K is for Know your Story.

The Script Frenzy A-Z so far…

Good morning, all. I just have one Script Frenzy article to share with you today – Know your Story.

This little word of advice comes from Greg Marcks, and it’s about outlining – which I’m not doing that much of myself this year, but Greg makes a good case that putting in planning time before starting page 1 of your screenplay can save you problems down the road.

Six Sentence Sunday – Geek at Heart

If you read my post from Friday, F is for Formatting, then you’ve already seen these six, actually, as I used them as an example in this post. They’re the first six sentences of my new script, though, (as nearly as I can count sentences in a script,) so I wanted to share them again for the SSS crowd.

My not-too-fantastic Script idea

So, it’s been crazy with the NaNoEdMo editing and the car buying and a few other things, but I’ve sorta come up with a notion for Script Frenzy that isn’t science fiction or paranormal fantasy or anything else that’s tough to produce. In fact, it even falls a little bit under the heading of ‘write what you know.’

I don’t have a crazy bulletin board of index cards for it this time, just an idea with a character and a situation, a plot idea about what he wants. I’m not even sure if there’s going to be a clear antagonist, or maybe it’ll be one of those plots where the MC is his own worst enemy. But this will be the story of a passionate Star Wars fan, who vows to find the love of his life by going on blind dates arranged through sci-fi geek groups. 🙂 I’m thinking of calling it ‘Geek at Heart.’

What do you think? Who should the bad guy be? What will the ‘All is Lost’ moment entail?

Pages to be critiqued

Well, I picked up the screenplay at Staples this afternoon, and it looks really good!

I also managed to dash off a new intro to “The Long way home” using the Alphasmart, and I actually think it’s good enough that I want to read it out for fellow writers this week and see what they think of it. This is Princess Naveli getting Ereyu the ferret as a birthday present and pet, instead of running into her by accident on the palace grounds, which I think will be overall a good change for her character.

I need to remember to make time for my 500-word backstory pieces for the Storywonk workshop this week. I want to do them for four characters in “The long way home” – Princess Naveli, Tumaxool the bodyguard, Ereyu, and Merlik the mysterious magician.

Three Weeks to Script Frenzy!

Okay, so I’ve been thinking about what I want to do for Script Frenzy for a little while now, and here’s what I’ve got so far:

My Logline: A naive salvage pilot and engineer from Earth get lost in a distant part of the galaxy on their way home, and involved with a charming Alien Mafia Lady who has the star charts that can get them back home.

I actually worked backwards to this, thinking that I wanted to write something science fiction and going through some of the story genres, before settling on a Golden Fleece, and wondering what would make a compelling ‘Road trip through Space’ kind of movie.

Let’s give it the Blake Snyder chapter 1 logline tests:

* An ironic hook? Well, yeah. The irony doesn’t have anything to do with the science-fiction aspects, just that my poor working schlub heroes are getting in bed with the crime lord, as it were.
* Compelling mental picture? It works that way for me. I’ll try to get some more feedback on it from other people over at the Script Frenzy forums.
* Audience and cost? I think it gives a pretty good notion of the cost to start with – it’ll be a bit on the high-side, because science fiction space effects don’t come cheap, but will be closer to the range of a typical crime thriller than a really big sci-fi action-adventure blockbuster. And you’ve got science fiction nuts in the audience, and crime thriller types, and anybody who really appreciates fish-out-of-water comedies.
* A Killer Title? Okay, I admit I’m coming up blank on this one so far… how to sum up all of that, especially the irony, in a title??