It's almost 8:00am, Monday morning, and I've been at work for the last 23 hours ... awake.
I got home half an hour ago, had some breakfast and now I'm going to bed for about 3 hours before going back to work.
Hopefully the dust will have settled, we didn't make the target and we are so close.
What's on the turntable? "Kid Charlemagne" by Steely Dan from "The Royal Scam"
Showing posts with label deadline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deadline. Show all posts
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Another week gone
I haven't blogged all week because I've been extraordinarily busy, mainly with Monsters. I got various bits of feedback from Philip Shelley (on his hols for two weeks) and David Bull (who's doing a special deal on "First 10 Pages" for all Red Planet competition peeps ... well actually anybody, but it might be especially useful to you). (Neither of these guys is cheap, they both have exceptional industry experience and you have to pay for it.) And then there was my read-through.
I'd been having issues with the storylines. I liked them, but my consultants sort of disagreed - not actually disliking them but pointing out certain aspects that were dire need of improvement like the fact that there was nothing to suggest that they would connect at any time in the future.
I dug my heels in. Damned if I was going to use a trick and/or device at the start to make it all work and play nicely together. Trouble is I had come to agree there was a problem, and I spent hours, days even, trying to see how I could fix it without using tricks and/or devices. Look at Heroes, I said to my wife, they don't use a trick and/or device to tie the plot lines together. She gently pointed out that the prescient comics and paintings did exactly that job.
I love my wife. And she was right. Again.
So I resorted to a trick and/or device. And it works beautifully, I really like the result. Damn it.
So last week I re-wrote and re-vamped the story, cut madly, re-wrote sections of dialogue, added more emotion and tension in 7 hours of intense work. Then zoomed the result back because Philip was off on holiday for two weeks and I needed more feedback fast.
Which I got: Fixed! I was told. Excellent. Loved the new dialogue, loads more emotion, felt the structure was (almost) fixed. Then proceeded to point out a whole bunch more stuff that needed doing.
But I've stopped arguing and started actually looking. He's right, of course. He (Philip, in this case) has been editing scripts for very popular TV shows for far longer than I've dreamed I could write screenplays. Not to say that I shouldn't disagree and argue, but actually looking at the script objectively is a skill we all have to learn, I think.
So now I'm looking at the new stuff to fix. I cut scenes mercilessly while on the train today, there's a whole aspect to this society that has grown in significance over time - yet it's not really significant to the plot, it's just an aspect of the society. So I've taken out all references to it, all the scenes that depended on it and I've left it open instead. Plus cut other scenes that weren't contributing to the plot and started rebuilding others to make them work better.
I think I'm finally on the last leg. (Either that or I'm on my last legs.)
Just remember all you Red Planet peeps: Last year's winner had one of the best script consultants in the world, oh yes. Personally I'd like to stand a chance of making at least the first cut this year. What makes you think you can do without one?
Unfortunately it means that "One Night in Paris" ended up on the backburner. I have some holidays of my own coming up and I'm not entirely sure I can knock it into shape in such a short time. Still, I love a good deadline.
What's on the turntable?
I'd been having issues with the storylines. I liked them, but my consultants sort of disagreed - not actually disliking them but pointing out certain aspects that were dire need of improvement like the fact that there was nothing to suggest that they would connect at any time in the future.
I dug my heels in. Damned if I was going to use a trick and/or device at the start to make it all work and play nicely together. Trouble is I had come to agree there was a problem, and I spent hours, days even, trying to see how I could fix it without using tricks and/or devices. Look at Heroes, I said to my wife, they don't use a trick and/or device to tie the plot lines together. She gently pointed out that the prescient comics and paintings did exactly that job.
I love my wife. And she was right. Again.
So I resorted to a trick and/or device. And it works beautifully, I really like the result. Damn it.
So last week I re-wrote and re-vamped the story, cut madly, re-wrote sections of dialogue, added more emotion and tension in 7 hours of intense work. Then zoomed the result back because Philip was off on holiday for two weeks and I needed more feedback fast.
Which I got: Fixed! I was told. Excellent. Loved the new dialogue, loads more emotion, felt the structure was (almost) fixed. Then proceeded to point out a whole bunch more stuff that needed doing.
But I've stopped arguing and started actually looking. He's right, of course. He (Philip, in this case) has been editing scripts for very popular TV shows for far longer than I've dreamed I could write screenplays. Not to say that I shouldn't disagree and argue, but actually looking at the script objectively is a skill we all have to learn, I think.
So now I'm looking at the new stuff to fix. I cut scenes mercilessly while on the train today, there's a whole aspect to this society that has grown in significance over time - yet it's not really significant to the plot, it's just an aspect of the society. So I've taken out all references to it, all the scenes that depended on it and I've left it open instead. Plus cut other scenes that weren't contributing to the plot and started rebuilding others to make them work better.
I think I'm finally on the last leg. (Either that or I'm on my last legs.)
Just remember all you Red Planet peeps: Last year's winner had one of the best script consultants in the world, oh yes. Personally I'd like to stand a chance of making at least the first cut this year. What makes you think you can do without one?
Unfortunately it means that "One Night in Paris" ended up on the backburner. I have some holidays of my own coming up and I'm not entirely sure I can knock it into shape in such a short time. Still, I love a good deadline.
What's on the turntable?
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Writer without a cause
I have been so unproductive in the last few weeks (before and since the SWF) that I've been feeling like I've lost my spark.
I have no cause or, in my case, I have no deadline.
I did ScriptFrenzy, I wrote a couple of treatments one for a real deadline and one for a self-imposed one. The Red Planet competition isn't a deadline because my script is pretty well ready, a bit of fiddling around to do when I get all the coverage and notes back.
So I've fizzled out.
It's not writer's block. I don't get writer's block.
I have no deadline. My job is great, I just got a really tough deadline to get something really important finished as early next week as possible. Lovely. I've never failed to deliver.
But on the writing front. Nada. I wish someone would give me a commission so I could get my teeth into it.
There are competitions, of course, and just today we got the Kaos BFSC any genre but producible for under $2 million. Sounds like a job for "Une Nuit a Paris". The deadline (ahem) is 12 Sept 2008, just ahead of Red Planet. So that's a little squeaky tight - I'm warming to it already.
Eight weeks to go from first draft to something worthwhile? Yup, that's tight enough.
We are the Bunnies of Happiness!
What's on the turntable? "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen from "Greatest Hits vol. 1"
I have no cause or, in my case, I have no deadline.
I did ScriptFrenzy, I wrote a couple of treatments one for a real deadline and one for a self-imposed one. The Red Planet competition isn't a deadline because my script is pretty well ready, a bit of fiddling around to do when I get all the coverage and notes back.
So I've fizzled out.
It's not writer's block. I don't get writer's block.
I have no deadline. My job is great, I just got a really tough deadline to get something really important finished as early next week as possible. Lovely. I've never failed to deliver.
But on the writing front. Nada. I wish someone would give me a commission so I could get my teeth into it.
There are competitions, of course, and just today we got the Kaos BFSC any genre but producible for under $2 million. Sounds like a job for "Une Nuit a Paris". The deadline (ahem) is 12 Sept 2008, just ahead of Red Planet. So that's a little squeaky tight - I'm warming to it already.
Eight weeks to go from first draft to something worthwhile? Yup, that's tight enough.
We are the Bunnies of Happiness!
What's on the turntable? "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen from "Greatest Hits vol. 1"
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The Sharps End, or, the End of Sharps
I didn't mention the fact that I had completed my BBC Sharps script and zoomed it off on Thursday evening. If you're planning to enter it's too late unless you can deliver by hand (or have access to a Royal Mail sorting office that does collections on Sundays).
I was quite pleased with the result, fairly light dialogue but with a solid drama base. A bit like a lemon meringue pie. I watched the "niceness as a disease" episode of House last night, the case of the week tasted everything as lemon meringue pie.
It's quite funny I suppose: The setting for the story is a community group of people giving up smoking. I smoked for two weeks in my entire life (it was a very stressful time). My parents never smoked, nor my sisters, nor my wife, very few friends I've known for years have ever smoked (except one but he has special dispensation).
So what right do I have to write about people wanting to give up smoking?
My mother's family are hardcore Londoners, and when I was younger every single one of them smoked. Whenever we went to visit we entered an atmosphere of tobacco. I've always been a people watcher, I saw the way people handled cigarettes, pipes, and roll-ups.
I always ended up with a nasty headache from breathing air heavy with cigarette smoke. And yet, the smell gives me some comfort. Scarily enough I realised a few years ago I was a closet smoker even though I never bought a pack (except for that two weeks). How does that work? I breathe deeply of other people's smoke. Laughable really. But an intense smoke-filled atmosphere still makes me sick.
So I have some experience of the matter. Plus the fact that smoking is an addiction just like any other, and that was the theme that I worked to in my script. Creating characters where the outer conflict of trying to give up smoking reflected an inner conflict of what they were really addicted to.
So, we shall see.
I didn't get any additional reading of this script partly because I ran out of time, although the actual writing only took a few hours. It only took a few hours because I did my planning, even down to the scene level.
I decided on the setting first (since that was the part that was prescribed by the "opportunity") then I populated it with people who might want to give up smoking, although one character was actually my wife's idea. Then I took the three main characters and constructed their inner conflict to mirror their outer one.
Finally I spit up the scenes very mathematically with #1 character getting most of the time in the story, #2 getting half that and #3 getting half again. So we have A, B and C plot lines, one clear leader and the others. Knowing how long the script needed to be (30-35 minutes) and knowing that scenes needed to be around 2 minutes each I could allocate actual page counts.
Of course, when I came to write it other scenes occurred to me and often scenes would be shorter than the plan. This is fine, after all we don't want 15 scenes of exactly 2 minutes each. That would be silly. Also how the supporting characters influenced the main plots became clear and a new character appeared that I hadn't thought of originally.
This was all good. And it meant my first draft was almost spot-on.
I then read through it and tidied up bits (there was one thing I wrote later that needed to be mentioned earlier, for example) . There was one scene I disliked when I wrote it and I realised that I was actually repeating stuff that had been mentioned in a previous scene. So I ripped that out and replaced it with something much better, which then played into an extra scene I had written later on.
All three plot lines intermingled and played off against each other. The characters were good, each had his/her own voice (I hear the characters talking as I write but, let's be clear, I don't write what they're saying, they say what I'm writing); the scenes feed nicely one to another, there's tension, there's action, there's humour. Yup, I like it.
(And I should add, the script will easily convert into a stage play so if the BBC don't want it I know what i can do with it.)
What's on the turntable? "Toss the Feathers" by The Corrs from "Forgiven not Forgotten"
I was quite pleased with the result, fairly light dialogue but with a solid drama base. A bit like a lemon meringue pie. I watched the "niceness as a disease" episode of House last night, the case of the week tasted everything as lemon meringue pie.
It's quite funny I suppose: The setting for the story is a community group of people giving up smoking. I smoked for two weeks in my entire life (it was a very stressful time). My parents never smoked, nor my sisters, nor my wife, very few friends I've known for years have ever smoked (except one but he has special dispensation).
So what right do I have to write about people wanting to give up smoking?
My mother's family are hardcore Londoners, and when I was younger every single one of them smoked. Whenever we went to visit we entered an atmosphere of tobacco. I've always been a people watcher, I saw the way people handled cigarettes, pipes, and roll-ups.
I always ended up with a nasty headache from breathing air heavy with cigarette smoke. And yet, the smell gives me some comfort. Scarily enough I realised a few years ago I was a closet smoker even though I never bought a pack (except for that two weeks). How does that work? I breathe deeply of other people's smoke. Laughable really. But an intense smoke-filled atmosphere still makes me sick.
So I have some experience of the matter. Plus the fact that smoking is an addiction just like any other, and that was the theme that I worked to in my script. Creating characters where the outer conflict of trying to give up smoking reflected an inner conflict of what they were really addicted to.
So, we shall see.
I didn't get any additional reading of this script partly because I ran out of time, although the actual writing only took a few hours. It only took a few hours because I did my planning, even down to the scene level.
I decided on the setting first (since that was the part that was prescribed by the "opportunity") then I populated it with people who might want to give up smoking, although one character was actually my wife's idea. Then I took the three main characters and constructed their inner conflict to mirror their outer one.
Finally I spit up the scenes very mathematically with #1 character getting most of the time in the story, #2 getting half that and #3 getting half again. So we have A, B and C plot lines, one clear leader and the others. Knowing how long the script needed to be (30-35 minutes) and knowing that scenes needed to be around 2 minutes each I could allocate actual page counts.
Of course, when I came to write it other scenes occurred to me and often scenes would be shorter than the plan. This is fine, after all we don't want 15 scenes of exactly 2 minutes each. That would be silly. Also how the supporting characters influenced the main plots became clear and a new character appeared that I hadn't thought of originally.
This was all good. And it meant my first draft was almost spot-on.
I then read through it and tidied up bits (there was one thing I wrote later that needed to be mentioned earlier, for example) . There was one scene I disliked when I wrote it and I realised that I was actually repeating stuff that had been mentioned in a previous scene. So I ripped that out and replaced it with something much better, which then played into an extra scene I had written later on.
All three plot lines intermingled and played off against each other. The characters were good, each had his/her own voice (I hear the characters talking as I write but, let's be clear, I don't write what they're saying, they say what I'm writing); the scenes feed nicely one to another, there's tension, there's action, there's humour. Yup, I like it.
(And I should add, the script will easily convert into a stage play so if the BBC don't want it I know what i can do with it.)
What's on the turntable? "Toss the Feathers" by The Corrs from "Forgiven not Forgotten"
Monday, April 21, 2008
After the weekend
Ah, the ignorance of it!
BBC radio 4 on a weekday evening has a review programme that can be very interesting though I dislike the main presenter, Mark Lawson. One of the reasons I dislike him is his contempt for Science Fiction in any form, so whenever there is a review or feature which has an SF element you can guarantee there'll be some snide comments floating about. And ignorance.
On a little filler feature this evening the most recent episode of Dr Who was mentioned, with its title "Planet of the Ood". A very good episode as it happens, but I digress. Mr Lawson demonstrated his ignorance by saying that it had introduced a new monster; which it didn't, since the Ood appeared in an earlier episode. But there was no reason to even mention it since the feature was about episode titles, and not the subject matter, he was trying to be clever and put it down with "monster" and demonstrated his ignorance instead.
So. Here I am back in Reading having been home for the weekend.
I had such plans for my Scriptfrenzy writing. It's a straight through train from Reading to Manchester during the week and I wanted to take a seat and work on my script for three hours. Unfortunately something got in my way: well, I got in my way. Well, my stomach to be precise. The train seats were too close together and my laptop isn't a little one. I was annoyed at myself, and then doubly annoyed because I hadn't brought a notepad with me. Tsk.
I have a family and it seems a bit wrong to hide in a room writing when they haven't seen me all week, so I didn't write while I was there. But the journey back was better, somewhat. I missed one connection (a train had failed at the platform we were supposed to arrive on) so I ended up on the wrong trains. But one part of the journey I managed to get a seat where the gap was bigger and had a good hour and a half of writing, and knocked out another 8-9 pages which was pretty good going.
As I have mentioned my script is inspired by the 10CC album "The Original Soundtrack" mainly the track "One Night in Paris", but other tracks where I can fit them in. One of which is called "Blackmail" and the protagonist has met the blackmailer. In fact this part of the plot is going to work very similarly to the way it does in the song (click for lyrics).
I've still got a way to go on the script, I'm on 38 pages, so 62 to go. That might seem like a lot but quantity isn't really an issue, it's just another deadline. I have 4 nights this week, 3 next week and 2 train journeys, that's 9 writing sessions so a minimum of 7 per day. But if I aim for 10 per session I'll wrap it up by the end of the weekend, and even if the train journeys turn into nothing I should still be able to complete it by the deadline.
Well that's enough the sums I suppose, I better actually do some writing.
What's on the turntable? "The Caves of Altamira" by Steely Dan from "The Royal Scam"
BBC radio 4 on a weekday evening has a review programme that can be very interesting though I dislike the main presenter, Mark Lawson. One of the reasons I dislike him is his contempt for Science Fiction in any form, so whenever there is a review or feature which has an SF element you can guarantee there'll be some snide comments floating about. And ignorance.
On a little filler feature this evening the most recent episode of Dr Who was mentioned, with its title "Planet of the Ood". A very good episode as it happens, but I digress. Mr Lawson demonstrated his ignorance by saying that it had introduced a new monster; which it didn't, since the Ood appeared in an earlier episode. But there was no reason to even mention it since the feature was about episode titles, and not the subject matter, he was trying to be clever and put it down with "monster" and demonstrated his ignorance instead.
So. Here I am back in Reading having been home for the weekend.
I had such plans for my Scriptfrenzy writing. It's a straight through train from Reading to Manchester during the week and I wanted to take a seat and work on my script for three hours. Unfortunately something got in my way: well, I got in my way. Well, my stomach to be precise. The train seats were too close together and my laptop isn't a little one. I was annoyed at myself, and then doubly annoyed because I hadn't brought a notepad with me. Tsk.
I have a family and it seems a bit wrong to hide in a room writing when they haven't seen me all week, so I didn't write while I was there. But the journey back was better, somewhat. I missed one connection (a train had failed at the platform we were supposed to arrive on) so I ended up on the wrong trains. But one part of the journey I managed to get a seat where the gap was bigger and had a good hour and a half of writing, and knocked out another 8-9 pages which was pretty good going.
As I have mentioned my script is inspired by the 10CC album "The Original Soundtrack" mainly the track "One Night in Paris", but other tracks where I can fit them in. One of which is called "Blackmail" and the protagonist has met the blackmailer. In fact this part of the plot is going to work very similarly to the way it does in the song (click for lyrics).
I've still got a way to go on the script, I'm on 38 pages, so 62 to go. That might seem like a lot but quantity isn't really an issue, it's just another deadline. I have 4 nights this week, 3 next week and 2 train journeys, that's 9 writing sessions so a minimum of 7 per day. But if I aim for 10 per session I'll wrap it up by the end of the weekend, and even if the train journeys turn into nothing I should still be able to complete it by the deadline.
Well that's enough the sums I suppose, I better actually do some writing.
What's on the turntable? "The Caves of Altamira" by Steely Dan from "The Royal Scam"
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