capriuni | Entries tagged with screnzy

I should have been paying attention to my icon, and taking its advice.

I realized, as I got out of bed this morning, that I've been basing all the scenes in my screnzy script on what I remember about being a kid going through PT, and being in the hospital, lying in bed while doctors and interns stand around talking about you in third person while you're lying there, looking them in the eye.

...And I've completely forgotten to write any of the sciencey-fictiony scenes where the kids are being experimented on to try and create artificial bones inside their bodies...

Now, I have to go back and figure out how and where to insert those scenes... especially since the Big Bad will come back using that "science" in the course of being his big bad villianous self.

argh. argh. argh.

...Also, had a really melancholy/confusing dream in the time just before I woke up for the day, that's just put a gray pall over my mood.

But that should probably be in a post of its own.

(Preamble: though I'd probably have a clearer head about it if I got some good protein in my system). But I don't really have the spoons to cook, right now.)

In my story (Graphic novel -- first attempt), my male protagonist is growing up as a physically disabled kid in a hospital-orphanage in a future world (my story starts in 2163 AD), where the physically disabled are sequestered away from society by law. He and the other kids in this orphanage are treated kindly (superficially) by the adults around them, but their value as human beings is based solely on what doctors can learn about curing them.

Meanwhile, the government that set up the sequestering laws is starting to crumble, and is hubristically throwing its weight around internationally, and a war starts just about the time he reaches adolescence.

The buildup to the war takes years, and I had been thinking that the first part of the story should take place entirely inside the asylum, and that I could foreshadow that by having the children overhear snippets of news broadcasts, and the grown-ups' worried conversations about the news broadcasts. But...

That's not working.

I'm thinking I could either:

Split the Storytelling into two parallel settings:

Life inside the asylum, alternated with
Life in the City, outside the asylum, showing what's happening in the Halls of Government.

Or, I could do something like they did in movies of old, and give necessary information by showing a newspaper headline.

And I can't decide which direction to go in.

Halp?

The reason I went for the "War" plot is that, in order for my protagonist to function as a hero, he has to be open about having a disability (which is something that is impossible for him to hide, even while he hides his biological-chimera nature). And simply having the asylums close down due to economic pressures would not be enough stimulus for a society-wide rethink of the legal sequestration of the Disabled.

But a war that provokes a citizen-led coup against the government that invented the sequestration laws would (more likely) be enough. Being physically disabled would still carry a stigma and be the focus of bigotry, but would not be cause for the cops to throw you into jail for daring to walk the streets unchaperoned, or owning property...

And a few more after that (out of 100)

Does happy dance.

So¹, Script Frenzy! validates winners based on page counts, and validates page counts based on where the page breaks fall within PDFs, with no regard to how many words are on each page, or what those words may be.

So², I'm writing my graphic novel script with the Freeware program CeltX, which automatically generates a PDF page break before every PAGE ## tag.

So³, faced with the fact that I am falling behind on my page counts, and my Inner Critic is nagging like a Nagging thing, today, I decided to race through the pages I need to write, thusly:

Page 24

Another night in the ward,
after "lights out,"
JOYEL suggests a secret code, so they can continue telling the story during the day, without talking: through winks and face twitches.
a wink is "fighting," index-finger wiggling is "finding something," thumb wiggling is "running,"
cane-tapping is "new character/place."
more overhearing of the news.

Page 25

The next day; the morning therapy period,
this time, with the kids using their code to continue telling their story while keeping it secret from the therapists
They have trouble surpressing their giggles.
Therapists are baffled; unsure whether to be pleased that morale is high,
or annoyed that the kids don't seem to be focusing
on their
exercises.

Page 26

Art class instead of outdoor recreation;
kids are asked to make cards for the president,
saying how proud they are that he is their leader
while art teachers focus on whether the kids are holding their brushes and pencils correctly, or are painting things the right colors.
and holding their brushes and pencils in the right way.

......

That way, I've "written three whole pages" by simply writing three paragraphs of sentence fragments.

But it's not cheating entirely, right? I mean, I am figuring out what happens next, and who does what. And I'm establishing the pacing, and putting placeholders for all the scenes so I can go back and fill in the details when I'm clear on the details...

Especially since this is a first draft, anyway. And if I still like it after I finish this stage, about 50-60% will be radically rewritten, anyway.

Right?

Right?

I know comic book convention says that splash pages are used for big reveals, or high-tension / high-action scenes, and that they should fall on the even-numbered pages, because that way, they remain hidden until the page is turned... But:

My mind wants to use them to set the scene (a single page-image that divides present from past, or wilderness from city), to convey a sense of either timelessness or stagnation (I assoiciate several smaller images clustered together with movement -- even if nothing within each image is moving, six to eight images per page asks the reader to move their gaze from one to the other).

I also want to put them on the odd-numbered pages, because that's where my gaze / attention tends to fall, by default -- maybe because that's the page that's right in front of me, but I have to turn my head, slightly, to see the even-numbered pages.

So, maybe instead of "Splash" pages, I should call these "reflection" pages?

[Message to those who are now reading via DW, almost exclusively: I done posted a poll about Graphic Novel writing in particular, and Writing, Storytelling, Care-and-feeding-of-muses in general, here:

Storee tiem! Quechen tiem!

(You need an LJ account to vote)]
I put far too much instant coffee powder in my hot water, earlier. Then I put too much sugar in, on top of that. I couldn't even finish drinking the mug. That may account for much of what follows.
I've hit a puzzle in my script. Much of Gabriel's early (i.e. childhood) story takes place between the ages of 8 or 9ish and 14 or 15ish. It's during that period that I want to show him meeting new friends, interacting with adults, being as much of a playful "normal" boy as possible. However, I also want to show a scene when he is about 3, and severely scolded / put in "Time Out" for daring to mention his "other arms" out loud, that will consciously and subconsciously color his feelings toward hiding them throughout his life. But I don't want the reader to think that that incident is the "norm" for how the adults in his life treat him. So I'm also now, facing the prospect of writing a few scenes from his baby and toddlerhood, in addition to his middle childhood and adolescence. Not bad, in and of itself, except that this will slow down the pacing of my story considerably.
I have Neil Gaiman's Dream Country by my left hand, in part because it has the script for one of his comics as an appendix -- so I can compare the script to the finished product. The story with the script is "Calliope," and its about a writer who keeps that Muse captive, and rapes her whenever he wants ideas. Okay, fine. Gaiman wanted to write a dark, creepy and violent story. But:
- He writes her as the youngest of the muses, when, according to tradition, she was always the oldest.
- Also, according to tradition, the muses never gave out ideas -- that was up to the artist / scholar to come up with. All the old hymns and poems in praise of the muses ask for their help and support in communicating the ideas clearly and inspiringly -- so that the finished work of art is befitting the importance of its subject.
- In the script, when Calliope is first revealed, Gaiman tells his artist: "If you've ever seen photos of famine victims, or concentration camp victims [...]" And then, in the margin, is his hand-written note complaining-explaining that his artist had drawn her too skinny, and the inker had to fix her up a bit. ... Face-palm, face-palm, Mr. Gaiman; you were the one to make those camparisons -- teetering on the brink of Fail, there, you are.
My reactions to (some of) my F'lists reactions to the Eleventh Doctor:
- From calapine (after spoilery bits regarding the first two eps.): "I want more theme-y stuff on the value of knowledge; such things make me v happy. (And any wee digs at the need to know vs the right to know, always appreciated.)"
  Yes. This. Truth, it is.
  
  It was one of the first things I noted, when my pbs station aired the first ep. of the Tom Baker story Robot -- How the Doctor there kept pushing people to be curious and seek out knowledge, vs. Rusty's stories that kept insisting that Knowledge was dangerous, and would wound you (and it's better to have your mind wiped).
  So: Yay!
- From snowgrouse: "I also like the way the Moff has written children and how he has written about children and childlike things. The Doctor understands them and doesn't talk down to them. You get the feeling that this is the narrative and the voice of someone who knows what it is like to be a child and knows kids will see through bullshit."
  Squee!
  
  In an earlier chapter in my life, I was convinced my destiny was to write for and about children (that has only partly come to pass), and it makes me a bit heartsick when I see children in pop culture, being treated as Plot Puppets for the adults (often the Lead White Male) to angst over and rescue, instead of people in their own right.
I'm thinking of decorating a shirt (or mug) with a logo design based on my "Flying Piggie (Write what you can Imagine)" design.

"Write what you know." is one of my biggest pet peeve sayings, along with: "There, but for the Grace of God..." and "...then, I met a man who had no feet."
I was browsing around Wikipedia, the other day, and found a passel of names for these brackets: { }, and also learned how they are properly used in writing prose (I'd only learned of them in the context of elementary school math class, to enclose sets). In prose, they're used to present lists of things that are of equal value and importance. So I will use them to present their various names: {Flower brackets, Squiggly brackets, chicken lips, braces, curly brackets, birdie brackets, and Scottish brackets}. Hee!

When I was reading all the prep stuff for screnzy, on the formating of comic books, etc., I was expecting the ratio of script pages to finished format pages to be something along the lines of

3:1 or
2.5:1

Instead, it's turning out to be more like

0.75:1 or (if I'm lucky, and really pad my descriptions for each panel)
1:1

*headdesk*

{sigh}

And I'm really having to push myself to write just one page a day (instead of four, which is what I should be doing) -- of course, that may be because I kept re-formating the opening of my story, and only decided to actually write in a formal prologue at three-quarters past the eleventh hour. So right as of this moment, I'm second-guessing everything as I write it. After I get to the story proper, and writing all my core characters actually talking to each other, the page count may go up (really wide margins around dialog). I'm almost to that point.

*fingers crossed*

I just needed to vent.

I just need to blather a bit, to get my brain up to speed -- like letting a car engine warm up to get it working on a cold winter day, I suppose.

So:

How to write, in three "easy" steps:

Start at the beginning.
Continue through the middle.
When you get to the end: Stop.

My hardest, ever, decision (this time around) (...So far) has been to figure out where the "Beginning" is.

( This is stuff I wanted to talk about (and get feedback on) last Monday, when I lost my Internets. Even now, a little feedback would be nice. )

Some decisions that were (slightly) easier to make:

Focusing on physical, neurologically-based disabilities for my allogory, instead of trying to encompass the entire range of "Disability." ( Blather continues )

This brand-new disability appears for a good reason: ( Yet more blather )

Skipping the whole "A.I.: Robots-are-the-new-slave-class" trope. ( Blather Blathington III )

*Clings to her Internet like a squid with velcro mittens*

Okay, so last Monday, there was a massive storm with thunder and lightning and flooding.

Or, there was all of that in neighboring places. Here, it was just a rainy, rainy day. I couldn't even hear thunder in the distance. But when I tried to log onto the Internet, discovered that I had no connection. Spent several hours trying to follow the Verizon "Reset your router trouble-shooting" directions to no avail.

Decided to take a break with a hot shower, to wash away my "Argh!" frustrations,* and when I got out of the shower, and went to call Verizon Tech support, I realized I had no dial-tone on my phone, either.

Cue a montage of phone tag, between verizon, an electrician, and verizon again, when I'm doing it by borrowing Audrey's cell, and therefore, having to wait 48 hours between each phone tag "turn."

So yeah, nothing bad happened to me, except for "connectivity withdrawal syndrome."

Oh, and the battery in my van died, because a dome light was left on, and we didn't know it.

...Won't be able to get that jumpstarted until Wednesday...

And I'm about 5 days behind on my Screnzy script... Hope that I can get over that, now that Mr. Google is back to answer the questions that come up.

*(and I also cut my own hair again -- it's jagged and uneven all over, but at least, I'm no longer inhaling hair down my windpipe every time I inhale to sneeze. So it's got to look better than it did, right?)

Unfortunately, they also make the physical act of writing stuff down exhausting.

Oh, well, at least I have a clearer idea of how my story is structured.

This is of the good.

"Oh, the charge? He's being abusive and insulting, and he won't let me get any work done."

I'm trying to figure out what my Opening Image^ is, and distill the entire nature of reality of the "normal world" before my story takes off, and Things Change Forever (for my protagonist), in the first 10% of my story.

In my head, the metaphor for the Cure Imperative of our culture is his doctors, therapists, and nurses refusing to even acknowledge the reality of his wings, and repeating the mantra that he'll be free when he can walk. But if I start my story in his childhood, I won't have enough room to tell the story of who he becomes as an adult.

There's got to be a way to do it, but all day, my Inner Critic has been "shouting":

*IT WON'T WORK, AND YOU DON'T KNOW A THING ABOUT WRITING, AND YOU HAVE TO START YOUR IDEA ALL OVER, FROM SCRATCH! (And you're lazy, and good-for-nothing, and will die young[ish] and alone)*

I'd like to stab the bastard through the heart with a silver quill pen. I would.

*sigh*

I guess this is what you get when you're deeply emotionally invested in your story.

-----
^(I'm using the "Hollywood Plot" outline guide provided by Script Frenzy, even though I've decided on the graphic novel format -- I figure the plot structure is basically the same, since they're both primarily visual media).

I filled out my 2010 U.S. Census form, yesterday.

It has only ten questions, this decade -- one of the shortest eva! -- and most of the questions were pretty straight forward, and boiled down to "Who is staying under your roof, as of April 1, 2010?"

Don't give us the names of people who usually stay there, but aren't now, due to being in a college dorm, prison, or nursing home -- 'Cause we've already got people counting those places, and we don't want to count them twice.

But do tell us if you're sheltering people who don't normally stay there -- relatives, that hobo in the basement, neighbors whose house burned down, etc.

And then there were questions about race and ethnicity -- which, it was pointed out -- are not the same thing.

Then, there's question 10: Does Person 1 sometimes stay somewhere else? N/Y [x] Mark all that apply: (and then, a list of options).

I was about to [x] "no." And then, I got to wondering: "Well, I used to count the house on the mountain as my second home, before Dad died. And that was since the last census. So is this question referring to the past, or the present-to-future only?

I checked out the Official Govt. Census Website. And all it told me was why answering this question is important, but didn't answer any ambiguities.

There was a toll-free number to call, however, which I did... and the automatic menu used voice-recognition only, which is totally discriminatory against people with speech impairments, but I didn't feel like Fighting the System to bring that up. As it was, the voice-recognizing computer could not interpret my accent when I said "Yes" (And I don't have a speech impairment), and it finally put me through to a live person.

When the live person got on, she basically repeated the same information as the website, reminding me that it's against the law for her to tell me what I should put down as my answer.

After we went back and forth a few times, I was finally able to explain: "But I'm not asking how to answer, I'm asking whether I should include whether I've stayed somewhere else five years ago, in considering my answer."

"Oh," She said. "That is a good question. And I don't know. I'll go find out."

And I was put on hold for about 15 minutes.

Then, I think it was her supervisor who came on, and told me: "No, the question only refers to right now, not the past."

So my initial hunch was right. ...But my mother always did tell me never to assume.

And now, there is an awareness that that question can come across as ambiguous, and there's a recorded accurate interpretation. So I think I did double-duty, citizen-wise, yesterday.

So, now you USians out there reading this know, too.

My "brief Treatment" for my screnzy script is getting unwieldy... because I'm getting bogged down in navel-gazing details based on my own childhood "In the System," and describing therapy sessions, and doctors around the bedside, talking about you in third person when you are right there, looking them in the eye.

So I think I'll reboot my efforts, and just write a time-line like thingie, just to make sure I have all the bits of a plot, and hope for the best.

Last shopping trip, I bought some Wasabi Peas. OMG-yum. The spiciness makes my nose tingle, like I'm going to sneeze. But it ends before the sneeze actually happens. The company that makes this particular batch is "Ann's House of Nuts" -- the name even spelled like mine. If my scanner were working, I'd make a journal icon from the logo. 'Cause, dude.

As I wrote in a reply to

megaptera, just now:

"The problem with plotting ahead, and deliberately trying to avoid cliches, is that it's got me thinking about consequences, and the consequences of those consequences . . . . It's [as if] an entire "Choose Your Own Adventure" novel is [exploding] simultaneously, in my head."

I don't really want to post a poll, and put this up for a vote, because this is my story, based (more than any other story I can remember writing, to date) on my personal memories and philosophy. And in my own life, I am a dictatorship in a in a nation of One Citizen... if that makes any sense. So I'm not putting my story up for a vote ... even though I'd welcome discussion of consequences and impressions, to help me sort out my own conflicting thoughts.

But:

It often helps me make decisions if I write my options out in a question-and-possible-answers format. And it might quiet my Inner Editor down a bit, if I give it something that looks like "Putting Important Things in Proper Order" -- like giving a fussy baby a teething ring. So I am going to play with HTML coding, and try to make a really fancy list.

Why would a government decide to establish a policy officially denying the existance of the Disabled?

It came into power at a time of an epidemic (or some other catastrophe), and citizens were swayed by health scares -- allowed the XXX Party into power for health security reasons (as the people of Afghanistan allowed the Taliban into power, in preference to the chaos of fighting war lords)

For propaganda: maintaining the facade of a society whose citizens enjoy perfect health allows an authoritarian-leaning government to project an aura of benevalence and reason, and thus deflect criticism from outside governments and dissidents within its own borders

Why would a government decide to change this policy, in practice, if not in rhetoric?

There is a coup, or simply a radical shift in government parties after an election, and the policy was such a well-kept secret that the incoming party members didn't realise how much resources it took to maintain it.

Citizens outside the Asylum system took the erasure of disability for granted, so when there was a new large-scale crisis, there was demand for resources to be put in that direction, and as the asylums no longer had the resources to function, it became more practical simply to close them down

Economic Downturn: depression. The government simply has no more money to pay staff, and utilities, or for the high tech medical treatments that are carried on inside the asylums (which are placed in remote areas, well-hidden from main population centers).

OMG!WAR!!

What happens if Home Nation become an occupying force in a foreign land?
1. Massive draft, including the able-bodied staff of the Asylums; without staff, they cannot function, and so are closed down
2. draining of capital and manpower from the homefront leads to popular uprising, which leads to a coup, and/or radical shift in Govt. (See II. A).
What happens if Home nation is Invaded by foreign country?
1. Home Nation fears that invading soldiers will take over asylums, and use the inmates as human shields; since the families of the inmates are continually promised that the children will one day be returned to them, allowing this to happen might cause popular uprising, so the asylums are shut down and evacuated (see II. A).
2. Home Nation loses war, and becomes a colony of foreign country (See II. A)

[ETA: And Now, comes the Hard Part!]

It ain't the work that's hard, Ma'am -- it's the decisions!

What are the advantages of the "Depression" plotline?

Less chance of OMG!Trauma! and emopr0n for Gabriel

Fewer moving parts for me

What are the advantages of the "War" plotline?

If the war is off the homefront, could be a reason for the "Depression" plotline.

If the Home Nation is invaded, it would bring the world to Gabriel, albeit in a violent way, and thus show a contrasting cultural view toward Disability.
- Because Gabriel is disabled and a child (double-whammy, as an underclass citizen), he can't travel the world by his own inititiave, and thus encounter "The Other."
- And I want to show "the Other," that contrasting, contemporaneous, views of Disability are possible. If there were a massive health catastrophe, it could very well have been global, but only Home Nation invested such a massive amount of resources to its Asylum System.

On the Other Hand, War = A bazillion moving parts.

...And this is what is driving me nuts: I clearly remember reading, years ago, in Funk and Wagnall's Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend*, that some cultures believed that children born from sex with a vampire have no bones in their hands (bones, in many cultures, are linked to the soul).

But I've got that book open on my desk right now, and I can't find the article where I read it. And I know that that's the book I read it in. But it's not in the article on vampires, nor the one on bones.

Has anyone here come across something similar, who may be able to give a clue where to look (maybe keywords to search with, online)?

Yes, I remembered this while thinking about my story, since my hero was almost born without the full compliment of bones. And I realized he's probably not the only kid with the condition -- just the only one with parents powerful and rich enough for their doctors to suggest a fancy, new, high-tech, experimental, "fix."

(Ah, the layers of privilege and under-privilege in the Disability Community!)

I know I don't need to remind myself of the details of this folk belief, since I've already got the idea, but it is a brain-itch.

And then, I got a mischievous idea: the other kids, who didn't get an in utero treatment, are fitted into artificial exo-skeletons, and for the kids with the most severe forms of this condition, those exo-skeletons might be fitted around their thorasic cavity, to protect their hearts and lungs -- very much like Davros's -- and I could counter the trope that physical delibilty = spiritual corruption by putting an imposing looking body casing around a rosy-faced innocent, laughing child -- who'd be one of my hero's bestest friends! (Bwa-ha-ha!).

Of course, I'd have to give it a different look, to avoid copyright issue with Terry Nation's estate, but still... *smirk*

*(1972 hardcover edition, which may be around the time I read the article -- I got the book new for Christmas -- it might have been in print a couple of years, by then)

For the first year of ScriptFrenzy!, success was measured in wordcounts, and to keep a steady pace of writing going, you had to strive for 667 words per day, which is almost, but not quite demonic....

So my first Skrenzy icon read: "667 a day: Devilish, like cake!" with a picture of devil's food cake, natch.

But last year, they switched over to page counts. So my favorite skrenzy icon became obsolete, and lost its reference point.

So, tonight, I decided that the first thing I needed to do to prepare for the next Skrenzy was to make a new icon (instead of, you know, deciding on a plot, or characters, or anything like that).

The trickiest part turned out to be deciding on the right background color; plain white was just awful. And making the background a contrasting gradation of colors (my second thought) was just too visually confusing.

I finally got to where I like it though. I like that the tragedy mask has the brighter, sunnier colors (I'm contrarian, that way). I may use it at other times of the year when I'm feeling all drama-queenish and emo, too... (like tonight)

I didn't even bother working on my script for the last couple of weeks, or even getting the few pages I did write validated...

Well, I never hit a "sophomore slump" with NaNoWriMo, so maybe I was destined to hit it with screnzy...

I'll keep Celtx loaded on my machine, though. May play around with it a bit more... maybe I'll get some inspiration for next year.

( Yup. ScriptFrenzy has led me to be certifiable. Yup. Mad ramblings on my writing/non-writing process )

For your pleasure (and my convenience) I hearby present (cut for epic lenth)

( *The Two Brothers* -- Pure Rip-roaring adventure. Disney and/or Dreamworks could make a blockbuster out of this Grimms' Tale! )

There are funky line-breaks in the story. But I'm too tired, now, to fix every last one of them, sorry.

I didn't even start writing until the 11th. I didn't write anything at all on the 13th, or yesterday, and I haven't written a single word at all (yet) today.

...It just feels like homework, instead of play (I did not intend to pun, but it's rather hard-wired into the language, at this point).

I dunno. I might be coming down with a bout of depression. Not real deep, or life-threatening. Just "meh," about everything.

Since this is National Poetry Month, and I have a Fake!Will in my icon, I'll give his twenty-ninth sonnet. I've read some critiques of this poem that said the expression of melancholy here was a simply a literary convention of the time. But when I look at it, I see what is now a "textbook case" of clinical depression (or it would be, if they'd had textbooks about it, back then). And some biographers believe, that even if the poems weren't published until later, that he first wrote the early ones around the time that his son died. Anyway, here you go:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

"Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,/With what I most enjoy contented least"

Hey, kids! Even Shakespeare had writer's block, and was his own worst critic!

Just some food for thought.

...I may check out the rules and regulations for "Short scripts," to see how (and if) they'll count more than one script toward the single 100-page total. If I can have a bunch of different stories, and move on to something else when I get bored or stuck, I may be able to find some inspiration again... maybe..

[ETA: Answer from the Official Screnzy Staff:

this may change; the actual details of verification have yet to be released. However, it is a safe bet to say that you will simply combine all your various scripts into one file, and submit them together. The validator won't know the difference

So, that's good... I guess. I can always do any old, random odd scene that comes into my head, now, and keep going until something sticks... or just keep going randomly.]

I've decided on The Water of Life (the fourth option here), with a little plot tweaking to add tension and make the logic a little clearer.

I know it's not the most popular choice, among those who answered my poll, But that's not how I use polls anyway. Simply posing questions, if I pose them in the right way, can help my mind focus, especially if I get feedback -- any sort of feedback.

I, too, really want to know what the Prince did to deserve getting turned into a frog (the most popular answer). The problem is, I don't know, either... And I'd kind of have to figure that out first, before I started writing, and I'm already short on time, since I didn't even decide to start until far too late.

The same is true for the story of the dryad (second choice), which is an original story idea I got years and years and decades ago from a single dream image (A man is chopping vegetables, and he cuts his finger, only instead of blood, resin flows out. And instead of being afraid, he's relieved. Then, I woke up).

And when I reread The Water of Life, I was struck by the character of the old man (who just sort of wanders through the royal garden) and the dwarf at the crossroads. Both characters "just happen" to have the knowledge and equipment that the hero needs to succeed.

And the idea popped into my head that these two characters could both be played by The Storyteller, who picks up different masks and props at different times, leaves the storytelling chair, enters the story to talk to the characters, then goes back to the storytelling chair to continue the narration. Once this device popped into my head, I could just see how it might unfold onstage. So that's the story I went with.

(There's also the story of the enchanted "princess" [ahem, Queen, ahem], that's not told in the original, that could give me enough elbow room to expand and explore, via a plot B).

Of course, now that I've begun so late, I'll have to write between 5 and 6 pages a day, instead of between 3 and 4. But it may still be doable, once I get my momentum up, and figure out the format and this writing program...

So what the hell am I doing here, huh?

*shrugs*

LJ is life.

But you knew that.

No, I haven't even started yet. I know, I'm lame.

[Poll #1167943]

ETA: I'm just now deciding whether I want to try using Celtx's index card feature, to plan out my different ideas. Sometimes, a bell or a whistle can help jumpstart the brain, and other times, will just get in the way...

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Ann

May 2013

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*forehead slap* -- aka auto-dopeslap.
I just posted this to Script Frenzy's "Plot Doctoring" forum... I'm asking your advice, too
Today, (as in "between two sleeps") I crossed the 50-page mark
This isn't *REALLY* cheating ... Is it?
*Cross-posted from the Script Frenzy! forums (Graphic Novels -- Slow-paced comics are cool, too!)
Screnzy and Sundry:
Argh!! This is going so slow! I am so far behind, it's not even pretending to be funny.
I'm about 21 pages behind where I should be, on my screnzy script, but
Yes, I *did* drop off the face of the world...
Aha! So *migraines* are an effective "Inner-Critic-Repellant"... Good to know.
"Yes, Officer. I'd like to have a restraining order put out against my Inner Critic."
The U.S. Census, n' sundry stuff:
And here I give you a Not!Poll:
Help! I've got a mind itch! And MudCat is down, so I can't ask the elder experts there! argh.
GIP: LJ Iconing -- procrastination hobby to the stars!
Well, this year's ScriptFrenzy is officially over...
I must be utterly insane...
Thinking of throwing in the Towel on Screnzy.
Well, I've finally begun.
Because my brain failed to settle on any idea after the first poll:

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Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

The songs that are stuck in my head

Entries tagged with screnzy

forehead slap -- aka auto-dopeslap.

I just posted this to Script Frenzy's "Plot Doctoring" forum... I'm asking your advice, too

Today, (as in "between two sleeps") I crossed the 50-page mark

This isn't REALLY cheating ... Is it?

*Cross-posted from the Script Frenzy! forums (Graphic Novels -- Slow-paced comics are cool, too!)

Screnzy and Sundry:

Argh!! This is going so slow! I am so far behind, it's not even pretending to be funny.

I'm about 21 pages behind where I should be, on my screnzy script, but

Yes, I did drop off the face of the world...

Aha! So migraines are an effective "Inner-Critic-Repellant"... Good to know.

"Yes, Officer. I'd like to have a restraining order put out against my Inner Critic."

The U.S. Census, n' sundry stuff:

And here I give you a Not!Poll:

Help! I've got a mind itch! And MudCat is down, so I can't ask the elder experts there! argh.

GIP: LJ Iconing -- procrastination hobby to the stars!

Well, this year's ScriptFrenzy is officially over...

I must be utterly insane...

Thinking of throwing in the Towel on Screnzy.

Well, I've finally begun.

Because my brain failed to settle on any idea after the first poll: