Outlines and Writing Sequence

Oh my, I haven’t really blogged much in April, have I?  I’ve been busy. Remember the Script Frenzy challenge to write 100 pages of script in April? Despite taking four days off for Norwescon and catching a killer cold, I managed to complete a stage play.

It’s a first draft. Like all first drafts, it will require review and revision. But it’s done. At 79 pages.

It was an interesting writing experience. I wrote final scene first, because I knew how it had to end. Then I wrote the first scene, because certain things had to be established for the final scene to work. Then I wrote some stuff in the middle, in no particular order. Then I wrote the scene that came before the first scene and then the scene that came after the final scene.

A lot of writers start with outlines. Obviously, I’m not one of them. But I had created such a cluster that I had to impose order on it. So, rather than outline what I needed to write, I went back and outlined what I had already written (which, incidentally, told me what I still needed to write).

What I  learned from the exercise was that my story had three distinct problems arising from the order of the scenes.

The first was sequence.  Characters cannot act on information before they receive it and problems cannot be resolved before they occur. This was the most obvious problem.

A little more subtle was the issue of timing.  In one case, I had a character told she could not return to work until she had solved a certain problem. At the start of the very next scene, she returned to work with a clever solution. It was in the right sequence, but it happened too fast. It just doesn’t seem like much of a problem when the audience only experiences five minutes of real time before it gets resolved.

And finally, there was the problem of flow – how one scene proceeds into the next.  It’s easy to cut between scenes on the stage with a blackout or a curtain, but cutting from a pair of characters on one set to the same pair of characters on the same set may not flow as well as other transitions.

This is part of the fun of working in different formats. All of these lessons can apply to the construction of any type of story, but they were easy to see while I was writing for the stage.

A Clever Word Avoidance Strategy

Short blog because I’m already behind on Script Frenzy.  The title of my play has changed, by the way.  I kept looking at The Souls Academy and thinking “Souls” looked like it wanted to be possessive, when the original intent was for it to be plural.  The current working title, still subject to change, is The Apocalypse According to Saint Michelle of the Coffee Shop.

Today’s writing lesson is in how not to be trite.  Or maybe it’s about word choice.  I’m writing a play about religious themes, but I don’t want to talk directly about things like “the healing power of love" because frankly it will make the audience wince. 

So I am actively avoiding certain words.  For “love,” for example, I’m talking about understanding and kindness. It’s less ambiguous anyway.  And, like with the sonnets I discussed a few blogs back, it forces me to expand my vocabulary.

Another trick I’m using is hiding key words amongst words of lesser importance.  Forgiveness is a major theme of the play – more so than love, actually.  So I don’t want to beat the audience over the head with it, especially early on.  So instead of saying “you need to forgive him,” I say things like “forget him, forgive him, or whatever you need to move past him…” The concept is still in there, but it is far less obtrusive.

And yes, authors worry about stuff like this all the time. Believe it or not, it’s part of the fun.

Staging the Next April Project

It’s April 1st as i write this.  In addition to being April Fool’s Day, it’s the start of Script Frenzy, the script writing challenge from the wacky folks that brought you Nanowrimo.

I wasn’t going to do the Frenzy this year, but then I remembered an idea for the ending of a play that I’ve had in my head for several years.

I’m going to have to start with the ending and write backwards.  (Back…words?)  Wish me luck.

I’m also going to need to figure out where the play is set.  I have action and characters, but no backdrop.  This is important for stage plays – every change in location requires a set change, which requires the theater to spend time and money.

Many modern plays revel in set changes – the elaborate sets and fancy changes are part of the spectacle.  And also part of the ticket price.

And on the other end of the spectacle spectrum, there is bare stage.  Shakespeare is largely written for the bare stage – the actors come in and simply announce where they are and the audience goes with it.  My, the Forest of Arden is lovely this time of year.  (Amusingly, A Chorus Line, famous for its big musical production numbers, is also written for bare stage.)

So I’m going to start writing now.  My work is tentatively entitled The Souls Academy: A Blasphemy in Two Acts.  I don’t really know yet if it will really be two acts.

But I’m fairly certain about the blasphemy part.

Unintentionally Deliberate

Way back in the long ago, I used to take Tai Chi classes. The instructor liked to talk about doing Tai Chi with intention. The idea being that anyone could just go through the motions, but they wouldn’t really be doing anything beneficial – just making empty gestures. To do it right required focus and breathing and, well, intention.

The word intention also means purpose, or goal. There is a difference, for example, in writing something for the fun of it and writing something you hope to publish.

All of which makes me wonder – when did a just-for-fun, one-month, knock-off script writing project become something I’d be revising and editing half a year later? I still have no expectations of it ever being published or produced. But I still want it done right.

Ars gratia artis. (Art for art’s sake. Also known as I’m going to finish this, damn it and I’m going to get this right, damn it.) I guess the work can become it’s own intention.

So now I’ve got the script done. For my next move, I’m re-writing an old Nanowrimo project with new intentions. I don’t know yet if I am aiming for something that can be published or just something I can learn from and blog about.

But chasing word  count for Nano last year gave me a good foundation from which to start. So now I intend to polish it up and do it right.

Stick with me and we’ll see what it becomes.

April in November, or, Continuity Editing

I think I’m almost done. Remember my D&D-style movie script that I wrote last April? The one for the 100-page Script Frenzy challenge?  After it was done, I decided it needed a little revision.

The original draft never had the moment where our heroes’ success was truly in doubt. Where, if I might borrow a phrase, the quest stood on a knife’s edge. So I went back and added one. No big, right?

But everything after that point in the plot was subtly shifted. I couldn’t just cut-n-paste the previous ending on wholesale. So, now I think I’m done, but I’ve shuffled so much stuff around that I need to do a continuity editing pass.

It’s an annoying step – mostly because it’s a technical, almost mechanical job, rather than an imaginative, creative one. What I need to do is review the draft and account for the progression of events. I’m looking for things like characters using their weapons two scenes after being disarmed.  And who has the McGuffin, which changes hands as McGuffins tend to do.

So here’s another secret of writing, which I hope inspires you as much as it does me. Sometime in writing, like in any craft, there is annoying busy work that needs to be done. I guess the secret is to want the finished product enough.

How it Ends

It’s April 29. For those of you in the audience that have not been following along at home, here’s the story: I signed up for the Script Frenzy challenge (www.scriptfrenzy.org) to write a 100 page script in the month of April.

I took as my topic a fantasy screenplay with the intent of writing a better Dungeons and Dragons style movie than the actual D&D movie that hit the theaters. I like attainable goals.

Yesterday, I finished the script. I ran the formatting utility that set it into standard screenplay format. It was exactly 99 pages.

Now if the story is good and tight and complete at  99 pages, then that would be the place to stop. But I know this is only a first draft.

So I went back over it, thinking about what I could do better. One of the things that was weak was the character development arc for my lead. He started out strong and skilled and honorable. I didn’t want a story in which he got worse. That left the question about how he was going to change or improve. Who goes on a quest in order to stay exactly the same?

Now the major thing that happens over the course of the movie is that our team of heroes is assembled. When I wrote the end, I had them laughing and joking together, being friends.

I looked back at the very start of my script, which I wrote on April 2.  I had established my hero, Jon Warder, and his home village, but I hadn’t paid much attention to whether he had any real friends there.

So I went back, 25 days later, and rewrote the opening to show a distance between Jon and the farmers under his care. To show that he didn’t really have friends.

Then I rewrote the ending to make the final scene with the laughing and joking a little stronger.

And now Jon at least has something he didn’t have before his quest started. It sounds backwards and contrived when I explain it this way, but remember, the audience only sees it in the correct order, with the problem before the solution.

The result?

101 pages.

April so soon?

In my last installment, I noted that I have plans for this blog in April. Well, April's coming early. See the thing is, my creative inspiration takes long vacations without inviting me and then comes back and acts all impatient. Muses -- can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

Here's the deal: The folks that bring you Nanowrimo, the 50,000 word novel writing challenge each November, also do a scriptwriting challenge each April called Script Frenzy. I've written play scripts before, including full length productions, but I've never written a movie script.

I've often noted that I could write a better Dungeons & Dragons movie than the one that hit the theaters. I mean really, who couldn't? Have you seen the D&D movie? (To be fair, I have not seen the original script and don't know how much it changed once it left the writer's hands. Hollywood tends to change scripts after casting instead of casting to scripts, from what I understand.)

So I'm going to put my money (or in this case, my blog) where my mouth is. I've already signed up with the Nanowrimo folks for the Script Frenzy challenge.

What I'm going to write isn't quite exactly a Dungeons & Dragons movie for two reasons -- (1) While I don't have any illusions that this script, which will undoubtedly require a Hollywood-size budget, will ever get produced, I remain aware that I have no right to the brand/trademark/intellectual property, and (2) being a real D&D movie would require the use of iconic D&D material, which I don't need to mess with. If it makes you feel better, pretend my master villain is a mind-flayer.

This blog will follow my progress and discuss the reasons behind the writing choices I make. I've been blogging about intentional writing -- here's my chance to show it in the works.

And even though I haven't started writing the script ('cause it's not yet April,) I have started making choices -- character names, character types, locations... Since I've started the work, it's time to start the blog.