wrong with your script, or at least what needs to be fixed. You can use them however you want, but to totally disregard them isn’t doing you any favors.

You’d be tired, too.

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Allowing myself the luxury of a 5-minute nap between projects
Allowing myself the luxury of a 5-minute nap between projects

What an exhausting week this has been.

-My “Ask a Script Reader/Consultant” series is going strong, with no signs of letting up. What I originally planned as a handful of interviews is now poised to run until at least the end of the year, possibly into January. There are a lot of quality readers and consultants to choose from out there, all of whom really know their stuff. If you think your script is good enough as it is right now, you should seriously consider getting some professional feedback from any of these folks to help make it even better.

-Had a great face-to-face meeting with another writer in which we talked shop, exchanged feedback on each other’s scripts and just had a nice time. It’s one thing to connect with somebody on social media or an online forum, but when you factor in the human element, it just makes it that much more a pleasurable experience.

-The feedback this writer gave me was about my western. He used to do coverage, so his notes were significantly better than mine. He had some very nice things to say about the script, and some great suggestions about how to improve it. Luckily for me, a lot of them were relatively easy fixes.

Working with these notes, I just completed a major edit, which resulted in shortening it by 4 pages to 122. That’s 4 pages less than the previous draft, and 10 pages less than the draft that went out to all those contests earlier this year. There will be at least 1-2 more edits, in which I’m hoping to cut even more.

-Because of all this other stuff, progress on the low-budget comedy has slowed a bit. The latest obstacle is the fleshing out of some of the subplots. While the main storyline is kinda/sorta solid, it’s those supporting ones that still need some work.

The next step may be focusing on developing each one subplot individually, then work out how it connects/relates to the others. This puzzle keeps getting more complicated all the time. I was hoping to have a first draft done by the end of the year, which is still possible, but it’s more important to me to have a nice, solid outline first.

-Got some great notes from a few people about the mystery-comedy. Still needs work, but just about everybody raved about its potential and how much they like the concept, which is always nice to hear.

-Looking for help with loglines? Check out this book from Doug King.

-A friend gave K some Meyer lemons, which naturally resulted in making a lemon meringue pie. I considered sharing some with my co-workers, but decided it was just too tasty to leave the house. When your child asks if the last piece can be saved so it can be part of her breakfast the next day, you must be doing something right.

-I haven’t been able to do any half-marathons since last year, but we got a dog a few months ago, so 2-3 times a week, I run the 3 miles to pick her up, then both of us do the run back. Doing these along with my occasional longer weekend runs has resulted in about 10 pounds dropped since Labor Day. Hoping to get back into doing some races next year, but the dog stays home.

-Oh, and there was this. 5 years in the making and no sign of letting up. Thanks for all the support, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride as much as I have.

If you’re new around here, welcome! Feel free to take a look around, ask questions, comment on something, what have you.

Can’t wait to see what happens next week.

Fall back. Regroup. Hit ’em again.

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Disappointed? Sure. Defeated? Never.
Disappointed? Sure. Disillusioned? A little. Defeated? Never.

Oh, what a week this has been.

The first round of the Nicholl Fellowship competition is complete. The quarterfinalists have been named, as well as those who placed in the top 10, 15 and 20 percent of all entries.

Regrettably, my western fell into the latter-most category. In some ways, that’s not too bad. Obviously not was I was hoping for, but at least worth noting.

It goes without saying that while there may still be hope for the script in the handful of other contests I entered this year, it’s also safe to say I should probably expect similar results.

But here’s the silver lining to all of this. I sent the script out, thinking it was ready. Since then, I’ve received lots of great feedback about how it could be improved – tighten this, work on that, etc. – and more is on the way.

This script was pretty good before. With a little more work, it could be fantastic.

I’ll be dividing my time between that and the rewrite of the mystery-comedy spec, of which I will definitely seek out professional feedback (Lesson learned here – after I think a script is good to go, I’ll spring for 1-2 sets of pro analysis. Definitely worth it.)

The silver lining to all of this: there’s no reason I couldn’t have two scripts ready to go for next year. Three if I really push myself with the pulpy adventure spec, but that might be overreaching.

Movie of the Moment – YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) One of K’s favorites, so we watched it as a family. V liked some of the jokes in the beginning, but her interest waned as it went on.

As for me, still holds up as one of the best comedies ever. Smart, funny and a cornucopia of quotable dialogue.

Here’s what you need to know

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Not THAT kind of exposition
Not THAT kind of exposition

As the rewrite/polish of the mystery-comedy continues, it suddenly hit me that while I knew the backstory of what came before, somebody reading it for the first time would have no idea what was going on, or at least how we got here.

A little exposition was in order.

But among the many problems with writing exposition is when it’s out-and-out obvious.

“You mean your brother John, who went through a terrible divorce, ran off to join the circus and became a cross-dressing serial killer?”

Sometimes it’s done very effectively, but unfortunately, a lot of the time it isn’t, resulting in a blast of information crammed into one scene.

No thanks.

Rather than go down that road, I’m exploring the potential of doling out the details over several scenes. A sentence or two casually placed here and there so as to not draw attention to itself, all for the purpose of helping you learn where everything is coming from and how we got here.

It’s a work in progress, so we’ll see how it goes.