I is for Introductions…

The Script Frenzy A-Z so far…

Probably the best articles available on the Script Frenzy website are the various introductions to different kinds of scripts. I know that the Introduction to Screenwriting article was a great help to me the first time I wrote a screenplay for Script Frenzy. From what I’ve seen, the others are just as good:

• Introduction to Stage Plays
• Introduction to TV scripts
• Introduction to Comic Books

What was your introduction to writing, or blogging?

 

Scripts

S is for…

Yeah, I know that Rach has extended a special Crusader challenge for Showing, but I couldn’t avoid doing a second Script Frenzy check-in for S.

Overall, writing my Alien Mafia Script has been going really well since I last mentioned it, with “F is for Frenzy”. I went up to Toronto twice last weekend to meet with other Frenziers and work on my red netbook, and on Tuesday evening, in the Central branch of the Hamilton Public Library, before the Hamilton Writers’ meeting at Chesters Beers of the world, I actually got to THE END.

The trouble was, I was only up to page 89 by that point!

Hamilton Writers’ was an interesting experience this week, by the way, because there was a Rush concert in town, so Chester’s was full of Rush fans grabbing dinner and a drink before the show. But that’s off-topic.

So, for the past few days, I’ve been working on inserting or expanding scenes in the middle of my script, in an effort to get to the target page number. I’ve borrowed a trick that was mentioned on the Script Frenzy website, and calling them ‘deleted scenes’ just because that gives me permission to have them be really bad and not keep them in the second draft, though some of them might be better than that. If I need to draw on them, I’ve got a few other tricks up my sleeve, like writing fake ‘out-takes’ and a making of documentary or other featurettes.

But that brings me to another point.

The Script Frenzy website has been down yesterday morning, a victim of the Amazon EC2 Cloud crisis. Hopefully it should be up later tonight, but I’m really missing the forums and the Script Frenzy staff video diaries and pep-talks and all of that stuff. I’ve made plans to meet somebody who’s not doing Script Frenzy at a coffeeshop, and wanted to extend the invite to Frenziers as well, but can’t contact them without the website.

So – come on, Amazon! Get your frakkin’ cloud pulled back together, toot sweet!

Blog the cat: Introduction

Blog the Cat post index.

I’ve been meaning to do more with Blake Snyder’s book ‘Save the Cat’ than just play around with beat-sheeting movies, so I’ve decided to make it into a weekly blog series. Hopefully, that will keep me at it.

The idea is, one chapter per week or so, I’ll read, discuss some of my favorite bits, post my answers to the chapter exercises and so on, and invite questions or comments from the peanut gallery.

I’ll also be starting another ‘chapter a week’ series next week for Wednesdays, that’ll be a YA fantasy novel released in hardcover in the past year, from an author who will be at Ad Astra convention Toronto in April 2011. That title will be announced next Wednesday.

So, ‘Save the Cat.’ I figure that this week, aside from explaining the concept, I should skim through all of the material before the start of chapter 1, though a lot of it isn’t particularly compelling reading. Chapter 1 will be next week.

Cover picture, with the cat hanging off a thick rope. Cute.

A few pages full of those glowing reviews, mostly from movie and TV producers apparently, along with a movie magazine, a writing website, a successful screenwriter, an agent and a VP development at a studio.

Publisher and editor credits, copyright notice, library of congress data, table of contents, acknowledgments.