Back In The Saddle

My life has been something of an unholy mess lately, and I'm not out of the hole yet, not by a long shot. If anything it's getting deeper. But I need to get out of these doldrums somehow, and I have found solace in getting back into writing again.

Having been thinking about a story idea that had been around for a long time, and making the graphic image a few weeks ago for fun, I went back to the story outline I had written a year ago and rethought some of the elements that didn't sit right.

For one thing the overall story was too reminiscent of an existing film. Unconsciously I was emulating it, and had come too close to the line too often to get away with it. So I have considered this off-and-on since realising it, and tried to figure out ways to distance it more. So as I rewrote the outline, keeping some elements and adjusting the rest, it came together a lot better, and faster, and in the end is stronger for it. There's still a lot of influence, but only broadly and is now more inspiration than straight out copying.

I have begun writing the actual script. It's a slow process. I've often wondered how it can be that professionals can take months, sometimes a year or more, to write a screenplay, when they're only 90 pages long and have around 200 words per page. Why does that take so long? Well, I still don't know. I've been working on it for less than a week, and am up to 25 pages and nearly 6000 words, and that's only working for about three hours a day. If I doubled my efforts to a full working day, I'd have the entire first draft done in two weeks. As it is it will probably take me four.

This is including the fact that I rewrote an entire scene again, twice, because I forgot to include a crucial character introduction, and had to go back and slot it in seamlessly, and that took some effort and rejiggering. Two days were spent on one scene that, while normally would be addressed in a subsequent draft, had to be done this time so that the rest of the story made sense (everything that needs to be there should be in the first draft, and it's up to subsequent drafts to rearrange and tidy up the dodgy bits).

Now that's how long a first draft takes, something that wouldn't ever be submitted. A third or seventh or fifteenth draft is not uncommon, and only then will it get shown around. That might be where they're using their extended time.

I find writing to be an entertaining pastime, even though it can be a effort. Most writers do it because they enjoy it, but some find it difficult. After all, deadlines and expectation can be quite stressful and interfere in getting the best work done. For me, I don't have any deadlines, I'm doing this as a hobby on my own schedule. So I can extract the fun and eliminate the stress. But I also am not getting paid.

Like many creative pursuits, the final script can all depend on how the day went. If I was given the same story to write a year previously, or in the future, I may end up writing a completely different finished product. How good it is can be determined by random factors and could fail so easily. In order to clarify my thoughts I need to take some time out each day to think about where the story is headed and what happens in the next scene I write. During those moments anything might influence me; something as random as the weather, what TV I watched this week, or if I had cheese for lunch, can make my thoughts turn one direction or another and lead to quite a different finished product.

So as this story plays out, it is exciting to see it develop, as it will rarely turn out quite the way I plan, and with luck be even better than I hope it to be.

Now onto the next scene...

The Screenwriting Bug

Back in November, online bookshop (and more) Amazon.com launched a somewhat controversial new venture, Amazon Studios. The idea is for amateur screenwriters to have an opportunity to showcase their product in a way that hadn't been available before. Instead of going through the messy existing Studio system, something that is still operating in the same way as it did in the 70s, the 50s, even some is legacy from the 20s, which is to say a laborious process that requires you to be listed already in various places within Hollywood before you're allowed to even get noticed let alone be taken seriously, Amazon set up a competition, in association with Warner Brothers Studios, to let anyone upload a completed feature length screenplay and get it read by their judges, and potentially win a large sum of money, perhaps even get it greenlit to be made and earn an even larger sum of money. It didn't matter where you lived, how old you were, or who you knew, this was a real opportunity to get your film noticed by genuine Producers and Directors associated with a huge Studio.

There are, however, inevitably a few catches. One of the biggest is that they Option your script for 18 months. That is, they have first refusal on whether the screenplay can be developed during that time. Sometimes when Studios Option scripts they will pay the author a nominal fee, occasionally as little as a few dollars, but also sometimes many thousands. Amazon is paying nothing to anyone, and yet every script that is entered, potential winner or not, is now trapped in their system. None of them can be submitted to any other Studio until the 18 months are up. And even after that there's some additional jiggery pokery that may keep it locked up for even longer.

The rules also allow for, and encourage, other people to read and rewrite your screenplay. This may be the most controversial part of the whole deal, as nobody wants their work to be trodden on by some clumsy idiot who thinks it needs more gore or their sense of comedy is more fart jokes. But that's part of the potential deal, so you have to accept that.

In the real Hollywood approach to rewrites, your screenplay is sold for a nice hefty sum before it can be rewritten, and it's usually taken over by experienced professionals, with a promise of screen credit. It may turn your original idea into something unrecognisable to you, but if your core idea remains, you get some amount of respect for your contribution.

I don't think the rewriting side of things at Amazon Studios has been too successful, as that's a lot of work for someone to put in for almost no real gain. I think it's one of those ideas they came up with at 2am to encourage interactivity amongst contributors, but in reality was a nutty plan that wouldn't ever work very well.

They have a third part to the competition, which is completely ridiculous, which is to get people to take an uploaded script and make an entire full length film of it. No budget, so it can be rough as guts, but that has the biggest potential return as the largest prize goes to the winning film. It's hard enough to find the time to make a ten minute short, there's no way anyone can make anything halfway watchable that is supposed to be 90 minutes long. It would take six months just to organise it, let alone shoot it, and the end result won't be any better than an Ed Wood film.

Anyway, I submitted my first and only completed screenplay, Pegasus Rampant, PDF copy available here, to their competition, because I knew it was never going to be actually made, especially as it's just sitting on my hard drive, and I need some more feedback so I can learn to write more, and do it better. I figured that overall it was worth the minor inconvenience of the restrictive rules. I wouldn't do it for every screenplay I may end up writing, but for this one time it's an educational experience if nothing else.

I put it online in November, but after 8 weeks it's only been downloaded less than 30 times. I have no idea how often it's actually been read, but I would guess less than half of them have bothered, perhaps as few as only two or three. Committing time to reading a 100 page screenplay is something most people can't easily spare.

So even though it's been downloaded only an average amount of times (plenty of other screenplays have had less downloads than I have, but some have had hundreds more - though I think some are cheating by getting friends and family to repeatedly download and leave fake reviews to game the system) it has had no actual reviews at all, at least on the Amazon site. I did ask some friends elsewhere to help me out by reviewing it, and one guy did, which was very considerate of him, and he had some good advice too. But one review is not quite what I had hoped for, really.

I don't even know if my screenplay was read by the Judges. They claim every single entry was given at least a once over before being accepted or rejected, but I've seen no proof of that beyond vague reassurances. Perhaps my screenplay is prize-winning genius but they just haven't read it. Doubt it, but you never know.

I did not get into the finalists for the first competition, so I don't really expect to be in the finalists for any others (all screenplays are automatically eligible for all ongoing monthly contests) because if it's rejected for one, why be accepted for others, even if I upload a new draft? Unlikely, but then as the competition starts to crumble due to the dodgy rules, maybe things will change in my favour.

Here's a site with some reaction to the mess and potential opportunity the Amazon Studios competition has garnered. It's a somewhat angry and poorly constructed site, but its points are reasonably made, and are a realistic appraisal of the whole situation.

I've been adjusting the screenplay since the aforementioned considerate review, and thus getting back into creative pursuits again, after a deadening few months where I've been out of sorts trying to get my life in order. This has inspired me to return to a script I had begun a year or so ago that had been left incomplete, one that I had always considered an exciting tale and a lot of fun. And in order to get into the right frame of mind for getting back to it, I thought I'd look through some artwork online to inspire me, and before I knew it I had gathered together a few resources to make my own image.

Flintlock: A dashing 18th Century Highwayman is enlisted by a covert Government agency to protect the King from spies and saboteurs. A swashbuckling romance of magnificent adventure, devious espionage, and villainous treachery.

In this image, which is desktop-wallpaper-sized at 1680x1050, the picture of Flintlock himself, the Highwayman, is actually a composite of 7 different images blended together. The face, the mask, the hat, the coat (x2), the hands, and the pistols are all separate pics I found that I cut up and pieced together, trying to match lighting, angles, and colours to get it right. Then I added in text, more flintlock pistol iconography, and textured the bejesus out of it, and huzzah. I think it has a lot of atmosphere, and is quite inspiring.

So after I've written up the new draft of Pegasus Rampant, it's back onto Flintlock, I reckon.

Is There A Draft In Here?

This won't be a long post. I don't want to talk too much about the new screenplay in case I jinx myself into not ever finishing it, just like so many attempts that have gone before.

But I have completed the storyline, to at least a level that I feel can now be attacked and shaped into a first draft script, so have begun the task of writing it.

Its current working title, after floating many different options, is "ShadowGlass".

Assembling the story elements was an interesting development. I had a few sequences in mind when I first came up with the story, and wanted to keep those intact as much as possible. There's often a risk of losing those initial elements after you throw in all the important sub-strata to flesh a story out to completion.

For example, the story may have been inspired by a scene where the protagonist has an argument with a character over something that has a really funny line in it, and you love that idea so much you build your entire plot around that. Then you see holes and gaps that need filling in, so as you flesh those out, other elements start to dominate, until finally after a lot of juggling it all falls into a decent script.

And then you realise there's no place for that initial scene that had the funny line; No matter how hard you try, you can't fit it in anymore.

Well I didn't want that to happen, so tried hard to keep the main elements as close to my initial idea as possible. I did need to find new motivations for some of the characters, but once I found those motivations, they actually added new threads that I could follow, which helped support and strengthen the story, including a whole new scene at the climax, so that was a particularly fortuitous idea.

The first draft is the most important, but also the least precious. The idea is to just write and write and write it all out, no matter how unwieldy or convoluted or boring any given scene may be to read. It will be dry, and perfunctory, and overrun with clichés, and possibly be an absurd load of nonsense.

But then once you have that all on (virtual) paper you have something to edit. The second draft is where characters can develop. By the last scenes in the first draft, you know your characters pretty well, and understand what they are doing, so you can now go back to their earlier scenes and rewrite their dialogue and actions to be more consistent and fulfil their motivations.

The second draft is also where you can see where some scenes are unnecessary, or can be combined into one, or are being too heavy handed with their message, so need to be rearranged or cut or otherwise tweaked to flow. Structure and pace is as important as character.

Third drafts are where you play with the dialogue to make it sparkle, to tighten it so the pacing is right for each sequence, and make it readable. That can often be the draft that you would send around to get reactions or even sell, depending on your skills.

You'd likely get feedback to adjust some things, and they may be small, but they may be big, in which case a fourth or fifth draft may be on the cards. By then you know the story and characters so well, it's usually a simple job to make those adjustments without it negatively affecting what's already firmly in place.

Anyway... I'm not there yet, I'm on page 10 of what will be a 100 page script. Ask me how I'm going after a couple of weeks have passed.

I've Started, So I'll Finish

I am very good at starting things and then never finishing them. I know I am not alone in this skill, but it is frustrating how many good ideas I begin and then abandon, even though they would probably be really brilliant if they'd been completed, maybe even fortune-inducingly good.

Since completing my first screenplay, I've been aching to write another. Each time I think I have a good idea, and it will thrill me to start on it, I get lost about halfway through and interest starts to wane. This is a bad thing on many levels, not least of which is if I ever want to dabble in it as a career, not motivating myself enough to finish it is not encouraging for prospective Agents or Producers. But then, if I had time and money as part of my motivation, provided by said Producers, I'd be sure to make it a priority and do a better job of it.

But that's a poor excuse for my appalling level of non-completion. My motivation should lie in the strength of the story, and the entertainment I get from creating the characters and sending them on their adventure. Being discouraged at a plot hole is no way to operate. I really have to kick myself into gear if I want to be a writer, even on an amateur level.

When I grew up in the 80s, a series of movies for young teenagers came out with a similar structure and setting. Not the Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink series, though they were certainly significant for many. I am instead referring to the Fantasy/Science Fiction movies where young kids in a small town go on a fantastic adventure, with no interference from adults except as potential enemies. Goonies, Gremlins, E.T., Explorers, Back to the Future, Time Bandits, etc.

But films like that just aren't made any more, and it's a shame. The fantasy films of today are all based on book series. I can understand how Harry Potter might influence a few incidental releases, but every single one, bar the occasional unique animated film? What's going on with that?

I want to write a film like I remember from the 80s. With kids having adventures, involving a small fantasy element, but with only a localised threat to contend with. None of this "Saving the World" nonsense. Just saving their own lives or their neighbourhood is enough of a challenge for most kids, so just leave it at that.

So while I was watching a DVD of one of the recent kids movies, inevitably based on a book series, I wondered if I could come up with even just an original concept that would fit my wishes. Could I come up with a story with a solid beginning, middle, and end, with all the potential for comedy, thrills, and threats, plus a few fantasy elements, something original, that has not been done in a film before?

And rather surprisingly, I thought of one. As I considered each individual element I wanted to include, it all began to fall into place remarkably quickly. I was so excited, I started to write it all down.

So far I have about 60% of the main plot, but the other 40% has to be sorted out before I can begin the script writing itself. Crucial elements aren't yet determined. But as I piece together what I do have, I can see plenty of opportunities for fun sequences, both action and comedic, which hopefully will only strengthen the plot, and lead to ideas to fill in the crucial blanks.

I am so excited by this story, and its originality, that I feel as giddy as I did when I first started putting together my first screenplay, Pegasus Rampant, though I had the bonus of being in recovery mode from my wisdom teeth surgery, giving me time to seriously concentrate on one thing. Nevertheless, it feels very much like I'm in a similar place for this project, so I hope I can maintain that enthusiasm and follow through to a finished screenplay, even if only a first draft. I really want to complete this one, because if it works it will serve as an excellent second example of what I'm capable of.

An interesting thing happened when I was looking through the Thesaurus for some keywords to create a title from. I stumbled on another word, not appropriate for this film, but perfect for another story idea, a short film in fact. So I took the opportunity to scribble down some notes on that idea too. I may revisit that one when discussing our next big project, whatever and whenever that may be.

Pegasus Regent

I probably shouldn't be doing this.

I have two other screenplays I want to write, but both of those have struck problems. One has a plot that needs to be completely re-configured, and the other has a huge stumbling block I can't figure out and is spinning me in circles.

But Rob and I were chatting the other day, and he said "I am just waiting for you to write the sequel to Pegasus Rampant." Well, I told him I don't really have a complete story for that one yet, and anyway I want to have it read by people who really count first, to boost my confidence and set me on the right path, before I start writing sequels to it.

But as I was stuck on the aforementioned two other screenplays, I have been thinking some more about what little story I had already formulated for this sequel. For one thing, I had already come up with a title - Pegasus Trampled. At first I thought that was a decent title (the next sequel is called Pegasus Triumphant, which I think is perfect) but thinking back on it, it's actually awkward and cheesy. So I looked up a rhyming dictionary, and narrowed it down to a few other options, eventually choosing to change the title to Pegasus Regent.

That change just sparked more ideas, which allowed me to fill in most of the blanks for the storyline. And I have that sitting there, looking up at me with those big brown sad eyes... I can't stop myself.

I really ought to be working on some other stuff entirely, but... I guess sticking with what I know best (Fantasy, and characters I'm already familiar with) and a complete storyline mapped out ready, is a better plan. Really.

At least, that's what I'm telling myself.

It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know

It's a frustrating thing that I believe I'm a good writer, and yet I don't have the patience and dedication to self-motivate. The best motivation for me is to do something for another person, preferably under a strict deadline. I'm good with deadlines. But when I'm doing it for myself, I can wangle an excuse to get out of doing the work at every step.

I am not a professional writer, and I may never be one. I will probably, like most people, be an amateur my whole life, unless an unexpected opportunity arises. Therefore I will only write on my own time, ergo my only motivation to keep writing at any given moment can only be my own dedication to the task. As I am inherently lazy, that is not likely to be a productive method of working.

Unexpected opportunities do arise for some people from time to time, but the best way to achieve success is to go seeking it yourself. You can't rely on things falling into your lap from out of the sky. I live in constant hope that this method will work one day, but it hasn't thus far.

Of all the different kinds of writing jobs there are out there, many of which I have dabbled in from time to time, I think I'm not cut out to be a novelist, poet, lyricist, journalist, or TV writer. But I do think I'd be pretty good as a movie scriptwriter.

How do I become a movie screenwriter, then? Sitting around ain't making things happen, so I must motivate myself to take the next step. And the next step appears to be to find an Agent who will represent me and put my work forward to the people that count so they will hire me.

How do I find such an Agent? Unfortunately, the way things work in this bizarre industry, it's not like an Acting Agent or a Fiction Publishing Agent; I can't just locate a Screenwriting Agent in the yellow pages and rock up to their office for an appointment. No, the way it's done is, they have to find me instead. Somehow my skills and interest in the industry has to be noticed by somebody who already has connections, and then that person drops my name through the right channels, and then the Agent follows the trail back to me.

Craaaaaazy!

I don't think that's the exclusive method, but it does seem to be the prevailing one. And it is harder when I am way down here in Australia, while most movie-related people live in California, a considerable amount of ocean away.

I am putting the feelers out, though really I don't even know how to achieve that much. It doesn't take much to be left adrift in this particular branch of the business.

I am lost, and yet... I also have a rather strong feeling of there being something big for me juuuust around the corner.

So close...

In The Mood To Write

I am sure this is a human trait, and is common amongst most of us, but sometimes I get all "creative'd out".

I generally spend a lot of my free time pursuing some kind of creative or artistic endeavour, be it reading (email, articles, novels), drawing (sketching, website art, 3D graphics, storyboards), writing (emails, scripts, ideas), or something movie related (compositing, visual effects, animation, editing). And sometimes after spending a few hours, or concentrating a few days in a row, on one specific kind of creative idea, I find it hard to shift focus onto a new creative idea.

So, for example, I might be working so much on a sequence of greenscreen keying for the short film First Floor that by the time that's over, the thought of returning to the screenplay I was working on is less appealing than it might have been, because I have spent so much of my mental energies on creative thinking and artistic imagery already. And even though the disciplines of compositing and writing are very different walks of life, they still crossover enough to interfere with my mental exhaustion.

Thus I have not been in a writing mood for so long that I haven't touched the first draft of my Viking screenplay in about three weeks, which I am most disappointed in myself over. I can make excuses (I've been packing, planning the move, and working on other creative ideas) but really I should've found a couple of hours each day to devote to writing. It's not like I have a lot of big decisions to make for the first draft, most of them are sorted out and I'm just fleshing them out and connecting them together to see what develops, so I really shouldn't be using the "creative'd out" excuse.

But there you go, I am using it anyway.

What I've also noticed is I haven't read a book in about three months. I don't know what's up with that, but my normal reading time, which is when I head to bed, has been without any notion of grabbing a book ever since the heatwave fried my brain. Most unusual. But then, I haven't got a compelling new book to read anyway; all the books I've bought recently have been quite uninspiring.

So, no writing, no reading. It feels like there's an empty spot in me that I ought to be filling, but even after writing all this blog post I'm not that enthused to continue writing or reading anytime soon.

Cryptic: Too Many Characters

As I begin my first draft of my new screenplay, I have come across an unexpected development that is really quite a thorny problem.

I have a treatment, which is a five page outline of the complete story, and it works reasonably well as a simple breakdown. Undoubtedly, as the writing develops, and new drafts are written, changes will occur, some major, some minor. For the first draft, however, all I need to do is follow the treatment as written, because if I start to bugger about with it now, and make big changes, it will threaten to divert from my intended path and come to a different conclusion, which will potentially confuse me, and possibly derail the whole film.

But as I wrote the first sequence, I included a character, a person for one of the leads to talk to as he enters the story, someone who wasn't in my (very loosely written) treatment. And the problem is I really like this guy. I have managed to write him as a really interesting character, who I can see would be fun to bring along on the adventure.

This is an issue I find surprising. I don't usually look at my writing as anything other than a way to tell a story. I can't look at it objectively, I tend to know what I'm good at, or feel comfortable at doing, and what level I am capable of achieving. It's weird for me to look at the writing and realise I've just created something really good, beyond what I had planned. He originated through necessity, but by giving him a particular personality, and placing him against the main character in just the right hierarchy, it made him much more fun than I had expected.

So I'm torn. Do I follow the treatment and abandon this new character after page ten, like I'm supposed to? Or do I take risks, and bring this character along on the journey, introducing new dynamics that I haven't accounted for in my original plot?

After some wrestling with the issue, I have decided I will follow the treatment. But as things develop, I will keep an eye out for an opportunity, take note of it, and I may weave the character in during the next draft.

Cryptic: The Screenplay

Having completed one feature length screenplay to my satisfaction and enjoying the act of writing it very much, I have begun a new script, starting today, in the hope that I might do it more often, and also the hope that it wasn't a one-off fluke.

It's called Cryptic, and it is an adventure movie, with traps and puzzles and chases and good guys and bad guys and epic locations and exotic lands and ancient cultures.

So far I have completed the synopsis. This is so I have some structure to follow as I write, and so I don't forget anything as I go. It's a remarkably useful aspect to writing, as it's easier to keep in mind where it's going, and therefore whenever I get stuck I am armed with information on how things need to go, which is where I need to get the ideas that fill in the blanks.

My biggest strengths in writing are dialogue, and filling in the gaps between major scenes. I'm really good at keeping the story moving along. And that's key to making a good movie - you don't want people sitting around talking about nothing, each scene needs to move along. This can be as simple as travelling to a new location, or as complicated as explaining exposition in a creative way so it doesn't sound artificial (really difficult).

I don't like films that are not paced in this way. Writers who tend to be all about character, and ignore any semblance of plot, are the worst. This is why I don't like Kevin Smith. His films have about five minutes of plot, and two hours of irritating socially inadequate nerds ranting about Star Wars. Horrible crappy nonsense, and yet unfeasibly popular amongst geeks who seem to tolerate anything that has mention of Star Wars in it.

Anyway, what this means is a genre like adventure movies, which are all about going from place to place, exciting action sequences one after the other, and a lot about characters who are willing to take risks and leap into dangers, should be within my capabilities.

But there is a problem. This is a genre that is becoming increasingly more common, and therefore is often done badly. This in itself makes it a challenge, and I don't pretend I have the magic for this kind of film. I'm not as confident with this genre as I am with mediaeval fantasy. Though I've seen a lot of adventure movies, the idea is to switch off and enjoy the ride, which I do, and therefore they aren't something I've thought about much past the superficial. This may mean either that I completely miss the nuances that go towards making it a good example of the genre, and so will make a very superficial script, or it may mean that, as I haven't over-analysed things, I won't get too bogged down in details that don't really matter, and should create something relatively fresh.

One thing I have decided is to have no supernatural elements in the story. I think that's part of what makes the idea unique, so I shall stick with it to the end. But it is easy to see how that might be a good way to spice it up. The biggest of these epics these days tend to have huge armies of CGI warriors erupting out of the sand, which makes for exciting spectacle, but you risk losing your connection with the characters. It's a fine balancing act that you have to keep in order to make a movie fun, within budget, but also fresh and new. The National Treasure movies are great and don't have masses of CGI armies. The Librarian movies are low budget but try to squeeze in supernatural elements at every stage of the story. The Mummy movies are all about dazzling imagery, but not so great at a coherent story. And the Indiana Jones movies are strong on every level, unless George Lucas starts listening to his kids for inspiration, in which case they rapidly turn to crap.

I learned so much when writing my last (first) screenplay, there's a good chance this one will be written faster, because I will avoid a lot of the first-timer mistakes. But having said that, I can't be complacent. Check and double check. Improve at every draft. Don't finish until I'm completely satisfied it's the best it can be.

The first one may have been a fluke. Perhaps I'm not cut out for screenwriting. If so, this will be the real test for me. Can I push myself to write something as good as, or better than, my first? And can I make it a good example of the genre?

Should be fun to find out.

What Will I Write Next?

Ever since I started writing my first screenplay, which I have since completed to my satisfaction, and enjoyed thoroughly while doing so, I have had a rather unexpected onslaught of ideas for other scripts.

Normally I am not much of an ideas kind of person, I'm better at assembling other people's ideas into a good story, especially with my knack for dialogue and for keeping the plot moving along, than coming up with the ideas myself.

But lately I've formulated several plot concepts, and am now inspired enough to choose the one I should write next.

I won't list the ideas here, for fear of someone stealing them, but I will say they include:

• An adventure story in the vein of Indiana Jones or National Treasure.
• An action story full of car chases and explosions.
• A comedy road movie.
• A thriller about an escaped wild animal menacing a small town.
• An espionage adventure set in the past.

After some thought, I think I've decided which one to do, but I may change my mind before I get properly started, depending on how well the ideas flow. I have the Maguffin already, which is to say what drives the plot, now I just need the motivation behind the characters, and that can be an effort. So I'll establish the different personalities, and a few of the moments of interaction that might occur, and see what develops.

I have some amount of faith in my abilities, so I think it will all work out. I hope so, anyway, because figuring things out leads to the actual writing, and that's the part that makes it all fun.

Things What I Have Liked In 2008

I have seen many movies and TV shows this year, many of which I have greatly enjoyed. Some I have not enjoyed, and most are somewhere in the middle.

I have also done some cool personal things which are of note.

Here are my lists of those things for 2008.

Firstly the movies.

These are the ones I liked, the ones I thought were acceptable, and the ones I haven't yet seen but certainly plan to, with the expectation that they'll be fun. I have not listed the bad movies, because I tend to weed them out before I watch them. I have a pretty good radar for that sort of thing.

COOL MOVIES:
The Dark Knight
Wall-E
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Prince Caspian
Kung Fu Panda
The Incredible Hulk
Get Smart
Hellboy II: The Golden Army

AVERAGE MOVIES:
Iron Man
Horton Hears A Who
Nim's Island
Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
Wanted
Hancock

NOT YET SEEN MOVIES:
Valkyrie
The Tale of Despereaux
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Transporter 3
Bolt
Quantum Of Solace
City Of Ember
Igor
Death Race
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Speed Racer
The Forbidden Kingdom

+++

Next are the TV Shows.

As well as the shows that debuted this year, I have also watched a whole bunch of shows from previous years that I missed at that time, having discovered the magic of downloading them, while also experiencing the crap of premature cancellation of some great stuff. And of course, seeing more of my favourites.

COOL TV SHOWS:
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Chuck
Reaper
Pushing Daisies
The Mentalist
Burn Notice
Eureka
Kyle XY
Lark Rise To Candleford
Merlin
My Own Worst Enemy

AVERAGE TV SHOWS:
Eleventh Hour
Crusoe
Torchwood

OLDER TV SHOWS I LOVE:
NCIS
Monk
Numb3rs
Doctor Who
Battlestar Galactica
Heroes
Lost
Mythbusters
Time Team

+++

And then there's my personal stuff.

I've done some things this year that are new and I've not done before, and some other things that I have done before but were the best ever so far.

COOL STUFF I DID:
Started a blog
Rob's WWII short film: Checkpoint
Began my short film: Horizon
Wrote my first feature length screenplay: Pegasus Rampant
Visual Effects for Dags's short film: Reality Check

3D MODELLING ACHIEVEMENTS:
Railway Locomotive
Jet Fighter Plane
Dragon
Judge Dredd and his Lawmaster Bike
PigeonMan's Car
French Cafe Exterior
French Cafe Interior
DC3 Plane
Space Shuttle

+++

Gee. When you list it all out like that, it seems like a hell of a lot!

Pegasus Rampant - The Third Draft

About six weeks ago, I started receiving reviews of my first feature length screenplay, Pegasus Rampant. They had lots to say, a lot of it good, but also a lot of it critical.

But the good kind of criticism, the kind that was helpful. Pointing out the weak spots, the technical mistakes, and what to concentrate on in the next draft.

Well, the next draft has been completed. It meant going through it carefully and tightening up the dialogue, to eliminate repetition and extraneous words, and to make the pace speed up considerably. It surprised me how much of it was long and unwieldy and could be reduced to sometimes only a third as long.

One particular character was not intended to have a very strong arc to his story, but they drew my attention to how important it was for him in paticular to have one, so I added that in. It didn't take much to do it, and it really did make the story better and the relationships between the characters more realistic.

The fight and battle scenes needed to be expanded on. Just saying "they fight" and letting the stunt arranger fill in the blanks is not acceptable in a spec script, so I had no choice but to put in the additional detail that they needed. They're possibly still a little too thin, but they are good enough to show the main beats of the fight, and they add some character motivation too, so that's good. And another thing it did, unexpectedly, was let me add in an extra plot point that wasn't there originally, and which adds an interesting texture to the whole story and the world it's set in.

There was a lot more I did to fix it up too, but they were subtle things like changing a single word in the dialogue or description to help emphasise some character beats or add visual imagery to the scene.

There is still room for improvement. I recently bought a book about scriptwriting, and reading it will give me new insight into how characters can and should behave in a story to make it zing, so I will read through that and hopefully it will inspire me, perhaps to formulate character moments, and give it some energy where it needs it.

But the plot is just where I want it. I don't anticipate much of that changing in any further drafts. Most of my emphasis will be on strengthening the dialogue and characters.

One day I will figure all this story writing business out, and approach it already knowing what I'm doing. Who knows, I may even sell one some day.

Pegasus Rampant - The Characters

Because I am writing a movie screenplay, I can't help but think of it as though it was a movie playing out in my mind. This means a fairly clear image of the characters should be in my head.

Unfortunately, finding the right words to describe the characters so that, when others read it, they see them in their head the same way, is not a skill I particularly excel at. I can certainly write their behaviour very clearly, as the story plays out, and I do write a simple physical description upon their introduction, with additions as and when new plot situations require it. But they aren't really very vivid.

For example, one of the main characters in Pegasus Rampant is Wren, who I describe thus:

A young woman, dressed in light leather armour. Lean and strong, her hair is dirty and cut short, though under the rough appearance she is boyishly attractive.

Well, that's broad enough to give an idea of who she is, but I don't specify too many details. Casting would already be limited enough to find an actor who fits the absolute requirements, no need to specify the negotiable ones.

Is that enough of a description for you to imagine what she might look like? When I go on to describe her as a Mercenary, in this Mediaeval era film, does that add to the image?

I am a visual person, an artist, and when I think of characters I like to firm them in my mind with a sketch. But my drawing skills are rudimentary, and lately under-practised, so my attempts to sketch an image of Wren have not been very successful so far.

I am consistently disappointed by the way most Fantasy artists portray female warriors. They always have them in impractical clothing, sometimes only bikinis, with exposed flesh everywhere! No armour to speak of, no sense that they're trying to protect against a weapon. That's just absurd!

I don't mind a little bit of exposed skin, but that should be for showing off muscle tone and scars, and maybe a tribal tattoo. They shouldn't be looking like beauty contest finalists parading on a catwalk!

So when I draw my warriors, I try to give them more realistic layers of armour, chainmail, leather jerkins, bracers, boots, etc. They have to be something you can walk around in, be flexible enough to fight in, be comfortable in all weather conditions, and protect you against weapons. Not expose you to the cold, be too heavy to stand up in, or let you be vulnerable to blades!

The other day I was in a Video Rental store, wandering around, and I saw a cover of a DVD that I really liked. The movie isn't anything to write home about, though. I looked at the image of the kick-boxing woman and thought "that's a great image with the perfect pose and build for Wren. If only she wasn't wearing those modern clothes..."

I looked up the image when I got home, and thought about drawing over the top of her to give her a Wren-like look, but soon realised I could do better than that - I could source each individual element of her clothing and distort and recolour them to fit the figure, creating a more photorealistic kind of conceptual art.

After a few hours work (I was up until 2am tweaking it) I came away from it pleased with the result. It's not perfect, but for a quick collage of disparate elements it's pretty good, and a close representation of the character's appearance.

The adjustments I would make, looking at it now, are things like perhaps a slightly prettier face, and a happier expression (I was trapped by the fact that the original image was of someone recently beaten up in a kickboxing fight) and a few more period-ish items of clothing, such as lacings for the jerkin, or some studs on the chain-mail. But that's just being picky.

I am often surprised with what I'm capable of doing when I put my mind to it. Things that seem daunting or unlikely to work often turn out a lot better than I had realistically initially hoped, and this is one of them.

Pegasus Rampant: The Reviews

I mentioned my intention to write a screenplay on a messageboard website, and someone there pointed me to somewhere online that reviews them, with the intent to learn how to improve technique and storytelling, rather than just to be criticised.

When I visited there, they also suggested various different pieces of software to help with accurate formatting. This included a new program that was open source, and therefore free, so I thought "that's just within my budget!" and downloaded a copy.

It's called CeltX, and is an excellent way to get things looking professional, without having to labour over the small details. Basically you just keep writing, and it does the rest for you with barely any need for you to look up from your keyboard.

It also has scheduling tools, space for meta information like notes and tags, output to PDF, and loads more features than I could possibly want. Outstanding.

Having completed my second draft of Pegasus Rampant to my own satisfaction, I uploaded it to the reviews website. In order to get a response I need to review other scripts also, as that's a way to engender a positive and helpful community. It also meant I could learn from experienced writers how to do it properly.

Though it also showed what not to do, because a couple of the scripts I've reviewed so far are not especially well written. I personally thought my own script was much better than those, though admittedly not as good as the others I've read so far.

But then, probably most writers think that about their own work. Now that I have had some encouraging reviews of my script, I can also see what their suggestions and hints and guidance has shown me - that my first attempt really was full of first-time amateur's mistakes.

Having said that, they mostly seem to like the story, and enjoy the characters, but I did write them sometimes too inconsistently, and there are a few loose ends that ought to be tightened up or rewritten. It just needs more impact. I think it is a very even script, but that means dull and monotonous. It needs higher peaks, lower troughs, and more of them. I'm cool with that. I can see that most of what they said is spot on, and definitely needs addressing.

The key technical mistake I made is that there's a difference between a shooting script and a speculative script. A shooting script is for the director, cast, and crew to read, so it has camera information, shot angles, scene numbers, sound effects, music cues, etc. But it's not my job to put those in when there's no director to read it yet - my job is to write a script that entices and interests people, so that they read it to the end, and are desperate to sign me up as their screenwriter. Therefore a spec script must have no camera angle information, and instead concentrate entirely on the story, the characters, the action; basically the imagery and the emotional beats. My problem was I was mixing the two kinds of script up, which is a classic beginner's mistake.

One of the reviewers said "I note it is an early draft. You will find by about draft six that significant changes will have been made!" Draft six! Crikey!

But she is most likely right. In my next draft I probably will change a few plot points, but in doing so I will have to wrangle them into line with my main story, which is a thread I hope I won't have to change too much. But even if I do, and reading their ideas I think it's inevitable, then it will turn into something quite different. I'm actually quite excited about that, though, as it means I get to create some new stuff. I hope it won't collapse into a struggle for me to deal with, and it will flow as easily as it did originally.

One thing that is a little bit hard to explain to them, though, is that as I was inspired to write this by watching a low budget TV movie from the Sci-Fi Channel that I thought I could do a better job with, I'm intentionally not aiming very high. It's not meant to be an epic fantasy like Willow or NeverEnding Story, it's really meant to be filler for a Sunday evening's TV viewing. I'd be happy if it went straight to DVD and was only available in the bargain bin.

Not that I don't have some amount of pride in the effort, because I most definitely do. It contains characters and situations that I love, and I put a lot of effort in making them feel like the kind of things that I enjoy seeing, in the hope that people like me would have a good time watching it.

But I also know that it is no literary masterpiece or visual spectacle. It's just a bit of a laugh.

I will work on draft 3 over the next few weeks, and see if I can address all the criticisms so that I have a better spec script, and a better film, at the end of it.