I think I’m going to print out a chunks of the screenplays for Star Wars and The Enteral Sunshine of The Spotless Mind to use as a my screenwriting “texbooks” pretty soon.
I have some other screenplays that I can study, but those two screenplays seem to be represent the sweetspots of what I want to do with any “screenwriting career” I may have.
But, remember, I’m an old, poor coot in the middle of nowhere. I’m really going to need some Hollywood magic to cause this to be anything more than just one of my usual daydreams that go nowhere. (Though, to be fair, my dream of being a novelist is progressing quite well.)
I’ve decided to take a deep breath and be far more careful about writing out scenes one I write a scene summary. The hope is, that I won’t keep writing and re-writing scenes in the first act forever.
But even if I fix that problem, there’s another problem I have to contend with — I keep gravitating around 46 scenes for my first act. This is way too many, in context. Each scene is, meant to be, on average 1,000 words.
And, yet, I know from how much I’ve been writing that this is not always true. I would say, on average, my scenes are close to 750 words. Anyway, the point is — I may, again, just have to “give up” on length and just write the novel I want to write, tell the story I want to tell and evaluate things once the third draft is finished.
This is just a random pet peeve of mine. There was a great sexromp comedy starring Dudley Moore done by Blake Edwards (I think) called 10. It stared Bo Derrick in her most languid sexkitten role ever. It was very much a late 70s, early 80s movie.
Well, there is one modern woman who serves the same public role as Bo Derrick back in the day — Emily Ratajkowski. The two women could not be more alike in personality and demeanor. They both have a very, very casual, languid approach to sex to the point that you could believe a ding-dong like Dudley Moore’s character in 10 had a chance with her.
Anyway, the way things are going the only way such a movie would ever be written is if *I* wrote it. And the way things are going on THAT front, it will either never happen, or by the time it did Emrata would be middle aged.
I may have a problem. Sorta. I have a female protagonist and much to my chagrin, I realize looking over the first act that more than once I have leaned into a “spicy” situation to progress the plot forward. I’m afraid my heroine is going to come across as something of a slut.
And, yet, in this topsy-turvy world we’re in at the moment, I suppose being so sex positive as an author will be seen as a good thing. But for the fact that to some (many?), uh, I’m a smelly “CIS white male” who is just doing it because I want to fuck my heroine.
Or something. Something along those –never-get-a-dude-the-benefit-of-the-doubt lines
But, in general, I’m very pleased with what’s going on with this novel. I’m just a little concern about….uh…length. The novel continues to “breath” growing bigger and smaller as I keep fucking tinkering with it. I have got to stop doing that and lock things down one way or another.
If I don’t, I’ll be dodging bombs during the Fourth Turning a year from now and STILL now have finished the third draft.
This isn’t really a “problem” so much as an indication of how obsessed I am with this very, very low-trafficked Website’s Webstats. I think my obsessive reader is still here, only using some sort of proxy service inside China. Or something.
The person who was in California, then Queens has vanished and has been replaced by someone just about as obsessive who is allegedly in China somewhere. I really don’t care. Whatever. It’s just I have a really hyperactive imagination and all sorts of dark scenarios as to why this person might be so interested in me roll around in my mind.
I have really been spinning my wheels the last few weeks with the very first few chapters of the third draft of my first novel. I’m afraid I’m feeling a bit burn out. There is a very arbitrary structure in my mind about how the story progress and because I just can’t get it where it needs to be, I keep reading then revising the novel’s first three chapters over and over and over again.
As such, I think I need to give myself something different to piviot to creatively whenever I feel this way. At the moment, it seems like it’s going to be delving into the icy waters of screenwriting.
But this will happen in the context of my main goal still being finishing a mystery-thriller that is an homage to Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series. My novel is so different that pretty much only I would notice any similarities.
Most of what is similar to Stieg Larsson’s work is structural in nature or the result of “form follows function.”
I will freely admit that my novel just isn’t as good as the novel I’m using as my “textbook” — The Girl That Played With Fire. That novel has a lot of heart. But that is, in general, what I want people to think of on an instinctual basis when they read my novel.
If they are fans of The Girl Who Played With Fire, they will feel like they’re putting on an old brown shoe. It will feel very cumfy and familiar, even if my novel is totally, completely, it’s own thing when it comes to subject matter.
That’s my goal, at least.
But I’ve studied Larsson’s stuff so much and have come to see some of his editorial decisions on a macrobasis as “the right way,” even though there is no such thing, I keep revising and revising and revising.
This is wearing me out. So, rather risk total burn out, I want to be able to pivot to screenwriting as necessary now and again.
It will be interesting to how long this plan lasts.
As I continue to spin my creative wheels with the first act of the third draft of my first novel, I find myself pondering yet again a second creative track: a screenplay.
I already have the infrastructure to do so — I have Final Draft. But the thing that stopped me from plunging into screenwriting remain: there is a sharp learning curve when it comes to writing a screenplay. So much so, that I honestly feel like just redoubling my efforts with my main creative track of a novel.
And, yet, I’m not getting any younger and I’ve progressed far enough with the novel that I think maybe it would be fun to piviot to writing a screenplay whenever I feel overwhelmed with the main creative track of the novel. I think, in general, what’s going on is I’m ready to expand my creative horizons beyond just one novel that I keep tinkering with.
I’m very much in a put up or shut up moment. I have GOT to finish something. But there are a lot of problems with a second creative track being screenwriting.
I’m Too Old I’m just too old. At 50, I’m so old that I fear that any hope of being a screenwriter is kind of an even bigger delusion than being a novelist. But, lulz, it would be fund to just tinker around with screenwriting despite my decrepit age. I’m a Kook This is a problem because I have no friends and no one likes me. If I was “normal,” I could maybe find a creative collaborator who could help me develop a screenplay. I Live In The Wrong Place I really live in the wrong place. I live in BFE Virginia. But, lulz, it would be fun to have a few screenplays done so if I ever happen to find myself in Hollywood I might be able to pitch them.
The upsides to screenwriting some on the side as I progress with writing a novel is that I could flex a different creative muscle or two in my mind. I have a few really great scifi concepts in my mind that would be fun to explore. I think what I’m going to have to do is do treatments for these screenplay concepts before I sit down to actually write anything.
The temptation will be, of course, to simply use those treatments for novels, rather than screenplays. But, lulz, as long as I’m being creative, I guess that’s all that matters, right?
It definitely seems as though we’re rushing towards a moment where at least two macro issues will fuse — sexbots and Incels. So, in the future, it’s possible that Incels will simply have relationships with pliant sexbots rather than have any relationships with women at all.
Ugh.
What’s worse, it’s possible that once MAGA succeeds into banning all birth control, they will go after this alliance. MAGA’s “moralistic state” will regulate the use of sexbots to the point that they can’t be used as…sexbots.
And all of this definitely seems to possible a precursor to MAGA finding a moralistic reason for regulating AI out of existence. I think this is part of a broader move on MAGA’s part to see AI as a threat to “traditional values,” be they economic or moral.
For a show that’s been extremely influential in American comedy for about 50 years now, people love, love, LOVE to bitch and moan about how bad Saturday Night Live is.
Lorne Michaels
I honestly just don’t get it.
The show is extremely inconsistent, yes, but it’s still, to varying degrees, really, really funny. And it definitely gives us rubes out in the hinterlands a sense of what New Yorkers are talking about.
Anyway. I think some of it may be there are a lot of young journalists who think they’re good enough to be an SNL cast member, so they take it out on the show. And, also, whenever thinking about SNL, you have to remember that the show is popular for the very reason why the nattering nabobs of negativism hate it so much — it’s Bob Hope humor.
It doesn’t really make you burst out laughing all the time, but it is humorous and you chuckle now and again. And its broader cultural significance picks up whatever slack there may be in its actual humor.
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