NANO: Day: 27

One of my favorite parts of Final Draft, the program I use to do my screenwriting, is the Statistics Report feature. It generates a report of all sorts of useful and interesting data such as Character A, who is supposed to be paired with Character B is actually interacting with Character C 12% more, or some such. It can also be deceptive- The report tells me that Father Murphy speaks the most with Byron, when in actuality, he's always with Tasha. And I know it's because A.) Byron questions him at length, and B.) Tasha's rarely alone and the program may read lines directed at her as being directed at Tyler or Geoff. The report tells me about what scenes characters appear in, so I can make sure no one is in the wrong scene-- or more likely where I typo-ed the scene heading! It also tells me that my dialogue makes up most of the script (Yay, as it should be!) and action makes up the next biggest chunk (and together make up roughly 91% of the script, lol!)

But the final element of a Stats Report is my favorite. It's the "Profanity Report". It tells me that I used the word "crap" once, "bastard" twice, "damn" twice, and "piss" once. That's all censor-proof, so I don't have to change it, but in an early draft, a report reminded me that although it was very fitting for Edward to refer to his son as a "piece of shit", since I was angling for broad audience and any channel, the dialogue had to change.

As of today, my outline, treatment, script, and leave behinds are finished, which just leaves editing everything once through on my NaNo to do list, and puts me at:

complete! The last 10% is the editing phase, so I am done with the initial drafting phase. But all my scripts get a thorough comb through before being set aside for a week/month/ sometimes longer before I do in depth editing. Always helps to get the brain cleared of what it 'expects to see' and actually looking at what's there. I also find it VERY helpful to print copies, changing the viewing format helping shake up what the brain 'expects' to see!

NANO: Day: 14

Just a quick status update:




I had hoped to be at 50% by the end of the day today, but I'm not too far behind, and am also roughly on track for the month and am not too worried about finishing on time. If I could take a solid chunk of time and concentration, I could power through a lot more, but unfortunately, those are in short supply.

Today's question: I need a good "cover name" for the devil. If the devil showed up on your doorstep intent on fooling you, what name would he use to introduce himself? (Bonus points for classic or ironic references!)

NANO: Day: 06

Why I save the scraps of dialogue I don't use.

Scrapped bits of dialogue, from early outlines. Some of the plot lines were dropped, altered, or delayed, for use later:
_____
T: Aren't you supposed to be shuffling into the mortal coil?
M: Still negotiating the whole 'don't wanna be a tortoise' thing.
T: How's that going?
M: Learning to love the lettuce.
______
T: Yeah? How many times does someone have to tell you to go to Hell before it spontaneously happens?
B: I'll be sure to let you know after I figure out the tootsie roll pop thing.
______

Maybe I can't use them now, but later, maybe I'll be able to use pieces of the exchange to punch up a scene. And if all else fails, the next time someone says I'm going to hell, I'll reference tootsie roll pops. Because who wouldn't be stopped in their tracks by that?!

Today's status bar:

NANO: Day: 04

Not a lot going the past two days, except proving the old axiom: sometimes you have to go backward to go forward.

Yesterday, I pulled off 75% of my scene post-its off the big board for Act 3 & 4 and the tag, then reordered, changed the B plot line radically, then went back to the outlines to change them accordingly.

Today, the treatment work flowed much better, and I made up the lost pages.

NANO: Day: 02

One of my "essential" rules is a writing trick I picked up from the writing blog of the fabulous Jane Espensen (Buffy, Battlestar Galactica).

To keep a sense of momentum from day to day, never finish your last sentence for the night. Break your sentence in half, even though you know exactly what you want to say. In fact, it's better if you know what you want to say.

It's a trick to ward off the curse of the blinking cursor. When you open your document the next day, you aren't staring blankly at the screen, waiting to form the next words into a sentence or stalling out. Instead, the momentum starts again right away, because your first task is finishing your sentence from the night before. And the next often flows easily from there.

It sounds like a simple strategy, but it works well for me.

And I remind myself of that fact on nights like tonight where I hit a natural break, am tired, and it feels like time to pack it in. Instead I pressed on a little further and paused mid sentence and paragraph on the next part. I don't get too far into where I know I want to go either, so I have a good idea how to continue the next day. Sometimes the best stopping point is right before you get into a segment you have well planned and are excited to press into further.

Today's status:

NANO: Day: 01

I'm currently rocking it out to the Tokyo Symphony Pops performing a cover of a Do As Infinity song. Why? One of my weird writing quirks is that I don't listen to music with lyrics (or at least not in a language I sing in, which rules out the Latin based languages, Hindi, Gaelic, German, English of the old, middle and current varieties, and actual Latin. My choir education was far too thorough!) So I have many symphony covers and a lot of Japanese, Chinese, and Iranian music in the writing queue. I also raid score soundtracks like mad. All this because I (and a number of other writers I know) have found the lyrics of songs influence word choice sometimes. It can also prove distracting if you like to sing (and I do!) If you haven't discovered it, the "Friday Night Lights" Soundtrack, featuring Explosions in the Sky is brilliant, and I'm a big fan of some of the experimental and lyricless Nine Inch Nails work, such as Ghosts. It can also be great to raid the various world symphonies, from London to Tokyo to Moscow. I also count on my friend, Kris, purveyor of music rare, exotic, and fabulous, to keep the list growing and rotating.

So I have a list of writing music for when I'm actually working, which would seem to render the popular writing activity of creating a lyrical playlist related to the project. Wrong! I have those as well. Which seems useless, except the burned CD's for this project have taken up residence in my car stereo, my MP3 player, and during my web surfing time. Since my pilot is a very strongly religious and philisophical list, the songs are focused in that area, but may indicate a little about how I regard all organized religion. Some tracks include:

-Mama Who Bore Me from "Spring Awakening" (talks about those who wish Jesus would come but would have no clue what to do if he did.)
-From A Distance, the John Barrowman cover (gay man covering a religious staple. Awesome!)
-Amhran Duit by Loreena McKennitt (was a memorial choice for a friend, very moving piece!)
-Only the Good Die Young by Billy Joel (okay, so I have some issues with the Catholic end of the spectrum, but I do love this song!)
-Ave Maria (Singular most beautiful piece of holy music, in my opinion)
-Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones

Like I said, covers a range, which suits the tone of the pilot well, as it has comic moments, dramatic moments, heartbreaking moments, and poignant religious moments.


Today's actual progress update:

I'm working on my final outline and treatment, starting in the more 'planning' end of the pilot. It went well, no major hitches yet, and I seem to be out of 'script supervisor' brain space, not logic-ing everything to death. Page count is a little over where I anticipated being today. Yay!

NANO: Day: T-Minus 7

A good (and fun) art activity for character development from NaNo:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3307339

I enjoy it because much like sketching my characters, their homes, etc., because it flips on my right brain artistic side on and the analytical, memorizing (script supervising) left half off.

So I did secrets for four of my main characters:

NANO: Day: T-Minus 9

A long day on set today, so not as much pre-planning and work as I'd have liked!

During my spare bits of time, most of which were sandwiched between working with this:


And shooting inside this:


(Yes, that's a '68 'Cuda and a military issue Humvee. Awesome.)

I sat in a director's chair, my notepad balanced on one knee and a character questionnaire on the other, diligently ignoring the gaffer, who was snoring slightly as he slept in his own director's chair next to mine. (I seriously debated drawing on his face, but the DP got there first!)

The character questionnaire I use isn't much special-- I picked it up in a workshop about a year ago at the Screenwriting Expo in Los Angeles. It gives you dozens of questions, starting out simple, like name, age, favorite color, and building to complex ones like ambitions, secrets, and things they're ashamed of. Then I go back through and ask the fun question: Why? Why is that the favorite color, parent their closer to, religion of choice?

So thanks to today's work, I can tell you that Tasha likes modern crime novels, is a huge fan of Val McDermid and anything with a crime fighting woman, and being a cog in a rather unique legal system, it's not surprising the fiction where justice is always served is especially appealing. Byron on the other hand, prefers his reading material classic, with a huge weakness for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This could be because he, like Holmes, is a bit arrogant and loves puzzles, or because he's a classic himself-- he was born in the 16th century.

...Did I mention my characters are dead?

NANO: Day: T-minus 10

T-minus 10 days till the start of NaNoWriMo!

As you may have seen from the description, my goal for the month of November is writing a pilot for a one hour drama. Usually the televison script version of NaNo, ScriptFrenzy, occurs in April, but every April, I find myself mid-spec and working hard for deadlines such as the NBC and Disney/ABC fellowships, or coming to close on a script for the April 15 deadlines on several script writing contests, plus being pilot season, I usually find myself working, so April has always been the worst start point for me.

November though...

The October deadlines are past, I refuse to acknowledge a holiday season until Thanksgiving has passed, and it's slow.

And tons of fellow writers are on board, just in a different format.

So I decided, to hell with when I was supposed to do it, I was hopping in during November, but transposing the April rules to the NaNo timeframe. Fingers crossed, it'll work out well!

So at T-minus 10 days:

I'm moving from the notebook, pen and draft paper outlines and brainstorming sessions to a more dynamic format:

I live in a converted school house, so my workspace includes an old chalkboard. Thanks to brown paper and corkboard, it's now a dynamic workspace for outlining the storylines and allows the mobility to move scenes within the outline at will.

The space to the right is set up for six acts (the grid), so unless my note cards and post-its grow legs, it should facilitate organizing the story. To the right, I fully expect work I've done including character analysis, brainstorms, and very bad sketches to cram the area.

I owe a big thank you at the kick off of this blog to my friend, Fabian Rush, who I recently met on the set of a feature film (him acting and me script supervising) because he was willing to let me pick his brain for all sorts of sordid horrible things that men think about and believe are hell worthy. And he was willing to do so while we ate lunch, so millions of thanks for giving up that potential quiet time! Those lunch chats helped me narrow down what I wanted to see in the pilot and what could be held back for the treatment and future episodes and helped me create my first outline. So thanks, Fabian, and remember, "they're coming for you, Barbara!"

So what's it all about? Here's a hint:

Matthew 18:18  I assure, whatever you declare bound
              on earth shall be bound in
              heaven, and whatever you declare
              loosed on earth shall be
              loosed in heaven.

Mostly I intend to focus on the process and my progress in this blog, and not the content, but this verse is a central focus of the concept. Outlines are WGA registered, as will be the treatment and script.