Dialogue Sucks.

I'm getting frustrated now because you know, in a novel, authors can show things through the character's thoughts, but when you're writing a script you can't look into a character's thoughts unless there's voice over and voice over is one of those things you want to avoid, so everything has to be visual and it makes so much sense in the book, but I have to make it visual and show it through clever dialogue that reveals character and background info but it also has to be witty and entertaining all at the same time!!!

Dialogue sucks sometimes.

The Woes of Revision

I'm slowly revising my feature film, and as a writer, I have the annoying habit of writing scenes that are so tightly woven with one action motivating the next action and one line of dialogue linked to the next line of dialogue, that if I have to change one line, that means I've messed up a whole page and I have to change the whole page, sometimes, a whole five pages. I think it's cool that my writing is like that, but it makes revision extremely difficult. Maybe that's why screenwriters like James Cameron write a 40 page outline before they even start writing script pages. Blech.

Compulsive Closure for Writers

Never fear, when you're a writer, you'll always have more projects than you'll be able to finish. So make sure you aren't like Sheldon and have Compulsive Closure Syndrome. (Or, you could make darn sure to develop compulsive closure so that you'll go crazy finishing ALL your projects and even if you end up in a mental institution, at least your writing projects will be done! :)

This week has been full of family...stuff, which explains why I haven't written any posts for seven days. I get a vacation today, so now it's eight straight hours of writing while I try to catch up. But when you start to get sick of your own project, it's nice to take a break from the required project and refresh your mind with something else, like blogging! I also found my old Honors Thesis while cleaning out my mom's bookshelf-131 pages of my first novel! Surprisingly, I had a lot of fun reading it. I liked the characters and the tension in the scenes even though I wrote it ages ago. Imagine that! My sister said, "Amy, you really are a good writer. You have a smooth flow that I really like. The only problem is, you get so stuck in outlining that you never get around to the writing part." I guess she's right. I guess I need to forget about perfection more often and just let myself have fun. So...I think I want to finish that novel. Not that it will ever be published, but I like the characters and I want to see what happens to them. Maybe I'll do a Wattpad account--add that to the pile of other projects I've got in line and hope I won't turn out like Sheldon :)

I Love Les Miserables!

I checked out the movie Les Miserables from the library and the movie adaptation is BRILLIANT! I never understood Javier's character until I watched that movie. They didn't just add a scene here or there, they rearranged the order of the songs to emphasize emotion and add meaning, rearranged the locations of the characters at certain time periods (Eponine wasn't supposed to be at the barricade until after the first battle), they added interludes to connect scenes together, added scenes that were in the book but not in the play (Javier pursuing Valjean and Cosette through Paris), added bits and pieces of dialogue to explain character motivations...it's BRILLIANT! The barricade shown during the finale of "Do You Hear the People Sing" is even a reference to the barricade built sixteen years later in 1848 that successfully overturned the French monarchy. Wow! I'm attempting my own novel adaptation right now and it's harder than it looks. I thought it would be easy since the story is already laid out, but what works on paper doesn't necessarily work on the screen and I'm changing so many things so that I can portray the characters visually and make them more interesting. Sometimes I look at the book and think, "What am I doing? This book is awesome. Why should I even try to mess with it?"  I thought that book adaptations would be easier than writing an original story, but boy was I wrong.

I highly recommend listening to the director's commentary of Les Miserables AND the interview with the screenwriter, William Nicholson (the director calls him 'Bill' in his commentary). I'm pretty sure I posted a link to William Nicholson's interview before, but it's so good, I can't resist posting it again:

http://www.theqandapodcast.com/2012/12/les-miserables-q.html

And if you haven't seen Les Miserables, WATCH THE MOVIE! And the play, and read the book, and, you know, do everything you can to immerse yourself in the emotional brilliance that is Les Miserables :)

Runaway Bride...uh, Writer

I figured out the source of my writer's block. I'm running away from my feature because in all honesty, I don't think I can do it. Isn't that just wonderful? (Please tell me you noticed the sarcasm. Apparently, when I try to be sarcastic, no one notices.) Screenwriter William Nicholson (Les Miserable) said that in order to be a professional writer, you have to have such a big ego that you think you are god's gift to literature. But you also have to be humble enough to accept criticism and not be a jerk. Enormous ego vs. humble acknowledgement of your faults. Great combination, right? (Did that sound sarcastic? No? Drat.) But it's true. Deep down inside, I know that I've never gone through the full revision process with a 100 page feature film, so naturally, I assume that I can't do it. Self esteem issues abound in writers. But when I start thinking that way, I also realize that's so ridiculous! By that same logic, anything that I haven't tried before is automatically impossible. Like teaching seventh graders for three yeasr, or presenting at a writer's symposium to a full house, or being a finalist in a screenwriting contest. I did all of those things, by the way. ALL of them, and I could go on for hours. So I better start telling myself that I'm a genius at features so I can get the script done. But the other thing that freaks me out is the time crunch. No way I can pound out draft 2 in 12 days, right? But if Handel can write The Messiah in 24 days, maybe a 100 page script isn't too bad in comparison.

I Hate Writer's Block

So I've finally started revisions on my feature film and realized that this is the first time I've sat down and REVISED an entire feature. Simon Kinberg is right. The internet is one of the writer's worst enemies. In particular, episodes of Batman Beyond (really good show, by the way. Fist bump for Batman!). But it's gotten to the point where even episodes of Batman Beyond will no longer fill the emptiness in my soul. I HAVE to write something (But they just put up seasons 2 and 3 of Generator Rex on Netflix! Stop that. Shut up, brain.)  One of the reasons that I'm stuck on this revision is that I know my second draft can't be as bad as the first one. It has to be PERFECT!!! Right? But I can't get it perfect until I experiment with different scenarios, so I'm trying to give myself permission to write badly, even if I know it doesn't work. But boy, does it make me annoyed when I have a story that doesn't work. It's like an itch you can't scratch, a pimple you can't pop, a mystery you can't solve, and it hovers over you like a dark cloud that drives you MAD!

The answer? Just start writing something. Staring at a blank page is the surest way to clog your creative juices. But when you start typing a few words, even if it's just a few, the creative floodgate loosen bit by bit until the flood arrives. There's something about typing out words that helps grease the gears. Outlining only gets me so far. When I'm stuck on the outline, that's the time to start writing script pages. Even if the first few pages are crap, writing out the story seems to unlock a new creative door in my brain and I think about the story in a new way. There are ideas I get while writing script pages that would never come to me in the outline stage. When you have writer's block, write like an idiot and eventually the writer's block will melt away.

Happiness is Evil

Here's one of the things that sucks about being a writer: When I see a main character having a moment when he/she/it is completely happy, I fold my arms and narrow my eyes because I know that happy moment is going to crash and burn in the next five minutes. As a result, I can never enjoy happy moments in movies because I know that a super-duper happy moment is just a clever plot device to set up the inevitable horror and tragedy about to follow. I love seeing characters work through the tough times, but to preface the tough times with a moment of super-duper happiness makes tragedy SO predictable. [SPOILER ALERT] I watched How to Train Your Dragon 2 again today, and the moment when Stoick is dancing with his wife and she says, yes, I'll go back with you to Berk and they're all hugging because they know they'll be a family again--I knew all that happiness was about to be ripped away. And true to form, the battle with Bloodfist immediately follows and Stoick dies. [END OF SPOILER] I was screaming in my head, NO! Don't hug and say you'll be a happy family again! That's as bad as saying 'things can't get any worse.' The Universe will have it's revenge for your moment of happiness!' Here's your advice for the day-downplay all your moments of happiness. That way, the universe won't feel compelled to rip it away from you five minutes later and then you can be moderately happy all the time!

I'm Behind! My World Has Ended!

July 3rd and I'm already 6,000 words behind on the Nanowrimo challenge!! AHHHHHHH!!!! What am I going to do?! Although I know I could've been writing instead of watching Avengers cartoons on netflix, the other reason I haven't been keeping up is because on July 23, I've promised to hand over a revised draft of a feature script to a production company I met at the Great American Pitchfest. I told them, "Give me thirty days and I'll send you a second draft." AHHHHHHHH!!!!! Why did I say that?! Revise a whole 110 pages and have it make sense in thirty days? Especially when the outline needs major changes for the characters and the exposition? AHH!!! (short AH that time) I love Nanowrimo, but revising is a whole different ball of wax than pounding out 50,000 words of a vomit draft that you know will never see the light of day. But I'm also a big fan of modifying Nanowrimo to fit your writing needs. Instead of having a goal to write 2,000 words a day, my goal will be to revise five pages a day-after I have an outline that I'm happy with. So that's the secret, folks. Grab time by the throat and make it work FOR you, not against you. Remember, a Nanowrimo winners badge is AMAZING, but not as amazing as getting paid for your work.

P.S. I was a big fan of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes on Disney (even though they messed up the theme song in season 2. I'd much rather hear the awesome song than listen to Fury tell me what I already knew about all the characters). The animation style was beautiful, I loved the voices, and I loved Jan, Black Panther, and Ant Man. Now, they've got Avengers Assemble on Disney with new voices, new characters and a new animation style to preface the next Avengers movie. The animation style is fine, but different. I think that Hawkeye's costume in Avengers Assemble is a huge improvement (except for the glasses. Hawkeye has ultra-sharp vision. what does he need glasses for?). I'm not a fan of the new voices. Thor sounds pretty much the same, but Black Widow's sultry, 'girls are better than boys' attitude is completely out of character for her. I half expected her to seduce Cap and Tony in the first episode. Tony Stark just sounds...I don't know, ridiculous? I need a couple more episodes to get used to him. I'll watch a few more episodes and give you an update. I'm still studying the dialogue to figure out why it bugs me so much.

Nanowrimo! What's That?

Gesundheit. But it's not a sneeze, it's Nanowrimo!!! National Novel Writing Month! Every time I mention this word to a screenwriter, they have no clue what I'm talking about. For those of you who don't know, Nanowrimo is the challenge to write 50,000 words in one month. Starting today. Because it doesn't just happen in November, they have a Nanowrimo summer camp, too! I don't write on Sundays, so that means 2,000 words a day for me. Yikes. It's a cool challenge, but boy is it hard! Join me in registering on the Nanowrimo website and watch your word count grow!  (until you miss a day, then you get depressed, so you don't write, and then you get even more behind, and more depressed, and then you panic and write 10,000 words in a single day and sprain your wrist so that you really can't write again for a few more days, and you have to catch up all over again)

Here's the link:

https://campnanowrimo.org/sign_in