Kill a darling to save a life

Years ago, I wrote a novel. It has since languished in my drawer. I’ve always been conflicted by it. It has serious flaws. The beginning starts off well enough, the middle meanders and the ending falls flat with an audible thud. Reading Syd Field’s Screenwriter’s workbook last night, I realised, that I had in fact been writing the wrong story. I introduce a main character and stay with him for half of the book, before switching the focus elsewhere. It just doesn’t work and I now have fresh ideas to go forward with.

But, it also reminded me of what I’ve known for a long time. Scriptwriting is an incredibly helpful form to know if you are a novelist. It teaches you to be very specific and structured when bringing stories to life. This is a tremendous boost when you are stuck.

So I’ve decided on a little experiment. As I work through the Screenwriter’s workbook, I’m going to let everyone see my mistakes and shortcomings too. Privately, I’ll be writing an original screenplay, but publicly on this blog I will be writing a Dark Angel TV movie (since there is absolutely no way that would ever get made).

Why Dark Angel? It was a short-lived science fiction TV show that got cancelled before it hit its stride. What’s worse, I thought the last episode was one of the weakest and most clichéd of the final run of episodes and it ended on a cliffhanger. I can’t do much about the clichés but I can tie off the cliffhanger, and completely deplete an imaginary budget with action scenes.

WordPress impressions

I like wordpress. I like the simplicity and cuteness. WordPress, however, does not like me. I am constantly experiencing “connection has been reset” errors over both Firefox and IE. Not being a technical whizz, this has me stumped. It’s not simply logging in that causes a hiccup - I can’t read anyone else’s site either. I suppose if I can’t get this problem solved, then this will be a rather empty blog.

Read screenplays

www.simplyscripts.com

Not simply a format for people in film, script format is a great tool to help novelists improve concepts such as “show, don’t tell”, brevity and structure.

Writing excuses

Writing excuses

Writing excuses is a fairly new writing podcast - only four episodes old – and is brought to you by a trio of established writers, most notably Brandon Sanderson, the writer who has been given the daunting task of finishing off Robert Jordan’s twelfth and final book of the Wheel of Time series. The podcast is purposefully short and focused because “you don’t have time and we’re not that smart”. At around 15 minutes each, each episode goes perfectly with a cup of tea. You probably won’t get a kick out of it if you are a more experienced writer, but I enjoy different writer discussions and points of view, and it is great when someone else puts a name to concepts I’d already been practising, albeit on an unconscious level.

Referenced in one of the episodes, is free program called Wikidpad, which I am using to outline and cross-reference character and plot arcs. I find that this is turning out to be a great tool for my “creative block”, a topic best left for another post.

Links:
Subscribe to Writing excuses via iTunes
Wikidpad

Counting sheep?

I’ve been around the writing block for a few years now. It doesn’t necessarily make me a brilliant writer, but it does mean that I’ve torn my hair out a few times over an errant character or plot point. Writing is not without its frustrations, so is life, but even in my darkest minute I have never considered the option that is, strangely, more prevalent than I thought.

Plagiarism.

Quickies: Don’t say it #1

If you were lucky enough during your school years to have an English teacher who cared about creative writing and didn’t simply follow prescribed material with all the enthusiasm of a lump of cardboard… lucky you. You may skip this post.

Have you ever heard the phrase “Show, don’t tell”? Odds are that you have. In my teen years, I thought it meant I had to describe everything in great detail. Aah youth. Those fleeting years where you are allowed to make mistakes and grow. In essence, it really means that actions can be louder than words.

“Joanne, I’m so angry with you,” Andy drew his lips into a thin line and stared at her with his piercing blue eyes. “You told me you’d quit smoking. What about our child, you bad mother you?”

Versus

Andy stalked across the room. Joanne felt the chill of his wake as he moved past her. He grabbed the crystal ashtray on her desk and hurled it through her office window. Ash floated gently onto the shards of glass, undisturbed by the sound that had stopped her heart and the ice blue eyes freezing her blood.

Dumbing down of lore

The other day I saw part of a children’s animated movie - another retelling of The Wizard of Oz. Now this wasn’t your typical Disney or Pixar movie, it was a straight-to-TV generic cartoon movie, which in my mind isn’t really an excuse.

The villain of the piece - the wicked witch - sits in a chair and has an argumentative and lengthy internal monologue debating what she is going to do to about our heroes. She spells out her entire plan, just like a cheesy soap-opera villain. Now, while adults are free to watch soap operas, expositing villain and all, I sometimes feel we are cheating kids by not letting them reason things out for themselves.

And so it begins…

In which Rooney decides whether she wants a WordPress or if she should stick with old reliable Blogger.

From an admin point of view,WordPress does seem the more intuitive and detailed of the two, the free themes are gorgeous, adding pages is a bonus, and it looks like you can have avatars and other uploads without needing your own webhost.

I don’t know what the cons are, if any. Care to share your WordPress experiences?