Go Forth and Procreate

Hey, my name is Rich Knight and I think we (we as in, you and I) should start a writer's group. I have a completed screenplay that I'd like to get critiqued on, but most of my friends don't have time to read my stories, and I'd like it if somebody actually did. This could be a good opportunity to get many people involved and reading your material (but one rule, no stealing ideas! Borrowing's okay, though) and commenting on where you have problems in your character development. Because if one person brings it up, they could be nuts. But if many do, then you probably need to fix it. Where else can you get that kind of criticism than in a writer's group?

So let's start one, y'all. I think it could be fun.

Could this be the next block buster, perhaps a good radio play, or a story for the bin, never bin it, keep it, revise it and send it again and again and again.

Hello My Name is Barry I have been writing short stories and sending them out to magazines and have had two of them printed in Bella (Womens mag) in the last year.

I have completed a few courses and have just finished Screen and Script writing at my local University 'Alone with Jack' was my course project and is ten pages long. (As requested by tutor).

I have lots of stories to make into scripts for radio and stage plays.

some of my stories would be great for TV or film.

I write in my spare time and would love to do it full time, since 1999 i have written more than 50 short stories but have not sent them all out until now. Now i am ready to show most of my work to those who have an eye for a good story.

If you think this maybe of interest to you no matter where you are in the world then please get in touch and we can see if we can work something out.

If you are a writer who is looking for someone to work with again please get in touch as there maybe something we can do.

I am not expecting to be the next JK (Harry Potter, books/films) but i do think that there is a market for my work.

Looking for an unknown well congrats I am here, just e mail me and we can both be Billionairs. ok so i have a good sence of humour!

In  the movie, "The Hustler" Fast Eddie Felson says, "Boy, it's a great feeling when you're right, and you know you're right."

 

At the pinnicle of my mathematics abilities I found myself in the cafeteria of St. Maria Goretti High School.  It was April, 1987.  I was thirteen years old and the indentured member of a seventh grade math team.  Having finished the team and individual rounds of problems we waited for the results and more importantly, the trophies.

 

By no exaggeration when that lady at the front of the room announced, "The boy with the highest individual score...", I pushed my metal folding chair back so to get up easier, "...is Robert T...(she mispronounced my last name too)"  It was me, and I knew it. 

 

I haven't felt that sensation in nineteen years, and five months.  The other night when I pitched my next two story ideas to a friend while consoling my wailing four-month-old son I felt it again. 

 

Oh, what dreams may come...  

The hero of the story, Italian journalist Marcello basically sinks into the pit of moral depravity because his desire for celebrity/fame (embodied in a rich Italian actress and a buxomy hollywood movie star) ultimately turns the man into a shallow cad who sacrifices the art of writing for decadent bourgeois parties where he humiliates a poor country girl. Was Fredrico Fellini on to something? That la dolce vita - the sweet life is really a bitter pill. I was a television presenter from age 11 to 16 and was a stage actress till I discovered....other forms of 'escape' as a teenager. It takes a very clear mind and stout moral/spiritual temperament to resist the trappings of hollywood or fame. If Marcello could do it all over again, perhaps he would have married his neurotic Emma.

Saw it yesterday.  Ehh.  A competent movie.  Granted, I'm an Eagles fan (difficult, I know), and a Philadelphian (down right hard); but for the most part it's your standard rags-to-rich flick, stomping through the footsteps of "Rocky" sometimes literally.  Ericson Cole, the director and DP really captures the older parts of Philly.  Acting is competent; but in this Mtv, microve, ADD society of ours just about every scene lasts as long as a Mentos commercial.  I long for the days of longer scenes.

 

In other news, I'm not as lost in my writing prowess as recently blogged.  On the same Triggerstreet website I was given a very generous review of my script.  I did pull it however and plan a touch up rewrite.  Think of it as airbrushing the script's tits to look boobalishous.

 

Stay tuned for what dreams may come.

When I was a kid, my mom would record films like "Fun in Acapulco", "Gidget Goes to Rome", "Breakfast at Tiffany's", "The Purple Rose of Cairo" and "Cinderfella" on VHS (I was not allowed to stay up late on a school night) On the weekends, I would watch one of these films from beginning to end, then rewind the tape and watch it all over again. I could watch the same film 3 times, till the sun set and my dad started to wonder about his 6 year-old's sanity!!! These days, unless a film has a certain "something" (which I can't yet put my finger on) I usually decide it's a waste of time within the first 30 minutes, it seems that even though there is more sex, violence and special effects, something integral is missing.....I think that missing element is the "lovability level" of the character. Maybe it is a reflection of society at large, but I don't seem to want to spent more time with the main characters in movies these days. They tend to be more cynical, misogynistic, egocentric and pretentious than the Jerry Lewises, Audrey Hepburns, Julie Andrews and Bob Hopes of yesteryear.

As it turns out my screenplay was poorly received at triggerstreet.com.  They lambasted me on my formatting, syntax (twice), and grammer.  One guy, I'm suspicious, only read the first and last pages of the script.  When I converted it from Final Draft (ver 5) to adobe acrobat it got mutilated in terms of capitalizations, spacing, etc.  So, anyone out here who can tell me how to download Final Draft (ver 6 or higher) w/o spending three hundred dollars would be helping out.

 

All these posts I've been leaving and all this screenwriting advice I've been vomiting on my page is suspect.  I'm embarrassed and pissed off.  I know I understand the theory.  It seems I can't as of yet execute the craft.  Very f#cking frustrating.

I'm finished!  Today I worte the last scene of my fifth draft of a script I've been writing for four years.  No kidding.  With the Screenwriting Expo 5 script contest deadline extended to today I rallied (with the help of my wife) and blazed through the last 30-some pages.

 

It feels good.  I'm happy with the unproof read product...so far.  Made my deadline, and can now bask in the hope and peace of conclusion.

 

Hey, I haven't been around here in a while.  What's been going on?

 

PS  If anyone wants to read my anus/opus, I'll have it posted on www.triggerstreet.com very soon.  The title is, "The Crooked Old Man".

We use the expression, "keep one foot on the ground".  We use it a lot.  "I got one foot on the...and the other on the ..."  Nice.  Implies inner conflict.  A straddling if you will.  Well, I've invited that very simple, popular, foot-in-mouth situation on myself.

 

One of my regulars at the bar (I'm a bartender by occupation) asked if I was on the web.  I said yes.  She's a good woman.  She chooses to take an interest in people's lives, and remember the minutes of their stores when she's not around.  She asked me if there was an online forum I belonged to so she could get samples of my writing, of which I'm endlessly prattleing on about.  I gave her this site.

 

Even as I write this I feel like I'm philandering.  I feel under scrutiny and obliged to impress.  I've maintained one life (foot) in my occupational world and done well enough to afford another life (foot) firmly planted in a dream.  A dream I'm quick to talk about, but slow to share.  And now one of my beloved (because that's how I eat) regulars could very well become a reader of this trite site.  The blog is really afoot.

 

So, like our beloved Jimmy Durante, good night Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

Having made yet another epiphany in my craft I've slowed down the telling of my story in ACT II so to create more of an emotional connection to my reader.  It's working so well I'm in the enjoyable dilemma of now having too much story to tell.  I can sit back and choose which scenes (already articulated) I want in this draft.  What's the new epiphany?  How am I trying to create that emotioinal connection, I ask (rhetorically...to myself)?

 

Just by slowing down the telling.  It's one thing to tell that, "Victor and Ingrid board the train."  It's another thing entirely to tell you 'how' they board that train, "Victor tightens his grip on the cane handle.  Risks taking that first big step onto the train step, but his leg gives out.

 

Not knowing whether he'll accept her help or push her away, Ingrid runs under him and holds him around his waist, wincing the whole time.

 

INGRID  "We'll get on together."

 

Reluctant to put his weight on the 10 yr old girl, and choking back tears of guilt Victor looks at her without his usual scowl for the first time.

 

VICTOR  "Alright."

 

They fill the threshold of the train and seem to help each other into the car.  END SCENE.

 

Something like that, as just an example. 

 

I don't know if that's better writing or not, but I'm excited writing that way; especially after the three scripts I read recently.  One of them made me laugh out loud.  My writing never evoked such responses.  But that's going to change.

 

PS Welcome new bloggers to Scriptologist.  It is what you make it here. 

Yesterday it was presented to me that from a certain point of view I had no childhood; rather an ephemeral crisis management role in my own and only household.

 

It's a hell of a thing to be told what you thought was your childhood, flawed and full of wonder, was more like survival training.  I'm not eager to go into detail about it yet; as I'm sure mine was less different, but more similar to most everyone's awkward experiences.  Rites of passage, change, identity, discovery, choice, and the wonder of who I ever wanted to be seem points of heated contention in my thoughts.  I feel...cheated.  I'm swirling in the machinations of what could have been if...if this , if he, if I.  A person could 'what if' themselves to death.  So what's left?  Looking back brings sadness and changes nothing.  So I look forward.

 

Better clarity of myself might offer better understanding of what really motivates my story characters.  Like in dreams I believe all the characters we write are facets of us, the writers.  That every manifestation on the page, every good guy and bad, every guardian, sidekick, and under-five is a piece of the complex follow through of childhood's, "what I could have been."

 

When I look at my recent revelation in this light I'm filled with hope.  I'm aware of what I never had, what I never had to take for granted.  What I think would have been awesome.  And not having had it I respect exploring it all the more.  As Bogey lays it out to his men in Sahara as they decide to stay and sacrifice themselves to an outnumbering German army:

 

"And I know what I'm asking.  I know all of you have wives, sweathearts, and family back home.  Not having any of my own maybe I know all the more."

 

And who knows, like Bogey my efforts might yield a timely, well placed serendipitous bomb in the dried up water hole of my youth that unleashes a wellspring of healing.

Previously I mentioned how my Act II muse was Charlie Chaplin.  Well, after three days and only bits of scenes I delved back into (picture Humphrey Bogard towing the African Queen back into the swamp that accosted him and Kate Hepburn) Dramatica Pro screenwriting software to guide me through the beats of Act II. 

 

It feels like procrastination; much like typing those, this and all other sentences to follow on this blog.  But.  If I get my scenes then it's worth it, right?  I said, am I right?  I don't know.

 

I've been dropping in on John August's blog.  Thanks, er...one of you faithful.  I've tried harder to comment in this forum.  I like it.  And it's a real balm for me to write for others and not so I can comb over my ever lengthening be-loggggggg, bitches.  Mark Garrison and I are tackling the structure aspect of his story.  He was kind enough to thrust me and my efforts onto center stage of his blog.  Turnabout is not only fair play, it's appropriate.  Being one of the newer members of this site Mark dove in with both feet.  I respect his efforts.  You know, "God loves the working stiff!"

 

That'll do for now because I believe shorter blogs are better blogs, and little people have no humor at all.  Think I'll go download some itunes on my ipod with no one else in mind but I.

Coming out of the Act I conclusion trap and into the first half of Act II it seems my muse is a Hollywood icon - Charlie Chaplin.  Because I don't have the events of this reel plotted I have to invent them using, ready for this blackberry whackberries, a sheet of loose leaf and a pen.

 

How does the tramp fit into plotting the events of a psychological thriller using technology, by today's standards, is no different than stick in dirt?  Simple.  Charlie used to plot his story events on a single page, simple descriptive sentences with active verbs in present tense, about fourteen of them.  I'm not saying it was easy to do; and I'm not saying he did it on a single sheet.  No.  I imagine old Charlie sitting desk side in his beloved tramp costume, chin in hand staring into the heavens searching for a funnier way to cook a leather shoe in an isolated, log cabin in the Yukon; crumpled single page drafts littered about a holey socked foot.

 

But one page.  About twelve to fourteen events.  Heightening the drama, rasing the stakes, building momentum to a climax.  That's where I'm at tonight.  Feels good.

 

Still waiting on feedback or status in the Nichols Fellowship, The Austin, The 20/20, and A Feeding Frenzy script contests.  If my script cuts the mustard in 20/20 I'll have a real deadline to submit the rest of my (yet unfinished) final draft.  Here's hoping. 

Haven't been writing lately.  The 4th, family, act I conclusion trap, lazy, and popular misconception that a break from writing is useful.

 

I'll say this.  Not giving in to guilty feelings from not writing is refreshing.  Pretending I could just work my stupid, asshole job, pay my bills, and live off the page was fun for a little while.  But then I watched Crash.  And then the knowledge of my own incomplete, imperfect story came bolting back faster than fireworks.  Here I am once again.

 

I know I haven't been commenting.  I'll try to get to you that had the gumption to write.

Last night after work my coworkers and I sat over the boss' beer and the stink of stale cigarettes discussing, among various dead air filling topics, the death of the comic straight man.  No more succinctly embodied in the embalming of Ted Knight years ago.

 

Who could deny his poker faced antics in Caddyshack brought the performances of his fellow actors to legendary heights?  His deliberate stutter, the tight-assed walk no black comic could mimic, the reined in rage going eyeball to Adam's apple with Chevy (where'd my career go) Chase.  Ted Knight had it all; and sadly he took it all with him when he went.  Seems the last pie in the face was on comedy itself.

 

Since the eighties I can't really remember a movie funnier than Caddyshack or it's contemporaries: Animal House, Meatballs; just to name two.  And those two had very good, can't wait to see what they do to them next, straight guys.  Respectively Dean Wormer, and Morty (both actor's names I don't know.  And isn't it always the way with the set-up guy.  Thus making Ted Knight's star shine that much further.)  A very far second, that's how it was said last night, is the droning, monotoned office manager in Office Space (insert actor's name here.)  His selfless performance to set up, titilate, and eventually pay off with his own embarrassing showdown loss is nothing short of watching Errol Flynn slay Basil Rathebone in one of those old, men in tights, swashbuckers of the thirties. (A more than just movie pop-up factoid: Basil Rathebone was a superior swordsman than Flynn ever was.)

 

So, comedies of late take heed.  The absence of that unfunny, too old to be this week's newest starlet, dedicated guy with teflon for a complexion in today's comedies is what's not funny at all about comedy today.

Reading an exceprt from, "The Illusionist" by Neil Burger in Script Mag. last night I got the feeling that my pages, even thought closer to proper format than not, still don't read like a movie.  I'm being made aware of this the more I read other scripts (usually ones penned by the pros).  And it's frustrating the hell out of me.  I've been writing four years now, and what about capturing movie events and speech on a page in such-and-such spacing, and such-and-such verb tense am I not getting?  I see movies, you see movies, we all see them.  We relive favorite scenes like movie moguls in executive suites.  We're all critics.  "That was a dumb ending.  Whatever happened to that character?  I saw a plot hole in Terminator.  They should have..."  It goes on and on.  So why after making a study of the craft, practicing, failing, practicing more do my pages not POP with the moment to moment experience? 

 

My writing sucks?  Sure, that's a strong possibility.  I'm still not getting it?  OK.  Optimistically, I'm too familiar with my own writing.  I like that one.  What is it?

 

BACK TO SCENE

 

Last night I put Script on the bureau, turned out the light, went two rounds with my pillow and started to slee-- think.  My writing.  My writing.  That scene.  This image.  The Illusionist.  What is Burger doing that I am not?  Why do I feel I'm watching a film?  Then it comes to me.

 

One of the writing devices I use in my script (albeit not in the first 20 pages posted) is called, "A SERIES OF QUICK CUTS", and then three or four short, descriptive image sentences to convey the feeling of a quick montage; an F/X; a time lapse; you get the idea.  Although not overused, and having a 75% effective rate with contest judges (A Feeding Frenzy had something to say about it), it still didn't really create the effect I wanted.  It convey the F/X.  It revealed story elements through description and conflict.  It was concise, and even the smallest bit clever.  But after reading Burger's pages it also wasn't enough.

 

So in bed, in the dark I kept thinking just about that one bit.  Then I came up with the idea of using a thumb nail image, followed by ellipses, and then a widening or panning back from the thumb nail to the rest of the descriptive.  Trust me, it makes sense.

 

Example.  A tattooed, scowling  biker hunkered over handlebars...slowly strolling a baby carriage on a busy, summer boardwalk at night.

 

Like that.  Did it make sense?  Did it work? 

Naw, I ain't talkin' bout da pleasure piece.  I'm talkin' bout writin' yoself into a boxes.

 

STATIC.  Dial-up internet PWING. PWING.

 

There.  That's better.  Just watched a Charlie Brown Xmas online with ghetto overdubbing.  Eh.  A friend emailed it to me.  But writer's box.

 

For three days I've been stuck at the end of act I without that big event.  I wrote myself into a corner.  I know where the story has to go, but setting up the potential climax and getting my guy into the meat of the story wasn't logical from where I left off.  So I thought, and I thought.  And I thought and I thought and I thought; and then I asked my wife and she came up with the solution.  Take it where you can get it, right?

 

By the way, what's up with the Asian invasion?

I was in my office last night (a crappy one room dive filled with generation "can-you-hear-me-now's") with a buddy when we touched on the subject of climaxes.  I made a personal adjustment to my writing technique, as I'm told writers will do.  It goes like this.

 

Think of a climax, a climactic action-action being the key here-that the hero and/or villain go through where it's outcome is so final that the audience (insert lesson from R. McKee's Story  here) "cannot imagine another conflict".  That kind of action.  What is the action?  What is it?

 

Is it blowing up a shark? Jaws.  Walking out on your family? Ordinary People.  Living through the passing of your only daughter in bedraggled clothes?  Terms of Endearment.  Goading a trigger happy prison guard to shoot you through a church window?  Cool Hand Luke.

 

Any action. 

 

Now.  Come up with your own.  Preferably the one you wrote.  What is that action?  Now ask yourself this.  Does it resonate?  Will the reader understand that it is a climax?  How?

 

Here's what I've been belaboring.  Any action can be climactic IF YOU PLANT IT'S PROBABILITY OF HAPPENING in act I.  This may be a no brainer to you, but the scabs just fell off my eyes with this.  And I've been writing for four years now.  Coming up with a climax is as easy as saying, "what do I want that action to be?"  Choosing it.  And then attaching a story value to it early on so readers will know this is the ultimate length the hero will/must/must not go to X,Y,Z. 

 

I know, I know.  Then why do some climaxes fizzle?  Answer: taste.  It wasn't important to enough people, but to just the right people to get left in the story.  What can I say?  No accounting for blah, blah, blah.

 

Pardon my idiot savant excitement over what seems to be a simple fundamental of the craft; but like I said, it just rang true to me.  Now I look forward to my ending and conjure that climax, that final showdown, that action.  Define it.  The rest of my climax conjuring is to make sure it resonates to my reader.  This is the climax because back on page X when he said she might have to BLANK, or else THIS.  I don't want to ruin the...well, you know.