Drop Back and Punt…

I had a great theme for today’s story… It was supposed to be about a more or less psychopathic guy that is put into the position of being a hero. At the climax of the story, he was supposed to say “So it’s all fun and games until I kill someone…” But the story that I’ve begun doesn’t really sit well with me the way I’ve been telling it so far.
Right now, I’m more wrapped up in the minutiae of setting up the story, and explaining how everything got to that point rather than just telling the story. I think the problem is that I was attempting to start with the line then drop into a flashback setup for everything, but there’s too many characters that need to be positioned, and too much action that needs to be described for me to be comfortable with what I’ve written and for me to take that approach…
So, after I get back from today’s Filmmaker’s Guild meeting at OU, I’m going to scrap what I’ve written, and restart today’s project.
I’ll let you know how it goes…

Feeling Good

As I mentioned in my earlier post, Quit Slacking!, I’m now putting forth an effort to at least write a short story everyday. While this is only the second day of my effort, I managed to write another complete short story today, and this is really beginning to feel good! I don’t think I’ve felt this creative and good about my writing (in general) in more than 10 years! I’ve definitely written better stories in that time, mind you, but I don’t think I’ve felt this good in ages!

I can’t wait for tomorrow!

Busy Day

I’m taking a quick break to point out exactly how busy I am with writing today.
First and foremost, I’m closing in on completing the class length version of the ancient story I mentioned in a previous post. I got to touch on all the original plot points I wanted though I’ve now taken it in a new direction. Considering there’s a 10 page limit for class, I’m somewhat satisfied but I’m looking forward to letting the story run wild in the “for sale” version.
When I’m done with that, I’m going to be rewriting a script I offered to Oakland University’s Filmmakers’ Guild last semester. It turns out they’re interested in producing the short… While I’m not likely to be paid, I’ll be more than happy to put it on my resume! It’s possible that it could even lead to me needing to join the Writers’ Guild of America, which in turn would validate my career plans!
And finally, I just took a few minutes to write up a quick log line and synopsis to try to attract a collaborator for another script idea floating in my head. Sorry, you don’t get to hear about this one because I hope to pitch it someday. 🙂

Back from the Dead

About 17 years ago, I began work on a time travel story that I thought had a unique spin. As I worked on it over a period of weeks, I kept running into problems that I couldn’t resolve at the time; the biggest of which was the point of view. Although I could have written the story any way I wanted, at the time I wanted to try something completely new to me: first person perspective and, more importantly, present tense.

The advantage of this perspective is that you almost literally get inside the primary character’s head; you get to know her thoughts, perceptions, and even her mental state by just reading the words that compose her train of thought. It’s not necessary to explicitly state “she felt trapped” or “fear gripped her heart” because the words she uses to describe the situation automatically convey emotional and mental states. Eventually I grew to love first person perspective, though I tended to opt for past tense after working on this particular story.

Sadly, at the time, I was unable to resolve my present tense issues with the story and was unable to make any significant progress on it as a result. Instead of discarding it, like I did with some of my other failed stories, I put it aside and vowed to come back to it some day.

About ten years ago, during a long bout of writer’s block, I decided to try to rewrite the story from scratch in an effort to reinvigorate myself and to work out some new ideas I had for the story. Unfortunately, I made the same mistake I had in the earlier attempt, and again chose to do first person present tense. I’m not saying that this perspective is bad, or that it never works, I’m just saying that it didn’t work for me for this story; after fleshing out some of my ideas in the rewrite, I again stopped work on the story. This time, I really didn’t make as much progress as I had in the very first attempt; I only managed to write two pages instead of the four that I had managed years earlier. Needless to say, this did not help my writer’s block.

More years passed. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m currently enrolled at Oakland University in the Cinema Studies program in an attempt to transform myself into a screenwriter. This semester, I’m finally taking a screenwriting course and, to brush up my story writing skills, I’m also taking a fiction writing class. The inspiration for my now self-published short “Right and Wrong” came as a result of some film noir I’ve watched this semester as well as the need to write a 50+ page screenplay for my class: I wrote the short story to flesh out the ideas I had for my screenplay, though the two have diverged substantially due to length requirements. If “Right and Wrong” the screenplay is ever produced as a film, it’ll be interesting to see how the public reacts to the fact that there’s a short story version as well… Will they see the screenplay as being based on the short story or will they assume that I merely summarized the script in the short story? Will there be a novelization of the movie, and if so, how confused will people be when they come across the short? Interesting questions…! But, I digress…

I have a new short story assignment for the fiction class, and though I had some interesting ideas, none of them seemed fit for the story I wanted to share with my class. I don’t mean to make this sound like I’m bragging, but my classmates have been really impressed with my work this semester, and they have some pretty high expectations of me. As a result, I have higher expectations, and higher minimum standards for what I intend to present them with. Despite my desire to explore the stories that I came up with, I was disappointed in the quality of the work I was churning out. With time I could correct the stories, and get them where I want them to be, but the class will end before I can really spend the time  on them that they deserve.

On a whim, I thought of rewriting something I had worked on in the past, and the first item that appeared in the list was my old time travel story. Having the files for both prior attempts, I decided immediately that this was the one. I printed both, and got my mind cranking on them as I drove to class yesterday, and when I got the opportunity to enter the classroom long before the start of class, I immediately went to work writing. Again I chose first person perspective; there were just too many visuals and thoughts that needed to be expressed by the main character that I wanted and needed keep to use a different point of view. But this time, I shifted to past tense, and in the space of just a few minutes I had already exceeded the two pages that I wrote in the last attempt at this story. I still have a lot of work to do on it, but this time, this story is back from the dead for good. I will finish the class version of this story, limiting myself to the upper limit of 10 pages, but I will also fully explore where this story goes this time, be it 15 pages or 1,000. This is turning out to be a story that I would have loved to read had it been written by someone else, so perhaps one day I’ll be sharing it with you!

Short Story: “Right and Wrong” Now Available!

I mentioned a short story a few weeks ago that I wrote for my fiction workshop based on a script I’m writing for my screenwriting class. Well, as of now, the story “Right and Wrong” is available for the Barnes & Noble Nook and  Amazon’s Kindle and their apps on various platforms. Although I’ve little control over the actual price, I’ve set the list price at the low, low price of $1, so go, get it, and enjoy!

Playing the Field…

Currently, I’m enrolled in both a fiction writing workshop and a screenwriting class, and I’m enjoying the hell out of both. For my screenwriting project, I’ve chosen to write a detective story, which is a big departure for me. Normally, I’m very much in to science fiction or fantasy for my stories, not something realistic, and certainly not anything that takes place in the past like this little project.

Well, I liked the idea so much that I ended up writing a short story to flesh out the script for my fiction workshop. This successfully killed two birds with one stone. I get to figure things out, and get a good feel for how long my script is going to be, and I completed a homework assignment in one stroke. Brilliant!

Furthermore, it may also serve another purpose… I’ve been looking over the Barnes and Noble program that lets you sell your own stories in the Nook store, and I think that after I revise the story a bit more, and perhaps add more to it, that I’ll post it for sale. I’m not expecting that it’ll be a runaway best seller or anything, or even to bring me a steady flow of income, but a few extra dollars here and there would be nice.