Start the Countdown

Let the countdown begin..

Nanowrimo starts in a month, which gives me that long to work on a plot for this year. The rules are simple enough, write 50K words in one month. There’s a ‘strong suggestion’ that it not be screenplays, poetry, fan-fiction etc but given the intent of the exercise is just to force you to write regularly and consistently on one topic, I imagine it works however you treat it. Plot planning beforehand is well within the rules so you don’t need to come up with the idea and do all the pre-work in the space of the same month.

I’d actually like to get another short piece (or two, though that might be overly enthusiastic given everything else going on at the moment) completed before November. That requires a little more work on my part. Last week was a ‘week off’ from writing after the comic script, so this week the plan is to get back into things. We’ll see how well that works.

Nothing back on the comic script submitted. I’m hoping to at least get some sort of warning if I’m expected to do a 10min pitch at Armageddon. If I don’t hear anything by the end of this week I’ll throw them another email.

Signed, sealed and delivered

Well the submission made it in to the comic contest on time and, as always, I spent the next two days thinking about what I should have changed. I’m sure its not an uncommon thing to feel like apiece of work is never entire complete and this was no exception. What probably made it worse is the page limits on getting an idea across, which in itself is probably a skill that needs sharpening.

The entry consisted of five pages of sequential script and a five-page treatment of concept. The sequential script was a challenge in that its something entirely different in terms of writing style. For each panel you describe the events for an artist to draw and then you put text/speech for each picture. Whilst some images came very easily (too much TV, movies and comics means I normally have a clear picture in my head when writing) panels need to exist for the words and not the pictures. In the end I just wrote the story (very crudely) then went trough and broke it down into panels. From there the story elements get split into what can be expressed graphically and what needs someone talking. I cringe at the ‘hand-holding’ of the writing in some places, but recognise that that’s how the comic medium works.

The treatment of concept was an entirely different exercise. A little Internet research on what a treatment is led me to the conclusion that its basically a sales pitch. Outline what you’re trying to achieve and the general story in a short enough format that someone can skim through it. Of course the challenge is getting enough of your idea into five pages in order for it to grab someone. I gave up writing five pages about halfway through and just wrote it all out. Once I had seven pages it was then an exercise in cutting the word count/page count down to try and make it all fit. There’s a lot left out and I feel that the events are covered but the reason for the events and the theme/purpose behind the whole story is missing. We’ll see what the judges have to say. If nothing more than this writing exercise comes of the whole thing, then its at least been an interesting experience.

Next up, back to editing The Time Traveller’s Teacher so that can be properly finished.

Progress

Well the script is done (the five pages needed for the contest anyhow) and it ended up being a little more involved than originally thought.

There's definitely a trick to being able to tell a story with only pictures (which you have to imagine) and people talking to each other. Just working out the order in which people should speak so speech bubbles can line up on the page is a challenge. It has been a learning experience though. From concept to plot details to structure (how to make a story fit on exactly 22 pages) and then to dialogue.. all the while retaining the original concept.

A five page concept document is all that's left to do before Friday night. I've got more than five pages of just notes so the next step will be as much and organizing activity as a writing exercise. Either way it still remains well within the realms of 'doable'.

A ticking clock

Five days to go, if not less, to get the comic contest submission in. In fact I could stretch it and still submit it Saturday morning AU time, given that will still be Friday in the US.. but I’d really rather not cut it that close.

It’s been a rocky road so far. Work has been hell, which just sucks the creative life out of me but hopefully is getting better. Unfortunately my father ended up in hospital Saturday morning, which has understandably made life that little more complex too (diagnosis is all good but its still a family scare). So whereas I was hoping to devote all weekend to writing, outside events conspired against me.

That said, some progress was still made. Starting with four concepts, I’m down to one concept with about fourteen pages of notes. I think it’s relatively solid now. Characters are sorted. The rules of the ‘universe’ it is set in are documented. A first issue plot is done. An overreaching plot is also sorted (ie. there’s an ending now) and the bad guys are locked in. Now the challenge is to take all the individual pieces and turn them into a single coherent pitch.

The hard part this time has definitely been the conceptual phase, working a lot quicker than I would probably do so normally. I’m hopeful at this point the actually writing (a 5 page concept and a 5 page script) will just be the ‘grunt’ work of the exercise. The concept document should be easy, the script will still be a challenge. So five nights (including the Friday) to write things up is still reasonable, assuming life doesn’t throw any more curveballs.

And now for something completely different…

Eight days to build a concept, write a five page treatment of said concept and five sequential pages of comic book script. Easy, right?

Top Cow are running a contest at Armageddon con in October and entries have to be in no later that Sept 21st. No small task to do all that in a compressed timeframe and a few other things are going to have to be moved around in order to just find the time. All that said, the challenge sounds like a lot of fun (and only a little terrifying at the same time). Not only does the work have to be good enough to get past the initial application stage, but if you’re one of the lucky few to get that far it leads to a 10min verbal presentation in front of David Wohl (Darkness and Witchblade creator) at the con. No pressure.

The real challenge is going to be coming up with something ‘new’ that can capture interest in a short amount of time and still be written with some sense of literary responsibility. Of course, it could be said that any short piece of writing should aspire to the same values.

I wonder how much electricity it takes to jump start the creative mind.

A sea of red

I hate editing. Actually, let me clarify that.. I hate editing my own work.

Editing other people’s work, whilst a skill some people prefer not to employ, can be a rewarding task. Obviously it needs to be done objectively, regardless of whether you know the person who’s work your are editing or not. Grammar editing is relatively easy, as long as you know the basics yourself and marking an entire paragraph as needing to be written can prompt a writer to re-look at the work from a different angle.

Unfortunately, doing the above is a laborious task when its your own work involved. Grammar editing is again, relatively easy. Changing a word or sentence structure on the fly is normally something that can be done in a short amount of time. Reading a paragraph, or two and thinking they just don’t make sense means you immediately try and think of how to re-write it. This then has the nasty habit of breaking your concentration on editing and switches your focus back to writing again. Do this a couple of times over the course of a longer piece and the editing task takes hours, or days.

So far the Time Traveller’s Teacher is eight pages of red pen marks and five pages of unread work still to be looked at again. Its something I really need to finish doing and the only way I can see to do that is to stop trying to fix it as I go. Of course, after that I’ll probably look at getting someone else to do the editing task again. I hope its not as stressful a task for them also.

One final note, don’t edit when you are stressed and distracted at work, it really doesn’t do anyone any good.

Down Memory Lane

In an effort to scrounge around for ideas for my next piece of writing I decided to wade through the six or seven ‘documents’ directories on my PC. Given it has been a few years since I was writing seriously, it shouldn’t have been surprising for find date stamps on files going back to 2000. Some files even had WPD extensions from Word Perfect, which hasn’t existed as an application in years. Reading through the things found there has resulted in a new practice I will be self-enforcing for all future writing projects.. make notes files.

Several files, saved with cryptic names, consist of a few pages of writing that must have had some point of destination in mind. Unfortunately I now have no idea what I was thinking when writing them. More recently, for each piece of work I am now creating a notes file to go with it. It’s a useful process which allows me to scribble-type ideas that may or may not be used, general outlines, character notes and anything else that might be relevant to the main piece of work. Hopefully this means I’ll be able to go back to any incomplete piece of work at a later date and pick up, with a relatively small amount of effort, where I left off.

In the meantime I’ve now gone from no ideas to about six. Task for the next couple of days is to shuffle those ideas about a bit and pick one (or maybe two) to start the writing process on. Weekend task will be to do a first edit run on ‘Time Traveller’s Teacher.’ I’m only a little concerned about how that will go.

It's a boy?

As of 12:21am this morning, ‘The Time Traveller’s Teacher’ became a completed piece of work. Checking in at a little over 8200 words it is a little weightier than I’d originally planned but it feels finished, well as a first draft at least. I have to say, I’m happy to have done it. Thinking back, it is probably the first completed piece of (non-work related) writing I’ve done in roughly fours years. Completed is a little bit of a misnomer, its still needs polishing, and probably quite a bit at that. Holding a printed copy of it makes it feel that little more real, and renews that feeling that this writing thing is something I do really want to do.

It was probably a little ambitious to go from a cold start to writing something this long, but I’m also looking at it as a learning exercise as much as a finished product. So on to the lessons learnt from this piece of work:

• writing around little children is extremely hard
• writing without the trappings of familiar surroundings and distractions works very well when you just want to write
• I really need to work on writing dialogue a bit more
• Writing at home, with all the usual distractions is going to require a lot more practice
• Sometimes writing the end of a story whilst you’re still half way through helps get the words out of your head and lets you go back to concentrating on the part you’re meant to be writing
• The last thousand words take as long as the first thousand.

So what next? nanowrimo is in November, so some of October will be spent planning for that. Before then I’d like to get another two or three shorter pieces finished off before than and take a closer look at the whole comic writing thing. At least it’s a plan… of sorts.

So Close

And now for the results of this weekends writing exercise..

I think I can give myself a comfortable 0.8 out of 3 for the weekend. The short story turned into something a bit longer and at roughly 6700 words so far it has about another hour’s worth of writing to be finished. That will only be the first draft of course, it will need polishing after that then I might even let someone else read it. As far as working on ideas or notes for anything else, well, the easiest excuse is when you’re away for a sociable weekend you can’t spend all your time staring at a computer screen. I also have to give a lot of credit to anyone who tries to write with small kids racing around, or trying to wrestle you at the same time.

Despite the fact the output of the weekend was a little lower than originally planned, I’m still going to mark it up as a successful venture. What I have so far I’m fairly happen with. The original plot and characters are much the same as what I had originally intended. The structure has changed a little and I’ve tried a few things with a change of perspective as the story progresses. Hopefully it works when the piece is read as a whole.

Now for the hard bit, finishing it. Act 1 and 2 are done, the ending/epilogue is down and Act 3 is halfway there. Finishing that final act has had a few problems and the challenge is going to be not getting distracted when sitting in familiar surroundings. Computer games and regular TV (the worst of procrastinating distractions) are out until the piece is done, but hopefully that will be tonight. Happily, the title of the piece still fits, even this close to completion, though I won’t be putting that here until at least the first draft is complete.