Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

I Really Like The Culture Of #Screenwriting

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Unlikely writing a novel, screenwriting is a collaborative process. As such the people who do it are much more like me. I love to talk and socialize and the screenwriting community seems like a lot of fun. It seems more my type of community than the novelist community. Screenwriting seems like people have a lot of passion for the subject and enjoy talking about it in a way I haven’t see with the novelist community.

I still have a novel I’m interested in writing, but the screenplay concept I have in my head seems to have picked up some creative steam lately. But, as I keep saying, the urgent need is for me to buy a professional digital camera. But that takes time, so working on a screenplay is something I can do while I wait.

So, I’m not saying anything will come of my sudden renewed interest in screenwriting, but the concept I’ve come up with leans itself to a cinematic representation, so I’m running with it as long and as far as I can. But I just don’t know. I don’t know how long this will last.

I really, really need to just save up the money for a camera and work towards that goal, but I’m in general a creatively restless person so I while I wait for the camera, I have to do something creative. Ideally, I will bounce back and forth between a novel and a screenplay. But we’ll see.

Even More Mulling Of A #Screenplay I May #Write

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Writing a screenplay is a bucketlist kind of thing for me, but I’m going to wait until I’ve finished it as a short story or a novella before I buy Final Draft and start working on it seriously. I have a novel concept, too, I’m interested in writing, but really it’s buying a camera and being a professional photographer that I am really working towards. Everything else is just because I idly am creative without thinking about it.

Regardless, below is a meandering video of me talking about a screenplay I’m interested in writing. The screenplay’s high concept would be something like Contact meets Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Stranger in a Strange Land meets The Last Star Fighter. Something like that. I really need to shut up and start writing, but daydreaming about doing it is so much fun.

V-Log: Mulling Of The Concepts Associated With The #Screenplay I’m #Writing

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I finally have down pat the high-concept I am interested in exploring with a possible screenplay: Contact meets Close Encounters of The Third Kind meets Stranger in a Strange Land. That’s the general idea, at least. I am going to do some more mulling today about the specifics, but I am lurching close to being able to actually sit down and write something. We’ll see.

Figured Out The Concept Of The SciFi Movie #Screenplay I’m Mulling

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I went for a walk and realized something. I have been struggling with the conflict of this story and I think maybe, just maybe, I have it. The high-concept of this script would be Contact meets Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Stranger in a Strange Land.

The conflict comes from the consequences of our hero being put in an extraordinary situation. I really like the idea of just a regular person being put in extraordinary circumstances and this script, should I ever write it, would be very much in that style. Our Hero is forced to make some enormous decisions for billions of people and the story is about what happens next.

I’m quite content with that, now I just have to write the damn script. I really need help with the plot, but no one will help me. But it’s still fun to explore this. As I keep saying, what I really need to do is buy a professional digital camera. That’s something that can change my life for the better.

V-log: Some Thoughts On The Nature Of #Writing A #Screenplay

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I really enjoy at least attempting to write a screenplay because of its innately collaborative nature. The below video is me talking about that some. I’m struggling to write out a concept that might turn into a screenplay, but it will be months before anything comes of it for various reasons.

V-Log: Thinking Outloud About The #Screenplay I’m Interested In #Writing

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

As I keep saying, buying a professional digital camera is at the forefront of my mind right now. But I definitely have an interesting concept for a science fiction movie. The screenplay would be a novel approach the concept of First Contact.

But there is much to mull, much to struggle with. I am perfectly horrible with plots and it could take me a while to the point where I’m able to not only write the screenplay but buy Final Draft so I can properly format it. The whole point is to give me something to believe in, something to hope for. I don’t live in LA, so it would be an enormous long-shot even if I wrote a really good screenplay with a strong concept.

Yet, whatever. I really enjoy daydreaming and I have a way of telling stories without even realizing I’m doing it. So, if I’m lucky, I’ll write something pretty much on autopilot. Not to say it won’t be a struggle to write something, it will. But it should be a lot of fun, also.

A Little Bit More About The SciFi Screenplay I’m Mulling

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

For years, I’ve been fascinated by First Contact. I’ve dwell deeply and at great length about how one might not only move huge numbers of humans off the planet but how you would organize that group of humans once you did. It’s something of an impossible scenario.

There just is so much to weigh in your mind. I have struggled to figure out how you might unite humanity if you worked on the assumption that — essentially — all human life is valued equally regardless of where you’re from. This is significantly more difficult to figure out than you might think.

Anyway, I may have figured out a strong enough concept to move forward with it. The movie would written with the expectation that it would be a tent-pole summer blockbuster but with smarts and a heart. I like screenplays as an art form because they’re collaborative and as the screenwriter all you have to do is give some guidance to the director as to what is supposed to happen. But, as I keep saying, I am saving my money for a professional camera so it will probably be later this year before I can afford to buy Final Draft so I can actually begin writing the screenplay.

In the meantime, I may sketch the concept out as a short story or novella or even a novel. I guess I want to prove to myself that I’m not only serious about this concept but that it’s strong enough that it’s worth attempting to be serious about in the first place. The camera is the most important thing to buy in the near term because it has a practical way of being able to change my life.

But I’m generally a creative person and I love to tell stories. And just recently I found myself figuring out the outlines of a plot for this concept I’ve been mulling for years. So, we’ll see. Maybe nothing will come of this. I might get bored and move on to the next thing, but if it holds up, I may very well start writing a screenplay about First Contact soon.

The movie concept I have in my head has elements of Contact, Close Encounters of The Third Kind and….in some ways it’s so unique it defies comparison. I’m coming at this problem in a really rather unconventional manner. I find telling stories relaxing just in general, so I may wake up and discover I’ve written a screenplay without realizing.

Mulling A Science Fiction Screenplay

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I have a lot on my plate creatively and limited funds, so I have to be careful what I spend my money on. I really want to buy a professional camera but I also am interested in buying Final Draft, which is script writing software. But the camera is more important than the software, so I am going to force myself to sketch out the screenplay as much as I can without any way of actually formatting it formally.

But the idea I have in my head is pretty strong. I have been thinking about this topic for years and I think I may have finally come up with a way to approach it. But, as always, the toughest part for me is the plot. I have a great concept, but I am really struggling with a plot.

And, yet, I am well aware that no one will help me because I can’t pay them, so I’m going to try to figure out a plot myself. But we’ll see. It will be interesting to see how far I get with this concept before I get fed up and move on to something else. I usually do that, at least in the past.

Saving SnapChat — The Complete Vision

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

If I was tasked with saving SnapChat, here is what I would do.

The first feature I would roll out as soon as I could would be robust discovery of people you didn’t know who happened to be proximity to you. So, there would be a feature where by you could see everyone on SnapChat at a bar you were in and you’d be able to “poke” them or something in such a way that they would know you were interested in them. You could then become SnapChat friends and send snaps to each other before you met IRL.

Maybe SnapChat has something like this already I just don’t know about it, but I know if it did have this feature I would be a heavy user of it. (As it stands, I barely use SnapChat, so there could be any number of different features I don’t know about.)

After I did this, I would slowly roll out a whole lost of features that would be difficult for my competitors to implement. Some of this would require the app having a desktop component that it currently doesn’t have. So, I would give people the ability to have live text chat with people as well as recorded video conferencing. I would also figure out a way to bring in many of the concepts of Usenet that made it popular 20 years ago. These changes would not come easy and they would be controversial with the user base, to say the least.

But as it stands, SnapChat is doomed. Instagram is going to kill SnapChat unless it innovates and innovates rapidly, so that’s why I even introduce these concepts at all.

Anyway, that’s just the barest skim of what I think should be done. I may come back to this, depending on my mood.

Far Worse Than Watergate, My Ass: How I Quit Worrying & Learned To Love Fuckwits

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

For otherwise grown adults, the Republican Party sure does collectively act like a bunch of little kids. They know the only way to get anyone’s attention is to cry and say this or that dumb conspiracy theory is “far worse than Watergate.” Republicans know they will catch liberals attention by invoking Watergate, even if it, in fact, has nothing to do with what’s going on.

I had a long, painful and weirdly insightful discussion with a Trump supporter recently that at first left me seething and now leavings me somewhat resigned. Talking to him about Trump was a textbook case of gaslighting and rhetorical shadowboxing. Even when I landed punches, he wouldn’t admit it. It was extremely frustrating.

But I did learn something about how to debate a Trump cult member. You have to give them specifics. You have to be prepared. If you’re going to engage, not enrage a Trump cultist, you need to be prepared. This is a really big mistake I’ve made in the past. Just because it’s self-evident to you that Trump and his ilk are bigoted, racist misogynists, doesn’t mean you’re not going to have to prove it to a Trump cult member.

The sooner we admit to ourselves that Trump supporters are in a deluded cult, the sooner we will better understand how to address them. They don’t see the fetid, rancid ideological dumpster fire of MAGA as that at all. All they care about is that the economy is “humming” and that ISIS has been largely defeated. It’s really weird that otherwise conservative people would embrace moral relativism in their efforts to support the Dear Leader, while a liberal like me has to stand on principle to get anything done.

Anyway, I guess the point is if you’re going talk to a Trump supporter, you can’t just yell at them the way you want to. You’re going to have to have cold hard facts — lots of them — at your disposal that you can throw at them. They will shadowbox, they will rhetorically bob and weave, but find your hill and die on it. Don’t get distracted by what a target rich environment MAGA is. Find a specific thing that really pisses you off about Trump, learn as much as you can about it and attack, attack, attack.

But we’re all doomed. I need some hope.