Anyways, at 2 a.m. I wasn’t scrubbing wine off the stove, but reading what I wrote for Script Frenzy 2012. If you haven’t heard of it, Script Frenzy is an annual online event where writers challenge themselves to come up with at least 100 pages in 30 days during the month of April. It may sound like pleasure derived from self-inflicted torture, but when you think about it, what art form isn’t?

Now, looking over my screenplay after letting it sit for almost 2 months, I can tell you with confidence that it is really, really bad.

Still, I read all 101 pages of utter suck and managed to find bits that made me smile and laugh and, best of all, made me eager to start working on it again. If a project has the power to make me excited and not want to drag it to the trash in shame then all the long hours of straining my eyes in front of my laptop and the sunny days spent indoors, writing, were worth it.

I’m yet to decide on a title, but I have been calling it #Persona. I’ve jokingly described it as Citizen Kane meets 500 Days of Summer and so far it’s stuck. I’m yet to find anything more accurate.

Excerpt:

I love how re-reading my writing can turn into such a self-reflective process. The script mirrors my interests and my sense of humor, things I didn’t realize while preoccupied with page count. After taking Popular Culture my sophomore year of college and writing a term paper on fan culture, I’ve been extra sensitive to looking relationships whether it be between two characters on a screen, people right in front of me or an audience I’m sitting with and their “interaction” with the celebrities onscreen.

My intrigue lives through my main character, Alex, who finds himself constantly asking: Why do I feel such an affinity for someone I’ve never met in real life and probably never will? Is it the person I’m fascinated by or merely their persona? Is it possible to stay objective and be critical of the thing (or person) you’re obsessed with?

These are all questions I toy with through the narrative. I’m not even sure if it’s easy or possible to find answers since the level and focus of fascination varies from person to person. I just use these questions to tell a story. That’s what I love about writing. Mine is just one voice that contributes to the vast discourse of life. Some will get it and relate to it and others won’t, but that’s okay.

After successfully completing Script Frenzy for the first time, I can finally say it isn’t as painful as it sounds, especially if you can get as easily pulled into the world of the story as I can. This first draft is a beautiful, disjointed mess, but at the very least, I wrote it all down, which means it’s out of my head. It takes some people years to get this far and thanks to Script Frenzy I did it in 30 days.

Was this a productive 2 a.m. moment? I think so.

“A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.” – Billy Wilder (June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002)

I don’t know how else to communicate my love for Billy Wilder, especially on his 106th birthday, other than confessing that all throughout Script Frenzy, this had been my desktop image:

I adore this man and not only because he was first and foremost a writer, but also because of his thoughtful cinematic eye, his unrelenting wit and his love for making pictures that always translates onscreen. Double Indemnity (1944) is the first Wilder film I’ve ever seen and set the standard for every film noir I’ve screened since. Even though the number of times Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff says “baby” is worthy of a drinking game, the delivery and commitment to the role is on point. Playing opposite of MacMurray, Barba Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson is a femme fatale in every sense of the term. The cinematography is stunning and the narrative is so artfully pieced together that it achieves an impressive level of suspense and entertainment without all the CGI and digital tricks of modern filmmaking. It also has lighter, amusing moments like the scene where Walter stops at a drive-in, orders a beer, drinks it in his car and is free to drive off. Oh, what it would be like to live in the 1940s.

Other classic Wilder must-sees:

• The Lost Weekend (1945)
• Sunset Boulevard (1949)
• Sabrina (1954)
• The Seven Year Itch (1955) (Currently on Netflix instant)
• Some Like It Hot (1955)
• The Apartment (1960)

Happy birthday, good sir. The legend lives on.

…

Photos via Tumblr

It’s been two weeks since my last post already? I was planning on doing an update at the end of each week for Screnzy, but I got a bit sick around posting time and wasn’t able to muster up the inspiration to update. Honestly, I’m still not feeling my best right now, but I’m here, so why not try to get the ball rolling and start a post? I suppose, first thing’s first, it’s time for an update on my Script Frenzy project.

For the most part, my first rough draft for my script is complete. It’s a mass of scribbles, side-notes, and often, very misread-able chicken scratch (even misread-able by the person who wrote it – I misread someone laughing at someone’s action as someone laughing at someone’s erection). I finished it up around the late 50′s-early 60′s in terms of page count, and since a majority of it is being completely re-written as I re-type it, I decided to be a bit of a cheater and count it in my screnzy page count. While this does count as editing, it’s also re-writing a lot and typing it all out, adding and taking scenes away, and the counter going up can sometimes keep me motivated to keep going. I won’t be an official winner, but I got my goal of writing a script done, and I’m keeping motivated for the final drafting stages.

Of course, I’ve been having a little bit of trouble keeping to working on it a little bit every day. I’ve been keeping myself entertained productively with a lot of other things – in terms of this project, settling on character designs, messing with the designs in different poses to see if they fit the character and I like working with them, practicing my digital painting skills, and namely a lot of things involving my little project-devoted sketchbook and my tablet.

On the other hand, I’ve also been devoting a little bit of time every few days to a mini-comic I’ve been doing to relax and have fun, for the entertainment of my friend’s and I, rather than sitting down and forcing my hands to the keyboard when I don’t feel up to it. It’s definitely not something I’m pouring as much devotion as my main project into, and I’m going for a sloppy, fun look to it, something obviously quick but still with a lot of work into it, something that I’m doing quick and for fun but still making sure I’m satisfied with for the style before I consider it finished. I think this is essential to my improvement as well – learning to make things quick and keep things fun every now and then, and trying not to lose sight in that working on these things are what I’m supposed to enjoy, not force myself to do 24/7.

And then there are other things I should be doing – work, reading Dracula, and posting on this blog. I’m fairly sure I can put those things into my weeks at least a little bit without messing anything up too bad, but I’ve also been staying up quite late these days and adjusting to that sleep schedule when I should really try to be fixing it to something more up-in-the-mornings-and-days focused until I’m done with my work. I’m really trying to settle into being more productive, but I’m slipping up a lot, especially with holidays and sickness. My recovery from other things, however, relies a lot on productivity and satisfaction with the amount of things I get done, so I’m going to have to try a bit harder.

If that means forcing myself to start a scene or two in editing and to plan a brief idea for another script, trying to watch a little less of the original Dark Shadows and get things done instead, and trying to fit all of this into an odd sleep schedule or fixing my sleep schedule to something different, so be it.

Expect some posts on editing, rewriting, and the like in the coming months, probably, since that’s what I’m currently doing with my writing, myself. I’d prefer to focus on things that I’m currently working on to keep myself in that mindset when it comes to writing these posts. Hopefully, there’ll be some more posts about my project in particular, inspiration, and eventually some to finish up my posts on character creation. We’ll see, though. As I said – I’m still adjusting.

If you’re participating in Script Frenzy, are you going to be hitting 100 pages this month or not, and how has your experience been? If you’re not in the Frenzy this year, what types of things have you been working on and how is that going? And for all of you – what types of things do you end up doing instead of working on your ‘projects’?

As a seasoned Nanoer, you’d expect me to go with Nanowrimo. After all, I’ve never even written a script before (barring a few five-minute skits I wrote for high school theatre class), while I have roughly half a dozen half-finished novels floating around my bedroom and ideas for at least half a dozen more.  On the Script Frenzy site there’s a forum for Nano-turned-Screnziers, where novelists share the woes of trying to write a script.

Most of these woes have to do with formatting, but I think that’s just silly. Sure, I don’t really know what I’m doing, but that’s what the free version of Celtx is for. Admittedly I still sometimes have questions about how to imbed a flashback in a scene or how to cut away from one room to another room to show simultaneous events, but generally speaking, formatting is pretty easy if you don’t try to do it yourself.

(I did do it myself in class one day when I was handwriting more of my script rather than paying attention to “Death of a Salesman,” but by then I had been using Celtx for a few days and knew what the script should look like. Later that night I brought the paper to Biggby for our write-in, and it made Feliza’s diaphragm contort in hilarity.)

(For those of you who don’t know, that’s the pseudo-scientific way of saying it amused her.)

And then a lot of Nanoers say they have trouble keeping in their head that it’s page-count, not word-count, that matters in Screnzy. To me, that means these people just like doing things the hard way. I mean, come on: 50,000 words (roughly 175 double-spaced pages filled with writing) vs. 100 pages (with lots of space due to formatting). Being the lazy bastard I am, I’ve had no trouble at all thinking in terms of pages instead of words. Consider the difference, here. If you write five words during Nano, you look like this:

Whereas if you write five pages during Screnzy, you look more like this…

Remember: Pages > words.

The only real problem I’m having with Screnzy is the writing itself. The reason being that when I write a novel, I usually have at least most of the scenes and dialogue planned out. Not in a wrote-a-detailed-outline way, but in a daydreamed-about-it-in-my-head way. I visualize while doing the dishes at work or driving. But with this script, I have done very little visualizing, which is probably a bad thing since scripts are extremely visual. So I keep getting stuck because, although I know what’s happening, I don’t know how it’s happening – I don’t have a clear idea of what the setting looks like, how the characters are interacting, or what the characters are saying. But I think that’s a personal problem.

As of Day 10 I should be on page 33.3 (if my math is wrong I’ll use the excuse that all good English teachers use: I don’t teach math), but without any script-writing yet done today I’m on page 40. This is my deciding factor on whether Screnzy or Nano is easier: I am NEVER ahead on Nano. In fact, though I won Nano 2011, I spent most of November behind. I had days when I had to force myself to write at least 2500 words just so I could be almost caught up.

Whereas during Screnzy, most of my tweets are like this one:

I rest my case.

Elizabeth Anderson is an education major at the University of Toledo, specializing in language arts and sciences.  She is a two-time Nanowrimo participant, a first-year Screnzier.  In her spare time she likes to read, write, draw, sing, play piano, take walks, garden, and be generally weird and nerdy.  Check out her blog, Twitter, or Facebook page.

It was a bit tough deciding what to do, the novelty of it and the many possibilities making me euphoric (a videogame? A comic? Oh, how about radio plays?) but I ended up choosing to script a story that I had on my mind for a while in graphic novel format.

Usually, before I draw the final comic or graphic novel pages I make thumbnails of them first with the dialogue for each panel and notes scribbled on the margins, so adding scripting before all that was a new approach to me.

I started piecing the outline together and developing the characters around a month before the event started. I was pretty excited to try something new and developing a (sort of) new story, especially after the fun I had last year with NaNo. Having a lot of free time then helped the want of doing something, of being productive and work on personal projects.

In the first couple of days, still struggling with the new writing format, I was a bit too focused on how the layout of the page would look in the end which made me slow (I was indecisive and second-guessing it a lot) but slowly I started to try to just keep the number of panels per page in check and not be so perfectionist about where exactly they would go. I realized it was more important for me to spare most of the effort for the flow of the story right now. Layout problems can be solved later (or so I hope), even if some tweaking is needed. Still, I have to constantly remind myself to write first and edit later.

Each panel description was either a pain or an enjoyment. I have a pretty strong visual for some of the panels so describing them exactly the way I want them makes my mind at ease. However when I don’t have a specific image my vague and/or short descriptions leave me feeling that my script is lacking. Then again, not all panels will be all action packed right? I don’t think it’s a bad thing, even if the feeling doesn’t quite leave me be.

On the first week the story I’ve been keeping only on my mind just ran with abandon, filling pages and pages of interactions and angles and expression, but then assignments sucked my time and energy and I felt inertia starting to creep. The second week was spent trying to keep up, finding a couple of minutes to write a page, seeing the goal of 100 pages by the 22nd to get a 100 euro donation to OLL start to circle the drain. I was afraid my descent from run to crawl would end on a full stop. And that’s why this weekend I’m metaphorically glued to my office chair unless the house is on fire.

Tomás is a Visual Arts student aiming for Concept Art. He draws, writes, plays games and turns junk into other stuff among other things. You can see some of his works at tomsp.tumblr.com.

MENU
“New Game”
“Continue” [Appears conditionally on previous save]
“Credits”
“Quit”

NEW GAME

The camera is behind the player-character’s closed eyes, slowly flickering open in a very cliche, minimalist white room. As soon as the player-character’s eyes are fully open, he can navigate the 3D environment with ease. The painfully shiny, circular room is empty, devoid of windows and doors.

CHEERY AUTOMATED MALE
(o.s.)
Welcome to your mind, player-character. As you can see, it is a bit of a blank slate right now. But you are here right now because you want to write a video game script. My name is Alex. My function is to get you started on the basics. First, let’s talk about formatting.

[SFX: PRINTING PAPER]
A black slot appears in the wall and promptly vomits a gray sheet of PAPER, light but contrasting significantly with the whiteness of the perfect room.

When the player picks up the PAPER:
[DIALOGUE BOX]
“Resources” checklist added to inventory [viewable in Pause menu].

CHEERY AUTOMATED MALE
Take a look at your resources list to get started on any formatting questions you might have. As far as I am aware, there exists no “one” industry standard for game formatting–it all comes back to the game itself that you are writing. First, what kind of game would you like to make?

[DIALOGUE BOX]
[1.1] I will create the next Bejeweled.
[1.2] I will create the next Fallout.
[1.3] I will create… honestly, I have no idea.

[1.1]
CHEERY AUTOMATED MALE
(o.s.)
So you envy Rovio then. Try to focus on quality, however, over quantity. Your game may or may not have a storyline, but it won’t cost you an arm and a leg to write it. It certainly won’t occupy a hundred pages if you’re planning this project for Script Frenzy. Still, it needs words. It needs a script, or at least a storyboard. Every action has a consequence.

BRANCH CHAPTER
[SFX: CRACKING TILE]
The center of the floor in the room cracks, a sapling of a tree abruptly springing from it. Pink cherry blossoms float to the ground.
IF the player is standing directly over the crack, he will be thrust to the ground. [-10 HP]

CHEERY AUTOMATED MALE
(o.s.)
Branching will become your best friend or your worst enemy.

The player-character, examining the tree, sees that each of the branches bears a glowing label, “Touch Me,” upon approach.

IF the player-character touches the BRANCH, two more BRANCHES spring forth, each with the same label and exponential growing ability.

When the player has activated any six branches:
CHEERY AUTOMATED MALE
Accounting for every possible action the player could take is a hassle, admittedly. But it is worth it.
[Go to Conclusion]

[1.2]
CHEERY AUTOMATED MALE
(o.s.)
Did you know that the video game scripts for games like Bioshock and Mass Effect consist of thousands of pages, not including character bibles and world encyclopedias? Furthermore, consider that good games do not entirely rely on convenient cutscenes to make a complete story–even the classic JRPGs contain story elements in the fights and missions between movie-like, cinematic sequences, even if it just means interacting with a shopkeeper. Cutscenes are the solution of a screenwriter forced to work on a video game. The best way to write a game is as a gamer.

[Go to Branch Chapter]

[1.3]
CHEERY AUTOMATED MALE
(o.s.)
Do not concern yourself with details too much. Your mind is not empty–it is only clear. Do not worry at this time about what kind of mechanics you have, or what kind of graphics you want in the final product. Write plot, first. Write characters, first. Write your ideas like a chapter of a novel, or a short story.

[Go to Conclusion]

CONCLUSION
A section of paneling from the wall becomes a DOOR, moving out and sliding up. Outside, an exotic, barren, and beautiful landscape of rocks and trees appears. The sky is dark with night, but stars and some kind of planetary body cast a romantic glow on the landscape, illuminating it.

Another section of paneling slides out and up. CHEERY AUTOMATED MALE enters, carrying a Chromebook under his arm and making a beeline for the door. He stops at its entrance to face the player-character.

CHEERY AUTOMATED MALE
Let’s start imagining.

Alex J. Freemont is a self-nominated android fascinated by the humanizing appeal of good stories wherever they can be found, especially if they involve time-travelling British men. It muses about the geek life on Twitter, while on transcending pixels it picks apart the aesthetics of genius casual games.

I’ve seen a lot of talk about week two, what it seems to do to people. A slow of inspiration, loss of confidence in their skills to see it through to the end… but this past week, for me, it’s still been flowing finely. I’ve been able to get quite a few pages more than usual in per day on the good ones, and I’ve gotten myself a bit ahead. My work has gone to a sort of slow, however, and I’ve been putting myself on 3 pages per day, usually right around night time. My inner editor has started trying to force it’s way through, and there’s that little barrier I broke down at the beginning building itself up again, a little barrier in my head that gives me doubts. One that fights the risks of taking on a project and leaves the door unlocked for the inner editor to come around a little too early for my tastes.

I had a nightmare last night, something horrible and terrifying. I spent a good deal of the morning looking up almost everything I could remember about it in a dream dictionary, each and every little detail I could find, and while I’m not one for dream analyzing, the terror from it was enough to get me to. I found that most of the details were involved with a positive change in life, a fear of not being good enough, things that seem to line up with an amazing change in my life that has come with Script Frenzy: writing more and writing regularly, which has inspired a lot of positive change. Recovery from something I’ve been experiencing for years, long enough for me to wonder how I’ll live when it’s gone, and I guess it is kind of scary thinking about it, although it feels marvelous. Most of the meanings I found lined up with how I’m feeling, the way life has been going, and some of the other things are quite personal, so while I won’t detail them here, they did line up correctly as well, which may have just been an odd coincidence.

The dream resembled nightmares I had often when I was very young, the main difference being my age in it and the fact that it ended with the words “32 PAGES UNTIL DEATH” on my computer screen. I’ve always had a fear of never finishing projects, and since I was little, I’ve had a bad habit of abandoning them. I’m thinking my subconscious is a little wary of my love for the project I’ve been working on this month, something I’ve been trying to build up in my head since around Thanksgiving. I’m balancing my life with it well, and while I do run into little bumps of stress on this road, I’m very confident in this project and I know I will finish it. I have a lot of faith in it, but I’m becoming doubtful of it as always, and this doubt was fairly specifically last night before I went to bed. Hopefully, Script Frenzy 2012 will help me through these problems I have and help me become a better writer, script or not.

While I’ll have to get to work and prove to myself that I can do this, the script has been going well. I’m getting to know my characters and the way they act more, experimenting with how they react to different things, basically learning more and more about them each page and (hopefully) breathing more life into them as I go. They’re each developing their own senses of humor, their own ways of responding to stress and irritation, some even gaining their own ways of wording things before the process of going back and re-wording their dialogue to fit their speaking styles. I’ve found that one of them used to write what they refer to as marvelous stories, and another has it in their nature to worry and dote over others. My antagonist’s plans are being set into motion, and the main characters are learning more about what other things that aren’t quite natural could be lurking in the forests around them.

I’m having a blast exploring my world, getting to know my characters, figuring out the little details of the story as I go. Winging it comes with a lot of doubt sometimes, but it brings freedom, too. I’m definitely going to try to do more of this, maybe combined with a wee bit more planning on what the actual stories will be about next time, and I’ll hopefully be trying more and more new techniques to see how things work out. Soon, I’m going to be buying something to keep all of my visual records for the story in – character and setting designs, drawings that will create the foundings of this world I’m creating, the visuals that will hopefully help me bring my story to something more than a writer and artist’s distant dream.

I’m absolutely loving Script Frenzy 2012, my first participation in the event, despite the bumps in the road! How is everyone else participating holding up? If you’re not participating in Script Frenzy, are you working on something else – if so, what is it?

This year, I planned Script Frenzy out a bit more than I have in previous years, and that includes the playlist.

I’ve got a nice playlist started that’s composed of what I’d consider “throwbacks”: songs I remember from my junior high and high school years that capture the tone of what I want Half-Sized Tiger to be.

Some of the songs aren’t from those years – most remarkably the one ADELE song on the list – but they’ve all got the tone I’m trying to achieve in Half-Sized Tiger.  I also included some links to YouTube videos – official videos by the artists, fan videos using footage from Toradora!, and non-official fan videos as well.

And so, without further ado:

1. Everybody (Backstreet’s Back) – Backstreet Boys
2. Dance with the Devil – Breaking Benjamin
3. Set Fire to the Rain – ADELE
4. How to Save A Life – The Fray
5. Up Against a Wall – Boys Like Girls
6. Fall Back Into My Life – Amber Pacific
7. I Want it That Way – Backstreet Boys
8. Dance Inside – The All-American Rejects
9. Unwanted – Avril Lavigne
10. Sweetness – Jimmy Eat World
11. Mr. Brightside – The Killers
12. Until The End – Breaking Benjamin
13. Hanging By a Moment – Lifehouse
14. My Immortal (Radio Edit) – Evanescence
15. Incomplete – Backstreet Boys
16. I’ll Be There For You – Jon Bon Jovi
17. Fall For You – Secondhand Serenade
18. Teenage Dream – Boyce Avenue

That’s quite the mix, isn’t it?  I don’t think anyone besides be would stick a Backstreet Boys song in front of a Breaking Benjamin song, but that’s what it is.  This list is subject to order changes as I change or tweak the order of events in the screenplay, but this is more or less the inspiration I’m drawing from this month.

Do you prefer listening to music when you write?  Do you have a Script Frenzy playlist?  If so, blog about it and post the link in the comments.  If you listen to a particular album, let me know – I’m always on the lookout for new music, and I’d love to hear what inspires you.

The first week of April is coming to a close now, and I’m still pretty confident. My script is a bubbling pile of inspiration, covered in scribbles and doodles, filled with scenes that I need to re-arrange and slim down, and the beauty of it is, I don’t really mind right now. I’m having loads of fun, and just getting the plot down in all of it’s winging-it glory. I’m battling my inner editor and whacking it over the head with a stick, but I’m repressing it enough to not go back, scribble all over things and rewrite them in white-out pens over the black mass of scribbles. I know that I’ll be typing out my script and wondering what the hell I was thinking when I wrote this here and let this happen over there and left this idea off somewhere else, but that’s the fun of it. I’m just letting my pen vomit my ideas all over a page, and I regret nothing. This way of doing things is very inspiring, honestly – letting the inspiration flow and take me everywhere it wants to is getting more work done than I usually do when forcing everything into the direction I already decided. A breath of fresh air, I suppose?

That being said, I did have a few plans for my characters – but some of them are already giving me the ol’ “fuck you!” and doing something completely different. I’d had a little bit of romance planned for much later in the series I’m working on for the main character with someone who hasn’t been introduced yet, however, the chemistry between them and another character is growing with every little word I write. I don’t really mind it – it just shocks me how letting my inspiration guide me and my characters do whatever is working so far! All I did was add a little bit of dialogue to reference to the internet phenomenon most of us have probably participated in at least once before, shipping, a tiny little joke that I intended to go no where, and within a few lines, my exact thoughts were, as follows:

“What have I done?! It’s sailing itself! This ship, it’s sailing itself!“

Regardless of fuzzy tummy feelings, though, these silly geese have a lot longer to go before it’ll even be acceptable to give them an actual romance, and right now, they have a famous legend to encounter – the Black Dog, or rather, something based off of it. The script I’m working on is a fantasy-based setting that is based off of several different places and time periods in terms of environment, government, architecture, culture, and folklore, telling the story of a fresh-out-of-training soldier with a lot to hide, nothing to lose, and how their life changes throughout several different stories, ranging from action to drama, and essentially goes through a lot of good, a lot of bad, and a lot of plot-rich things hidden in even the most seemingly irrelevant pieces of their life when they wind up being carted off to war at the worst possible time.

As horrific as that may sound, I’m having a lot of fun with it, and the message I want to convey especially – people walking in and out of your life, lessons learned from them, etc – is something that I will admit means a lot to me. I’m enjoying the attempting action scenes, the plot development, and the character development, especially. Hopefully, when it’s done, it’ll come out to be a blend of action and plot that I can work with. It’s to be a graphic novel, webcomic (this is the most likely one), or maybe an animation if I sharpen my skills there, and I’m planning on putting as much work into this as possible. This won’t be a project that I give up on so easily.

The biggest problems I’m really facing with Script Frenzy right now are writing enough to make my hands ache (something I don’t really let get in my way too much) and falling behind in my reading, which I definitely plan on fixing this weekend. Hopefully, I can make good progress with both this month. This week’s-almost-done update being finished, I should get to working on writing a little bit before my nephew comes over for me and my mom to babysit him.

How is your script going so far if you’re participating this year, and what are you writing your script about? I’d love to hear from everyone!

Although I can write at the drop of a hat, I absolutely HATED all my English classes in school. On top of that, I can’t spell worth a lick. Thank God for Spell Check and an understanding wife who is a wiz at spelling!

Those who know me know I don’t take the easy road in any adventure. And I am not taking one in this year’s Script Frenzy. What adventure am I throwing myself into? Glad you asked.

I was watching the news a couple of weeks ago, something I rarely do now-a-days, when something caught my eye. Immediately a story began festering in my mind, a what if story. The story took on a life of its own. I couldn’t rid my mind of the possibilities for the story. I contacted an author friend of mine and bounced the idea off of him. HE LOVED IT!

Great. I now had a concept for my story, and I figured, why not write this script for the contest?  I started an outline for the story, and forwarded it to my friend. Again, he loved the concept. He pointed out a few potential holes that needed filling, but encouraged me nonetheless. As the plot thickened, something strange happened. I would refine my outline, and define the “Plot Points”, and then I would hear that the twist I was planning actually happened in real life! Not once, but almost daily.

My friend would send me something that he heard and/or read about, and was as amazed as I was. Because of the timeliness, he encouraged me to not only write my script, but to also write a novel. At first I said “no way,” I can’t write a novel, especially when I am preparing to write a 100-plus page script. But as the outline grew, and my note cards multiplied, I realized there is a novel contained in my story.

My story is called “ANATEDAE PLUMP.” It’s an Action/Thriller, set in the present-day Middle East. Just so you know, although I will be writing both simultaneously, I am focusing on my script first and foremost. I will get as much of the novel written in April as I can, but I will complete 100 plus pages of the script. You can keep up with how I am doing by following me either on Script Frenzy or my web site, www.FrugalProductions.info.

Now to matters at hand. I also submitted a spec script to another author to adapt his novel to a script, and offered to adapt another story for another friend of mine. I told you I liked a challenge. As I usually sign off on my writings, keep your ink wet, and your sleeves dry. Till next time, happy reading.

Cliff Garstka, Sr. is an imdb.com accredited actor, writer, director and producer. He recently created Frugal Productions to make his films the way he wants them made – and Frugal Productions is open to assist other independent filmmakers. Their first film, “FROM THE EARTH,” was accepted into the 2011 Santa Fe Independent Film Festival. You can check them out online at www.FrugalProductions.info or email Cliff at Cliff@FrugalProductions.info.

The first is the logline, one of the first things your Frenzy profile asks you for after title and genre.  A logline is a one-sentence summary of your plot. Essentially, writing a logline means you have to boil down your entire 100-page script into a single concept.

Still confused?  Here’s the logline for my SF project:

Two teen delinquents team up to overcome obstacles and attend college despite their lifelong gang leader rivalry.

While it doesn’t go in-depth – and doesn’t even give the characters’ names – the logline is an effective plot summary.  While it’s not exactly the most exciting, it’s good enough to get me started.  The nicest thing about a logline is that you can edit and change as you go along, but I’m going to save those kinds of things for after I finish the script.  That way, I’ll be able to examine the plot and create a better hook for my logline.

Exercise: Write loglines for “Terminator,” “The Proposal,” “Spider-Man,” “Bring It On,” and “Star Wars.”

Next, we’ll talk about the “____ meets ____” format.  While it’s not technically a real format, it helps you think about your story in a different way – plus the Script Frenzy website features “____ meets ____” on the front page.  This format is less about the basic concept of your script – which is what the logline is for – and more about the style in which you’ll write your script.

I like this format because it’s an interesting way to work out the kinks in your style, especially for loose adaptions.  Compare your project to two movies or books that others might be familiar with:

My script is 10 Things I Hate About You meets Toradora!.

Quick and painless, right?  If you want to learn more about either of those things, you can click on the titles – though I’m sure you’ve seen 10 Things I Hate About You, especially if you were a 90′s kid.

Exercise: Use the “____ meets ____” format for the following books: “The Hunger Games,” “The Da Vinci Code,” “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” “Ender’s Game,” and “Holes.”

Now that you’ve got your concept and your style straightened out, we can talk about plot. I’m sure most of you are familiar with outlining, a pretty common trick for working on a big project, whether it’s a novel or a film. We’re going to try a different way to outline your plot: using the three-part format.

Break down your story into three major plot arcs: the beginning, the middle, and the end. This author does a nice, rather in-depth post about the three-part plot structure – he even has pictures – so I’ll just give you a little suggestion instead: try writing your three arcs as three separate paragraphs. Fitting with the concept of the three-part structure, the first paragraph should be more of an introduction, whereas much of the action would take place in the second and third parts.

Your paragraphs can be as long or as short as you like. Here is my first paragraph:

Ryan, a physically intimidating teen, fronts as the leader of the Blue Dragons gang, but he’s actually a big softie who loves cooking and keeping house more than fighting. After a huge fight against rival gang the Tiger Grrls – and rival gang leader Tori – Ryan decides he wants to quit the Blue Dragons to pursue his dream of following the lovely Kate, Tori’s best friend, to college. Tori, who has a huge crush on Ryan’s best friend David, threatens to reveal his humiliating crush unless he helps her get into the same college as David.

I do have two more, but that should give you a decent idea of how to begin – the second paragraph describes Ryan and Tori’s exploits as they attempt to get into college and the third paragraph introduces the plot after a crisis erupts. Got an idea of how to do it? Now it’s your turn.

Exercise: Write a three-paragraph summary of your Script Frenzy project. You can also do “The Godfather,” “The Lion King,” “The Parent Trap,” “Miss Congeniality,” or “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” for outside practice.

Finally, it’s time to title your project! Titles can be tricky, but you can always change it later.  Pick out a specific phrase or image from your project to start with.  Decide if it would make an eye-catching title – or even just make a nice working title – and stick it on your title page.

I chose “Half-Sized Tiger” as my title.  That’s the nickname of one of the characters, Tori, that Ryan gave her as something rather rude or unpleasant.  Eventually, the meaning of the nickname changes as Ryan’s perspective of Tori changes.

What is the title of your Script Frenzy project?

photo by Alan Light. Used with permission.

DAY ONE

So, today began the month long Script Frenzy challenge – 100 page script in 30 days. I didn’t get a lot of time to work on it, but did manage to get an acceptable first 7 pages done. That’s a pace that could work.

I find writing scripts to be a lot more comfortable for me. I’ve always been a comic book and film nerd, including aspiring to create my own of both, so I’ve had quite a bit of previous experience writing in the script format. Even so, most of my previous work was written with sub-sub-sub-shoestring budgets in mind (i.e. something my friends and I could produce fairly easily). For this challenge, I’ve abandoned all such concerns and I’m just trying to write the most entertaining script I can – budget be damned.

Because, let’s face it, there’s little to no chance this thing would ever see the light of day as an actual film. But that isn’t really the purpose behind this, is it? Of the hundreds or thousands of participants in Script Frenzy, how many believe their work is actually destined for production? I would hope very few would be so deluded. I apologize if you are one of them.

So, in closing, if you haven’t read my previous post on Script Frenzy here, I would advise that you do. And, please, by all means, try your hand at writing something. It’s fun. It’s practice. It’s your ticket to Hollywood stardom.

Well, maybe only some of us.

Dear Readers,

Welcome to Script Frenzy 2012!  Script Frenzy is an annual challenge held by the Office of Letters and Light in April to write a 100-page script in the month of April.

This year, I’m participating in Script Frenzy for the first time in several years – and this time, I have an edge: last semester, I learned how to properly write a screenplay in the Screenwriting I course at my university.  Along the way, I’ll post encouraging tidbits, discussions of craft, and hopefully pick up a few guest bloggers as well.

If you’d like to participate in Script Frenzy this year, you have plenty of fantastic options for writing.  You may want to consider experimenting with one of these forms:

• Writing a film.  100 pages is a typical length for a feature film and, based on how much action and the pacing of the dialogue, makes for a film of about two hours.
• Writing a stage play.  I’ve written stage plays before – that’s how I started my high school drama club.  Stage plays are fun, but you’re limited by the space on the stage.  If you loved drama club when you were younger – or if you love acting for the stage even now – you may be most interested in writing a stage play.  My favorite stage play is M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang, which is the book on which I wrote my senior Honors Thesis.
• Writing a miniseries.  A miniseries can be tons of fun!  Since you can calculate about one minute per page of script, a 40-page chunk would make a single episode of your miniseries.  If you’re not too intimidated by going over the page count, try writing a three-episode miniseries with 40-minute episodes for a total of 120 pages.
• Writing the opening episodes of a television show or web series.  TV episodes are usually about 20 to 23 pages long for a half-hour show and about 45 pages for a one-hour show.  With those lengths in mind, you could easily write three or more opening episodes for a potential television show – and you could reduce the number of episodes needed by writing a double-sized pilot episode.  If you’d rather write a web series, you can write serial scripts of any length, so you could write a five-minute show every day and crank out your SF project in only 20 days.
• Writing a comic book or graphic novel script.  This is the really fun but really difficult one: comic book/graphic novel scripts are written very differently from screenplays or stage plays.  You can learn more about how to write comic book and graphic novel scripts in Script Frenzy’s Writer’s Resources section.

Certainly at least one of those things must tickle your fancy!  If you’re just coming from NaNoLand, you may want to try writing a film first – and using your last NaNo piece as the base of an adapted film.  Who knows?  Maybe your SF script will end up even better than your NaNo novel.

Remember: to make that 100-page goal, you have to write three and a half (3.5) pages per day.  The actual number is 3.3 pages, so if you do 3.5, you’ll finish a little bit ahead of schedule!

Are you participating in Script Frenzy this year?  If so, post the URL of your profile here, and I’ll become one of your writing buddies!  You can also add me directly on the site by visiting my profile.

After doing NaNoWriMo and writing 50,000 words in a month writing 100 pages of a screenplay seems like it should be a cakewalk. That is if I can decide what to actually write. I have so many projects to choose from it’s almost impossible to decide.

I have a sitcom, a mini-series, a web-series and at least 3 movies I have ideas for rolling around in my head and yet I can’t seem focus on anything enough to get more of just an idea out.

Who knows, maybe I’ll surprise myself and come up with something completely different than what I planned. That’s what happened with NaNoWriMo last year.

Only 3.5 hours until it’s officially April (in this timezone) and the Frenzy begins. Good luck to everyone participating!

I’ve never participated in Script Frenzy before this, and I’ve never written a script before, either, so it’s definitely something new and exciting in most ways. I did read up a lot on script writing and formatting one night that I was up late with nothing to do, but most of that knowledge escapes me and didn’t seem too much like my shtick when it came to the formatting. Thankfully, what I’m writing isn’t a traditional script for TV/a movie/a play/etc etc (The script will be intended for a graphic novel or web-comic), so I can just write it in a way that I like and that makes sense to me. It’s really, from the little things I’ve written to get a style down, just a simplified way of getting everything down and not wasting any time with it so I can get the story down as I like and add details later. I think it’s worth a try, and maybe it’ll actually become something if I finish the whole thing.

Another thing I’m doing that’s different from usual with it is that I don’t have nearly as much planned – I spent years writing different versions and ideas for my old novel series idea and coming up with new characters that changed everything completely for it, and every version I wrote (only one completely finished first draft, which I started in September of 2010 and finished that December) would change on it’s own, be it the characters becoming more realistic and developing differently or just a new idea for the plot throwing it off the original track causing it. So, with this new story and these new characters, I figured since I was going to be doing script frenzy anyhow, why not just wing it? I’m giving myself freedom to let my characters take this story anywhere (of course, I do have things planned, but it’s only general plot points that I really want to do and are subject to change) and the ability to just relax and start writing. A breath of fresh air, compared to how my other big idea was being written.

I think Script Frenzy will be a good thing for me – I need to get back into the groove of being productive with everything, basically just do more in general on a more regular basis. Having something enjoyable that I actually really want to do first thing in the morning will probably be a good way to get me into the productive, working mood and help me start off my day in a way that isn’t laying around watching the history channel or Mister Ed. So, what I’ll probably do is get up and work on it first thing in the mornings for the 3 pages and, if I can, later on do some more when I’m in the mood. Probably going to start up my Starbucks trips for writing again soon – always a good way to get myself down to business with my writing.

So, is anyone else reading this planning on doing Script Frenzy? If so, what type of script are you doing and what’s your writing plan to get those 100 pages in?

I also had the opportunity to visit one of the schools to which I am applying for graduate school.  It was an amazing and fantastic experience – although the 18+ hours of driving could have been less tiresome. Visiting really helped me form a better idea of what I want to do in publishing and what I want to pursue.

In terms of my writing, I’ve had lots of fun and interesting experiences this month.  The following stories were published in UToday, the online edition of UT News:

• Magic comes to UT through ‘Harry Potter’s World’ exhibit
• Maumee River focus of next ‘Quantum Leap’ research talk
• Alumnus to receive Turin Award, give astronomy lecture
• Jain traditions topic of Lecture on Eastern Religious Thought
• Professor publishes new book on network capabilities
• Poetry by UT professor included in American Library Association Notable Book of 2012

This list does not include stories included in the print edition of UT News.

At the end of the month, I had the awesome opportunity to teach a workshop on the Celtx program to my student writing group. I was so proud of everyone who attended: most of them not only learned how to write a screenplay and use the program, but they also completed their first short film script!

As April approaches, you can look forward to tons of fun events. It’s National Poetry Month, so I’ll have plenty of things to do with UTWG – including some public readings that may be of interest to some. Join us April 19 at Grounds for Thought in Bowling Green for an open mic reading – and keep checking back to find out what other things we’ll be doing for National Poetry Month.

Script Frenzy takes place during April, as well.  I’ll be participating in SF and blogging about it along the way! Check out my Script Frenzy 2012 page as the month progresses to learn more about the challenge and what I’m doing this month.

nice bass sound in this video…

thanks for the submissions send more to

http://www.youtube.com/ideagirlconsulting