Friday Forays in Fiction: Script Frenzy 2010 Kick Off

moar funny pictures

It is the end of day two and I still have zero pages. Too many excuses as to why. I had a late start in prepping because I didn't decide to do it until less than two weeks before. Then the starting day coincided with the day my in-laws left town and that always changes the contours of my days as when they are gone Ed and I spread out into the rest of the house. We cook for ourselves. I take the opportunity to do chores like laundry and cleaning our room that are harder to do when they are home. It also coincided with payday and we went shopping yesterday and since we were out stopped by the library where we picked up more DVD. Ed had both days off work so we were doing stuff together we can't do on the days he works like watching movies which is a special temptation when his folks are gone as we can use the big screen TV in the front room and sit in recliners. We watched The Big Lewbowski last night and Ratatouille tonight.

I've been binging on DVD for a month partly in preparation for Script Frenzy. I do realize that I will have to curtail some of that if I mean to write a script. But I'm hoping I won't have to stop altogether as I'm finding it very helpful to watch with the eye of a writer who is learning screenplay formatting standards. I have long watched with the eye of a writer who knows how stories are put together but until last April screenwriting technique was a big blank space in my knowledge base. My main purpose in participating in the challenge is to take advantage of all the resources--the how-to articles and forums and the provision of motivation by it being a challenge and the community of fellow scriptwriters etc. It's a bit like having a free class or workshop.

Ed didn't go to bed until ten both nights which was two hours past his usual bedtime and thus cut into my writing hours by that much. And last night I moved my 'office' out into the front room as Ed was heading to bed and that took more than half an hour. Which brings me to the LOL heading this post which I captioned based on something my sister said in an IM when I complained about how long it takes to move back and forth between the bedroom and the living room.-round trip is at least 40 minutes and can be an hour. Which is why I only do it when Ed's folks are out of town because they don't go to bed until around 10pm and Ed's Dad can be up as early ast 4am. She suggests I move more stuff out of my room than is really necessary for the work I'm claiming that I'm intending to do. She further suggests that I should be able to fit everything I need, including the netbook, into one bag and make one trip.

She has a point. Maybe several. I'm pondering.

Meanwhile, I'm still struggling with major plot gaps in the story I chose for this year's script. It is possible this story just isn't ready. I'm going to give myself a couple more days to play with the concept but if I haven't started writing actual scenes say by the time my in-laws return on Monday then Monday night I'm switching to adaptation of one of my completed short stories like I did last year. That way all the story elements are in place and all I have to worry about is translating it from short story format to screenplay format.