Bad Damn Day

I had a great weekend. I recharged a ton, and I walked into work energized and refreshed. But reality was hellbent on bringing me down. My supervisor was dead-convinced that I, a poorly-trained newbie, was incompetent, and had to spread it to everyone. I tried my damnedest to prove it wrong, or at least take her abuse with a smile on my face. Then my client was a lazy dick today, tipping over an oil drum before making me do the work he was getting paid to do. It was some shit. And he wandered off with nary a word. He's deaf, so I can't just call out for him. I have to run after him and physically find him. I couldn't, because he was just GONE. So they were collectively convinced that I suck at what I do. And because of the after-work talk regarding this, I was unable to cash my check AGAIN. If you can;t tell, I'm upset about this.

So now I'm trying to get some progress on this story. It's turning out rough. It just needs more time put into it. But I have another one that's fleshing itself out day by day. So I may just put that one on the cooker and have this one on the backburner for however long it takes to flesh it out. Either one will be good, I think. They're both epics from the dark ages, but totally different. So I'm confident, but I won't force the story to happen if it doesn't want to happen just now. My muse will sing that tune when she sings that tune.

That's all I've got to say about that...

Countdown.

Four more movie ideas to plan out. I need an outline for each. So that'll be the big project this week, as I have literally nothing on the cooker next. And I won't start without a plan. No sense in wasting my efforts. Perhaps my creative juices will get flowing again.

Three scripts in my portfolio so far. Seven planned out. Shit, if even one sells, my student loans die horribly. This is my Mass Effect, and I am my own Commander Shepard here. But three scripts is a modest portfolio already. Hashtag confidence.

Two weeks until I can market my scripts. I don't have a bank in this area, and my first check will apparently be paper. It would spend too much of it to be financially feasible if I started marketing with this check. All others will be direct deposited. So there's a deadline.

One more draft and then I'm done with this script, and it's ready to sell. With Friday as my goal to be done, I think I made it. It's good. I like it. This next draft is going to have to wait a bit, but it'll be short and sweet to do. Just a tweaking draft.

Zero other people believe in me, and that's okay. When they get crazy notions, I don't believe in them either. But I'm doing this for me. So I can finally live my god damn life. And it'll happen. Even if millions have to die (on paper) for it to happen.

Done with compression draft.

Damn, that took a while. But I managed to get 8 pages knocked out without changing the plot much at all. Now to handle dialogue and then leave it. It's got to stew some more. But I'm glad that everyone has their own voice at this point. The dialogue draft is just a punch-up for every character. Then I do one more pass for quality assure and it's off to market with this puppy. My goal was to be done with it by payday, and that's Friday.

Also, my client didn't want to do a damn thing today. It was maddening, so instead I research another project. That brings me up to four that have research done. This weekend, I'm going to a Renaissance Festival, next week I'm going to an SCA event (probably), and the following weekend I'm taking a road trip with some friends. So it'll be a busy few weeks. But the first two weekends should help with inspiration, and the last should help with my structure. The hope is to get all four planned out in detail before going. Then, when I put one project on the back-burner, I can switch to another and keep production up. I'm certain my quality is fine for Hollywood, I just need my production to improve.

And things with either girl are going nowhere. And that's fine. This progress is more important. Reproduction is a thing that motivates deer, squirrels, and salmon. I would hope I'm more evolved than that. The thought has gotten me through relationship doldrums for years. I guess I'd rather be one WORTH dating than one who NEEDS dating.

Last-Minute Alterations

So, first off, today at work, my client didn't want to do ANYTHING. He wanted to lay on the floor and rock back and forth. Which is boring as shit for me, because then I sit in a chair and watch him. So I thought through the boring bits of my story.

There were a couple of repetitive scenes, and I looked into them. One of them, I wanted to repeat slightly. It compounds the danger of one of the antagonists, but they're delivered 100% differently. And I tweaked the other so that it works for me. It works better now. I'll do another run or two, just to make sure I'm not imagining it. And I found another scene that needed to happen. Since I've shed so much weight from this thing, I have plenty of room for a last-minute scene that ties the story tighter.

And then I managed to trim down the beginning so that the inciting incident comes right when I wanted it to. Overall, very pleased with today;s progress. I usually have changes around this time. Weak bits that need to be changed. Fleshed out. I'm hoping to finish by Friday. Let it sit, then go over it again before trying to sell it. This would be the third in my portfolio. And I have another three that I'm planning out. I suppose I'll take a break when this one's done. Just until I finish planning these ones out. More religion and more female protagonists, which will again be a huge change.

And I realized recently that I've been forcing things with the girl. It may yet happen. But I need to ease up. And I suppose it doesn't help that I met someone at work, and she's interested. She straight-up asked me if I was married or have a girlfriend. That's a big one, as it's effectively "are you single." She's cute. Very country, and a good girl, both of which are very different for me. But I have shit taste in women.

Lot of last-minute plot changes.

My lil fatty.

Been trimming my script down lately. My goal is to get all the way through it by Monday. I absolutely guarantee it'll be done by then. At least with that draft. Then it's only dialogue punch-ups and a quality draft, to ensure that I didn't accidentally remove something that made something make sense. It happens on occasion.

The dialogue draft is mostly to ensure that each character's dialogue sounds like them. And both drafts are an opportunity to fix character descriptions. They're honestly the toughest part of the process for me. I know who's who, but to describe them briefly is rough.

In any case, I'm probably procrastinating. Back to the grind.

Productive Weekend

I'll admit it. Though my progress on my current project has been solid, I was stuck on my next one. This weekend I went fishing with the family, and it changed entirely. I came back knowing how to fix an older story (about Ireland) so that it works, and knowing which parts of my French one needed help. I've since fleshed the next one out nicely, and I intend to do the next one tomorrow. I've even got another one on the cooker. So my idea is to plan these two out while I finish up this one. Then I plan to rough draft out the French while I work out the innumerable kinks in the Irish story. If it all goes well, I'll be able to rough draft out the Irish one while my French one is taking a necessary time-out.

And I'm working now, which is good. I'll be able to market them soon enough. Some of the stories have little issues here and there, but they're nothing extreme. Nothing story-breaking, near as I can tell. So it's exciting to get the next wave of them out there. I feel like having a fountain of solid marketable ideas is a boon, and if even one of them is "great," I should be good to go. Either way, I'm putting everything into each story. They're each unique and I try to make each as good as it can possibly be.

Who knows? But in any case, I have faith that it'll work.

Other draft DONE.

Spot edit draft is also done. It took less than an hour, because I've got Ctrl-F worked over. It's my bitch, and it does what I say. I think my process is pretty refined by now. I have a method that produces scripts reasonably quickly, and lets me dote on every thing and every character. Sorry, I'm a bit drunk right now. Also, listening to the ewok celebration song. That's my "that'll do, pig" song. Means I done good.

So, for tonight, I celebrate progress made. Ten pages of solid steamroller editing. All scenes evaluated. All considered rewrites and edits evaluated and dealt with accordingly. Tonight, I was victorious.

Also the girl, who lives forever away, posted a thing to me about how "All men should learn from Mario. Even if their princess is far away, they should go after her." Pretty sure that makes it mutual, if not still inconvenient as fuck.

I'm not great with goodbyes. So... that'll do pig.

It's DONE! ISH!

I finished my second draft just now. It's the toughest one to do, usually. I usually write the first one half-drunk, and it shows. But it makes the empty page less intimidating. This is my clean-up/rewrite draft. Anything that changed between drunk writing and sober editing a couple weeks later needs to be implemented. So this thing had roughly 40 pages added to it, and not much of it was vamping. A lot of scenes were changed, and all of my second-stringers were fleshed out. I established the interrelationships more/better. It was a lot of fucking work, if you'll pardon the colloquialism.

So next is the spot-edit draft, which is little tweaks here and there, where I add bits that I think are necessary to make the story more coherent. Then I do my fat-trimming draft, which is 1000% necessary, as this thing is like 122 pages right now. But it's best if it starts off a fatty, because it gives me room to compress, work out (AND BRUTALLY CRUSH) the weak bits, which I find ultimately leads to a good final product.

I did a lot of my analysis in my off-time, as the amount of new scenes meant that I had to go ANOTHER week without looking at it. But it was for the best. It let me distance myself, so rather than perfect scenes as I had first written them, I changed them around in my mind a bit. They're better this way. They make more sense. The pacing is more natural, and I have a solid ending. I like it far better than the original ewok-celebration one. Not that this is a Star Wars or anything. It was just a similar ending.

This one leaves a sequel available, despite being a complete movie. I mean, if it gets made and bombs, no one's sitting there wondering when the next one comes out. But if it blows up, they wouldn't have to cobble together another one, like 300: Rise of an Empire. It was so forced that it felt like a brain shart. But now's not the time and this ain't the place.

In any case, roughest draft is DONE. I'm off to do a fun thing. I've earned it.

Never piss off a writer.

One of the reasons I like screenwriting, aside from the length matching my attention span, is that audiences are far more willing to give a movie a shot than a book. If the book sucks, you lost roughly a day of your life. If the movie sucks, you lost a couple hours. So it's no loss if it sucks. But that means that the audience tends to be larger. So it pays to be nice to a screenwriter, because if you appear as a character, they determine the frame you're cast in.

The reason I bring this up is that two more people I know have been cast as characters in my next project. I have a couple people I know in each script I write. My SCA buddy Hammar is in this one, and Oni and Ryu are in my samurai flick. So this one has the guys responsible for my unjust firing. It occurred to me while planning this that a couple cocky dudebros with an "everyone but me is expendable" mentality are JUST the people you want to see leading an army just before it's annihilated. And it felt therapeutic, not going to lie.

Also, an army is annihilated in this one. :P

Update

Today I made excellent strides in planning my next script. My prior one has been tinkered with, but there's some serious plot problems that involve rewriting some scenes. So I'm trying to push further, but I'm not pushing too hard. Push too hard, you make shit movies. And I refuse to attach my name to something that sucks. There is no brass in my golden legacy.

That being said, I effectively came up with the lion's share of the plot for my next bit. It'll explore the complex interplay of religion in the dark ages. So that'll be fun to explore. And my main character should be fun to write. I know I can do this too. And it might sell. Worst case scenario, it's more portfolio padding. But yeah. I really pushed forward, and came up with some solid sequences. And a list of characters to add into the story. I had plenty of first-stringers, but this is an addition of several second-stringers. Necessary ones too. I think they add a lot of depth to the story. And they should make it tighter too. More characters, less nobodies. They killed Townie #1? Suck. They killed Francisco the friendly barkeep? THOSE ANIMALS!

Also, I'm waiting to start at the job. But I need to do some TB test or something first. I spaced on the prior one and had to go in again. So my goal of being done with this current script about the time I get paid is looking pretty damn attainable.

And today I confirmed that the girl is at least flirty. In the past, she'd been having questions focusing on things I'm interested in. But today we discussed VERY personal things. And she knows the kind of person I'm interested in. She's been making herself into (at least ostensibly) that kind of person. And I AM interested. But I hate long distance, and I'd rather be single than do it again. If we want it to happen, one or more of us would have to make some facilitative life changes. I know she hates where she lives. And I don't intend to live in Iowa either. But we're both poor and living on opposite ends of the country. We may very well be revisiting our doom...

BUT, the distance between Babylon and Athens is finite, right? If the stars aligned, and both parties were equally enthusiastic, we could maybe make it work.

Nate's trip was a success.

On a non-writing note, this weekend I took my bestie to Colorado. He has these violent grand mal seizures caused by anxiety, and most states prescribe medicinal marijuana for them. Iowa governor Terry Brandstad has vetoed all attempts to make medical marijuana more accessible. Nate went through a full page of medications, and none of them did anything but give him side-effects he would medicate to offset. So we went to Colorado to see if it worked. I guess the idea was that if it did, he'd move out of Iowa, to a state where he could live a normal functional fucking life. Pharmaceutical profits shouldn't get between a person and their ability to live their life.

So we took the trip this weekend. And he had a full uninterrupted night's sleep for the first time in over six months. In this case, the law is a red tape to strangle a person more than an instrument of public good. I didn't have to poke and prod him to wake up either. A tap on the arm and a "let's get breakfast," and he was up.

So, I think the plan is for him to move out of Iowa, to a state that cares more about its citizens than its dogma. I get the impression that the law is less about public good than it is about maintaining the status quo. Ensuring that the people in power get what they want and the rest of us are kept in our place. If the law is corrupt, does it not invalidate its original purpose, of maintaining public good? That feels like a theme that could be explored. If you want it, it's yours, free with this also-free blog post. :P

And it was good for me too, because I needed to step away from this project for a few days. I have too many new scenes, and I haven't forgotten about them. New scenes that allow my second-stringers to have their moments in the Sun, escalate the plots, and add a lot of excitement (see also: quality). So I'd be trying to tweak them, rather than evaluating them from a fresh vantage point. It eliminates a lot of bias. And I think that, first thing tomorrow, I'll dive back in again. So that's going to be fun.

And I got the job I was wanting. I begin training fairly soon, I think. I'll talk to them tomorrow, probably. Then we'll get things started. And I imagine that, about the time I get my first paycheck, this project should be about done. So I think I'll hit my goal! :D

Frustrating Draft

This draft is dragging it's ass. My rough draft usually takes a bit of time, and the next one is my rewrite draft, which takers longer. This one is frustratingly long. Yesterday, I did 15 pages of editing, most of which was scene splicing and rewriting. Today I did most of a sequence and then wrote 5 scenes. They fleshed out my second-stringers pretty well, and they escalated the action. And this one needed more mass anyway, but still. It feels like all I did was patch holes in the story. And it's part of the process, I know. But still, it added about 15 pages more to edit. But I'd need to let these scenes sit for a bit if my rewrite is to be any good. And that means putting it off.

Instead I'm trying to be very deliberate in my writing goals, and knock out bits of the spot-edit draft along the way. I mean, the spot edit draft is pretty much just going through things and changing bits. Like using "dominus" instead of "sir." It's more busy work than actual work.

So I guess I have the next hour off. Looks like it's Disney music and Family Guy. Anything to offset the horrors I've been writing for the past day. Act 3 is an escalation, and this is a very Game of Thrones-esque story. Horrors aplenty. Makes me pretty certain it'll work out in the end, but still. Too much murderous thinking takes a toll on you.

I need a drink. ANOTHER drink.

Morality in Writing

Watching Narnia right now because nothing good is on. People say that this is one of the "best fantasy stories ever told." I find it boring as paint. The morality is black-white. There are good characters and there are evil characters, and the distinction is so glaringly obvious, a child could have written it. Granted, I don't disagree with having clear heroes and villains. But the witch is the epitome of evil. She couldn't be more villainous if her name was "The Antagonist." The lion, conversely, could legitimately be called "Jesus-Allegory Lion," and it would be equally ham-fisted. The good guys live in sun-dappled meadows with flower-petal people, while the bad guys congregate in G-rated Mordor. Such clear lines of distinction make thinking about the themes unnecessary. Because the theme just struck you like a bus.

Black and white morality is the worst, in my opinion, because there's no tension. There's no thought. Frankly, it's boring. The good guys wear white hats, speak in Bible verses, and don't eat meat (not that I'm knocking that lifestyle). The bad guys laugh maniacally, stroke their Snidley Whiplash mustaches (even the women), and eat babies. I mean, the protagonist was knighted for killing one thing, and now he's riding a unicorn. It's enough to make me root for the villain, except that they're doomed by virtue of opposing the good. Because the good cannot be harmed. There are no consequences for YOU, because you're nice. Everyone will be on the right side, so the bad guys get what's coming to them.

And the reason this bugs me so much is that you don't fear for anyone. You have your favorite character or whatnot, but their peril isn't truly perilous, because you know they'll get out of it unscathed. In a world where the good aren't defended by plot armor, and the evil are not merely obstacles to be overcome, but beings with motives and purpose and brains, I think it makes your character's peril more real. They may NOT get out it. So-and-so didn't, and we liked them too. And even if they do survive, they may be broken, mentally, emotionally, or physically. That doesn't mean a writer should kill characters for the sake of killing off characters. That's trying to pull emotion out of your ass, and it generally makes me cut all emotional ties to characters. But a well-placed death or maiming can be a beautiful thing, and give the sense that your characters aren't sitting at the kids' table.

Lame Weekend was Somehow Eventful

I'd been disappointed with this most recent story. It wasn't what I wanted it to be. It had plenty of good character options, but I was utilizing none of them. I've just kind of slogged through this editing draft though, and it's turning out damn good. All of the characters are getting their scenes now. I'm going as far with each character as I can, and I'm absolutely thrilled by what's going on. I have no doubt in my mind that it'll make a good addition to my portfolio. But we'll see yet. I'm really pushing for this to be one of my best. There is no prize for second place in the history books.

Also, I did the job interview. It went super well. I interviewed for two jobs at once, and I thought I nailed the interview pretty well. There was none of the negative body language Survival Frog gave me. I'm pretty confident. And I want this job, despite the lower wage. It feels good to go to work, come home, and know you've actually made a difference in someone's life, rather than become a sycophant to pad out some out-of-touch billionaire's wallet, like I was while working for Airbnb. And I hope the job thing picks up quickly, because I'd really love to begin marketing. My goal is to be done with this one about the time that first paycheck rolls in.

And the girl has broken up with her boyfriend of three years. I definitely got the vibe that she was looking around for other options. But we're in the same place again. Long distance didn't work last time. I don't see how it could this time. But I keep asking the divine about my love-life, and this one slowly becomes more available. Maybe things are working out as they should. Maybe these scripts will fly from the shelves, and I'll be able to visit her, and things won't explode like last time.

Or maybe leprechauns will colonize the inside of my butt. Who knows? I got typing to do.