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.