#week418

STATUS SO FAR:

Days 1-2: I had a story slam coming up on Tuesday night so I end up spending a good chunk of my mornings and lunches working on the story revisions for that. And rehearsing it. Creative Time: 0mins

 Day 3: I realized that as a precaution with the snow storm, I was not going to go to the story slam. I manage to realize this before lunch. During lunch I refamiliarized myself with the Forum story. And tried to find my a good place to jump in for the writing. I think I need to just start doing it, so after I remembered the story and the general concepts I tried to start writing, from the beginning onward since thats the logical order. We will see how far I get. Doesn't feel like very much yet.

Creative Time: 40mins, during lunch; 20mins, after work

 Day 4: Today was the big snow storm. I worked from home. This meant no commute and that my wife, son and daughter were all also home. So I couldn't focus much. The only relatively undistracted time I had was during my son's nap, but I had to use that to work on day job things. I did eke out a little bit of time after everyone was asleep but that wasn't much. I suppose every little bit counts.

Creative Time: 30mins, in the evening

 Day 5: Finally felt like I was able to chip away a good amount today. I had a bunch of notes that I've been hand writing and I got those all into the script. I just need to keep letting it grow. There are many aspects of this script I'm having a hard time deciding on which direction to go. That's a good thing, it means there are options.

Creative Time: 20mins, before work; 40mins, during my lunch break; 20mins, during train ride home.

 Day 6: I finally forced myself to write actual dialogue but then I felt like I was charging into the darkness with a very loose plan. Some times you have to force yourself to write through the confusion. Other times I'm not so sure.  “Swan song, how you livin?” “Yes”

Creative Time: 20mins, from the train; 50mins, during my lunch break; 20mins, return train.

 Day 7: I barely managed to pull some time together this weekend because Liz and I had a lot of house work and events, so there was not a ton of time.

Creative Time: 30mins, late at night.

 CONCEPT UPDATES/CHANGES: I mentioned that I\ forced myself to write a chunk of dialogue. But I am the kind of person who wants more defined beats in the story to shoot for so I'm not just going off on tangents and then struggling to connect the dots later or eaitng up a ton of pages doing that. I think the lesson of this week is that while some times you have to force yourself to write through the confusion, this is not one of those times. I need to substantially develop and expand the story outline before I feel like I can feel in the dialogue gaps. I want to understand the characters a little better. A while back, I read the book “The Coffee Break Screenwriter” by Pilar Alessandra. From the title alone, it seemed in line with my method of working. I tend to only be able to write in 10 to 20 minute bursts, and this book is specifically broken down into 10 minute exercises that will lead to you building your script. Now it is geared more towards a feature length screenplay but most of the principals still apply to an hour long drama. My goal is to organize and develop my ideas into a more coherent outline by the end of this coming week. I will try to utilize these exercises.

 PICTURES/NOTES: NA, those here is a line to the book I mentioned.

 THIS WEEK RUNNING TIME: 4.83 hours (that = weak)

I really was expecting more of a dip in my productive due to Baby #2 but staying the course with my creative work has been good and proven that I can juggle it as long as I give at least a tiny bit of time. I’m excited to get back to this story. It wasn’t quite resolved last time I was working and I wanted to see it flush out into a script draft before last time and it simply was not possible. I believe, however ambitious and optimistic I may seem, that I can pull off a draft at the end of 5 weeks. Since I ended up extending last month, I really thought I would use the months as project markers most of the time or at least phases of the project. I was going to work on this for 6 weeks, but it was going to land in the middle of Month 6 anyway, so I’m going to have Forum be all of Month 5 and then start Month 6 with the Master of None spec.

 Semantics really but it helps me stay organized if you’re keeping track.

 THIS WEEK:

 First Act Mountain Exercise

 1 WEEK GOAL: I have a mountain of work ahead of me, hence this weeks title. The first act is a behemoth of ideas that needs to be flushed out and by doing so in a draft form, it will ideally create a positive domino effect, in which the concepts and ideas drive the ideas for the second act and so on and so on.

 BOILED DOWN CONCEPT: I left off without resolving a lot of the virgin girls pasts and missing a clear understanding of the ending as well as big gaps in the end of act 2 and act 3. I would like to resolve those parts of the story.

 PRIMARY REASON: Some stories I fight tooth and nail to write. Case and point: Staggering. I always fight myself writing that. I want to write it but I struggle to produce something without severe difficultly. This is one of a handful of ideas I’ve had that write themselves. I find myself constantly thinking about this idea and trying to resolve things even as I am working on my house, or working on other scripts. It calls to me. Even Lord 2 was not quite like that. That story took a while to build. The big revision in the last wave was a lightning in a bottle moment but otherwise that script was built over iterations. The only other story to fall out of my brain and onto paper this easily was Superego, despite the fact that it’s a personal story. Why not feed powerful ideas instead of trudging through the ones that feel like quicksand!

 ON DECK FOR NEXT WEEK: