Tags: Filmmaking, Screenwriting
So mere hours after posting about my new regiment, I’ve decided something else.
I’m going to record my screenwriting progress on this blog, as it was originally intended to be. See- when I started this sub-section blog it was merely a way for me to go on my political/environmental/social/art/drug-induced rants without attracting the ire of my fellow Supergun Cinema staffers by clogging up the front page. This blog was my outlet.
Shortly after, I realized that I don’t have enough fuel to rant 24/7, but needed to fill these cyber-waves with SOMETHING. Then it hit me- do what every other damn writer/director/actor is doing… make a blog about MYSELF! Write about all the banal, mundane things I do in relation to my films and completely alienate the general audiences by being so self-centric and vain that all I ever talk about is what I’m doing!
Like now!
So after setting my 20-page/week regiment (2 pages on weekdays and 5 pages per week-end-day), I’ve accomplished DAY 1’s quote of 2 pages! Wahoo!
Couldn’t go further than that to be honest because I’m just so tired tonight, but it’s 2 more pages than yesterday! I’m still very much in “Act 1″ (using 4 act-ish structure) and within the first 10 pages, and I’m finding it difficult to NOT edit as I go. I’m just trying to bang out this whole concept, but I’m getting snagged up in 2nd-3rd draft issues! Why won’t it flow?
Tonight I fleshed out two new characters in brief introductions (that will probably be cut anyway, LOL) and took my protagonist through part of his “first day on the new job”. Since this script is partly based on my experiences at my last job, it was actually kind of fun walking my protagonist through his first day jitters… only this main character is a little more “snappy” than I was, and it’s been tough weeding my own gawky shyness out of him and infusing him with some authority-defying sarcasm…. It’s cool because I get to relive some of my own experiences through someone else’s eyes… and like anyone with hindsight, I can have all the conversations I WISHED I had, and say the things I WANTED to say! This is why I love this shit…
I know what the experts say about character development before writing, but I find that my characters only start to actually come alive when I’m writing them. Perhaps it’s a side-effect of Bi-polarity, but I have no problem jumping into different skins on the fly… it’s buckling up and doing the preliminary paper-work which I hate the most…. so maybe that’ll be part of my “method”… I don’t know. It’s evolving. I haven’t written a (completed) feature script since the drunken-days of Macbeth 3000 (and even then, well…) so technically I’m not REALLY a writer yet… at least, one worth paying any attention to… come back this time next winter and we’ll see, won’t we?
But that’s half the fun… if you’re here reading this text right now (freaky, isn’t it? It’s like I’m TALKING to you), you’re either wasting your time, or you’re ahead of the game knowing an all-star pro writer before he’s REALLY a writer.
But that is it for today. In the span of time it took to write this entry I could have banged out Page 3, but obviously it was never meant to be. Let’s see if I can keep this momentum up tomorrow, considering I’m filming all night…. and with that, time for bed.
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