Script Frenzy

Sitting about halfway through April, I'm also sitting about halfway through my script. Maiden of pain is turning out pretty good in my opinion, though I should be a little further along than I am currently. The characters are getting well fleshed out, the plot is moving along well (and making sense). I think I even have the theme growing nicely.

I've mentioned my script idea in a couple of previous posts, including how I plan to actually expand it into a proper novel. So far I've gone through the main opening, have begun to progress along transformative phase, and have been pushing the limits on my serial killer's murder spree. The male lead is going nuts slowly, and the female lead is loving every minute of it. I've read a couple of gems of dialogue to a few people, who have been pretty happy with them and are eager for more.

Now that I'm crossing the halfway point, I need to grow the love sub-plot, push the spree over the top and make it personal, and get the transformations fast-tracked as we come closer and closer to the final revealing ballroom scene. I'm very excited about how this is going, even if I'm a little behind where I think I should be at this point in time. Thankfully, as this piece currently has no purchaser, I don't have a horribly strict deadline (just 100 pages by the end of the month).

If you want to know how I'm doing, or what I'm doing, at any particular moment in time, I am available on Twitter. Having people pop on to cheer me on, and jeer any posts of laziness would be a big help.

Pushing Ahead

It's been a week since the Ad Astra convention, where I spent almost every waking hour surrounded by writers, editors, publishers, and adoring fans... Ok, they weren't my adoring fans, but they were still adoring fans. Biggest fan moment for me, seeing Robert Sawyer and Ed Greenwood sitting on the same panel. Drinking in my room until 4:30am with Gord Rollo, Ken Lillie-Paetz, and Miriam H. Harrison was another big moment for me.

I attended most of the panels I had planned, with only a few minor modifications at the last minute. I ended up having to skip Marketing Yourself for the second half of the Instant Fiction panel. It was well worth hearing the winners read their pieces aloud. One author had written a story from a responding traffic officer's POV about a demon coming out of a pothole on the 400. That was an absolutely fantastic short short (250 word story). My own piece needed an extra 20 words to give the ending I wanted, so I ended up using the crappiest ending imaginable. I've since rewritten the ending the way I wanted it at the beginning. With some more tweaking, I may stretch the story to 500 words and turn it into a half decent filler piece for a science fiction magazine.

I also skipped out on the panel on Paranormal Research, Urban Legends, Tesseracts Anthology, and First Contact. The last couple happened after the Sudbury Hypergraphic Society decided to return to Sudbury, and the first two were on the Friday night and were really just optional in my mind anyways. I have a full notepad of notes that I have to digest and a list of books longer than my arm to try to get my hands on. While at the con, I kept my purchases modest and ended up coming home with only a mounted Shadowrun poster and a chainmail teddy bear for Sabrina.

Since I've been back, I've been busy. I haven't updated my works in progress page yet, but I've completed a few more short stories, and am just one or two stories away from tieing up my necromancer series. The SHS had its meeting at Mimi & Lulu's, covered what we picked up at the con, and chatted about a few upcoming events: The Northern Lights Festival, The Sudbury Hypergraphic Society Radioshow, and the Sudbury Hypergraphic Society Summer Book Sale.

The Northern Lights Festival: We will be getting a table to help promote our members and their work. We'll also be promoting Script Frenzy and NaNoWriMo. I'm going to be booking the weekend off my day job so I can man the table most of the weekend. Hopefully I'll have something up for people to grab.

The Sudbury Hypergraphic Society Radioshow: Starting in June or July, the SHS will be performaing readings on the local radio station. We'll be reading and performing our own work to the listening masses. It's another way to get some exposure for ourselves and the art community here in Sudbury.

The Sudbury Hypergraphic Society Summer Book Sale: Sometime in August, the SHS will be hosting a summer book sale. We'll have a load of fiction, craft books, and some other great books up for sale. All proceeds will be going to a literacy charity. We haven't chosen one just yet, but once we choose one, I'll pass it on. At the moment, people wanting to donate books for the summer book sale can drop them off at Mimi & Lulu's (c\o Danielle), The Source by Circuit City at the New Millenium (c\o Shawn), or to any SHS member they happen to know.

And finally, Script Frenzy started on April 1st. Day 5 is just about over, and I'm sitting happily at 25 pages of script. As some of you may already know, I've writing a Dark Romance script temporarily titled "Maiden of Pain." Think of it as Pygmalion meets Saw. I've been chewing through it pretty steadily, and I'd be very surprised if I stopped at the 100 page mark. I plan on expanding the description after I've completed the rough of the script, and turning it into a proper novel. All in, I'm thinking 300 pages.

Script Frenzy Preparation

We are now only one week away from Script Frenzy. Every year in April, people from around the world attempt to compose 100 pages of script in just 30 days. In its inception, Script Frenzy was located in June and the goal was 20,000 words of script. Last year they moved it to April and converted it into the format that it currently holds.

I've participated in Script Frenzy twice before. My first script was a horror script, which drew some inspiration from a student film I had participated in when I was at Carleton University. The student film was entitled "Weekend After Thanksgiving." In the film, the neighbour had recently died under mysterious circumstances that were rumoured to have been caused by black magic. A group of students are spending their last few nights in their apartment and packing up. One student is interested in the occult, investigates, and goes mad. The student film was horribly written and poorly executed (but a lot of fun to make). I decided I would borrow a part of that premise and rewrite it, for fun, how I would like it to turn out. It was a good exercise and my movie script veered a long way from the student film that had inspired it. Unfortunately, I was unable to make the deadline.

Last year my attempt was in a different genre. I attempted to write a cyberpunk film, a la Shadowrun. I fell into the problem of too much description and too little speech. Although the ideas and story are strong, it did not turn out to be a good script, and I was unable to make the final deadline. I plan to rewrite my script at some point, but as a novel instead. It should work out quite well that way.

This year I dug through my file of old writings and scraps. I did not have any idea what I wanted to write. I came across a scrap that I had scribbled down in 2003. Think Pygmalion meets Saw. The logline: A dark priestess of torture and mercy corrupts an upstanding nobleman to the depths of depravity, while being snared by his charms. This will be fun to write. A touch of Dark Fantasy and Romance all in one. After Script Frenzy I hope to expand it and turn it into a proper novel.

Script Frenzy still doesn't have much of a following in the Sudbury area unfortunately. Only a handful of people have signed up so far. The event is very helpful for people struggling with dialogue, so I hope more budding authors decide to give it a go.

Syllables Sound Sexy

Alliteration strikes again! Muahaha.

Ok, so I'm just planning on doing a short little post today. I know I promised one on the 7th to keep people up to date on how I've been doing. Things have been coming along pretty good on most fronts. Still don't have any queries or submissions out, but that's a part of what I plan to work on this week since I'm stuck up here in Timmins anyways. I've a week of vacation and will end up getting my driver's licence at the end of it finally. As such, I'll also be doing a lot of driving.

I will tend to have the mornings and evenings to myself however. This puts me in a good position to work on researching and writing letters of submission. I've three pieces that I feel are complete enough for me to send out to a few different places. Will have to wait and see how it turns out. I will be sending out "Lakeside", "Through a Window", and "Last Tuesday". I've a couple pieces from my Necromancer series that could probably stand on their own pretty well, but I'm thinking of trying to get them out as a single piece once they're completed. If I can't seem to find a way to get them through that way, I'll split them up and see if I can get parts published separately. After the stories have gone through their hold, I can see about putting together an anthology.

I could look into going the self-publishing route. That sort of thing works really well for some. Randolph Lalonde immediately comes to mind. Randy's been self-publishing through CreateSpace for the past year, and now manages to make enough from his self-publishing to write full-time. The thing that keeps Randy going though is his following and his frequency of publication. His following will rabidly devour his latest pieces, search the web for hints about his next work, and try to find out all about him. I know Randy through the Sudbury Hypergraphic Society, so I know that he's really a pretty down-to-earth kind of guy. He's easy to talk to with some of the same troubles the rest of us have in terms of writing, but with the added pressure of having to get his work finished and out in limited time because of upcoming bills. I have my job at The Source for my bills, though I hope one day to use my writing to more than cover that.

In other news, Ad Astra is swiftly approaching. The latest list of panels is somewhat uninspiring, but I should still be able to get something out of it. I'm very excited and have just about everything ready for the event. The Northern Lights Festival will definately be a goal for the SHS, though we won't be doing a performance piece. We will be having a booth and will be advertising some of the events that we're involved in. There's to be a book sale this summer, plus I get to advertise NaNo and SF.

Speaking of Script Frenzy, I've been racking my brains for an idea and finally stumbled upon it in my crap-file. Dug through a handful of my older work, mostly stuff that I had a couple pages, barely an idea from, and stopped on years back. I found a small folder of research from when I was thinking of doing a novel for WoTC back in '04. I've since taken the idea and worked out a pretty good outline for a screenplay. Think of it as Pygmalion (My Fair Lady) meets Saw. I think it'll turn out really good, and after the script is done, all I need to do is fill in some description and it's a dialog driven novel. I think its a good approach. Certainly something different. I just hope that I can finish up the rough of my Necromancer novel before the end of the month. It's going to be busy between now and then!

Anyhow, back to work with me. I've a lot more to do.