Script Frenzy WrapUp

Hi.
I know it's been a while.
April was a bit of a hectic month, not only because the frenzy was happening but also because I was organizing some events for Lambeth's Readers And Writers Festival.
Happening in May.
Namely one event with Brendan McCarthy (the psychedelic GOD that he is) at Minet Library on the 16th, 2.30pm.
And another with Pat Mills (2000AD, Slaine, Charlie's War and, a personal favourite, Marshall Law, among many others, of course) and Ilya (the editor of The Mammoth Book Of Best New Manga and the one behind the about-to-come-out adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear). This will happen in Streatham Library on the 23rd of May. A Saturday, from 7.30pm onwards.

If you want more info, simply drop me a line at pgalvao@lambeth.gov.uk
(and I'll be able to add you to the Graphic Novels Reading Group mailing list too, if you want)

or go to

http://community.livejournal.com/lambeth_comics

There are quite a few posts about it (so you'll have to scroll down and search for them) and I'll probably be posting a refresher in the next couple of days.

You can also book yourself (and friends!) for any of the events on:

readersandwriters@lambeth.gov.uk

But back to the frenzy...

Well, I did manage to finish it. Wrote just over 100 pages for INTIMACY and about 160 for T.A.F.
And, funnily enough, the whole month went opposite to what I had anticipated.

I started the month really wanting to get my hands on the comedy and a bit afraid of what I was going to do with a massive drama...

Knowing this I tried to spend as much time as possible with INTIMACY and really getting worked up with a lot of internal debate, visualising the scenes over and over again until something made sense, clicked or the two characters simply started ranting at one another.

To tell you the truth, at some point the whole thing felt like it was going to quietly explode and Micah and Danielle (the couple) were simply going to get out of that place never wanting to see each other again.

But I wanted for there to be some light at the end of the tunnel and, since it made sense within the story, there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
Actually I think that the light at the end of the tunnel simply reveals a landscape similar to the one left behind (at the beginning of the tunnel...). The difference is that there is a sense of things being broader and more easily dealt with.
To me it's not so much the "happily ever after" but rather the realization that they want to be together, despite the past, ready to face the changes time will bring, one after the other.

Even though the first draft is quite rough - the scenes aren't in order and definitely need to be revised - at least I think I managed to achieve what I feared I could very much fail when I started the script. Being deep and analytical though not overly. Create something that was intense emotionally but that grabbed rather than push away. Allow the characters to breather and their play of tensions both pull them together and apart.

At least I believe that all these elements are there and ready to be worked into something that will appeal and make you wonder. And feel. And identify to some extent.

With TAF the scenario was much different.

When I had the idea I just kept laughing because I just had in a rush a bunch of crazy ideas and I could see them all playing in my head and they were funny, and the idea made sense and I wanted to write them.
But then the blank screen stared back and, after contemplating the same gag for 20 times or more, it starts losing its brilliance. And when you sit down to writing it you begin to wonder if it's actually that funny.
And when you begin to describe it you feel that this description of it isn't really that funny. and that you can't really translate the images in your head (that have all this sound and colour and energy) into the paper.
I found myself not wanting to write any of the scenes that I had wanted so much to write in the beginning.

Solution?

I started writing the story in chronological order.
And I tried not to think if I was being funny or not.

You see, what I realized (and it's always the same lesson, I know...) was that the thing that stood more in the way were my expectations. I had in my head a film that was meant to be gag after gag and totally crazy.
But, when I sat down to write it, I had to do it in an organized manner, in a not so crazy way (even though I did have my moments...).
What I kept reminding myself is that the objective is that the end result to be funny. I cannot expect to get it right the first time around.
So I did my best to stop worrying and got the story down.

Because for me this film was also about the story. And more and more as I kept on writing it. I mean, initially Lester's son was just a kid that sometimes showed up and with whom Lester could do crazy stuff. But then I started realizing the potential of having there someone sharing those experiences but with a totally different perspective. So the film stopped being so centralized on Lester and became more of a duet.

As it stands now it kind of moves halfway through from Lester to Joey. Lester is always the main character and the story is about him and his accident, but Joey becomes increasingly important. And the theme of love we launch in the beginning keeps being transmuted in different ways throughout the story.

It is a feel good film. But even in this there is a difference. Initially it was simply a comedy. A bunch of gags and a crazy guy doing weird stuff and having weird stuff happening to him. But as Lester started interacting and I consequently became more aware of the dynamics and kept some level of realism going in order for some measure of bird's eye view to be experienced by the viewer at the end, I realized that the story had changed, that it now had different needs and that it wanted to cause more than just laughs.

I think it's a better story and a better film for it.

In any case, on the 30th of April I posted my results at about 10pm, cycled back home and, surprisingly, whilst expecting to just get home and switch off by watching a film or something, I started tinkering about with RIGOR MORTIS and came up with a few more ideas and actually spent a couple of hours jamming some stuff onto paper...

But more on that on the next post!

Hope you are all well!

Peace.

More View For The Mountain

Two and a half weeks gone past in a flash.
Went to portugal for 7 days and, thus, the writing more or less stopped.

Going back to my diary I can see that I worked a bit on RIGOR MORTIS and LAST RITES before I went but also in various other things. Mainly transferring the ideas I had in Myanmar from longhand to word files...

Even before I went I managed to do that analogue copy paste thing and assembled all the files and began mixing things a bit but it soon became too convoluted for me to pursue it. So what I did was make some sort of little cards with the name of the file, page, scene, characters and brief synopsis of content and then shuffled it all around on the wall.

Today I manage to do all the copy pasting on a word file that is now 205 pages long. The comic itself is probably closer to 250... seems way too long but it may well work this way. I'm not interested in making it smaller just for the sake of it. I suppose this is one of the benefices of non comissioned work. I can just do whatever the heck I please!

But I've been very good with A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN. I've been working on it everyday and it hasn't left my mind a day since I came back from Myanmar.

I also finished polishing up the second draft for LAND OF FOG. Mainly cosmetics in relation to the first (spelling, phrase construction, you know...) and two new chapters. I think they round the story a bit more.

And now I only have to figure out what I'm going to do with all the other ideas that I had in Burma... I don't really feel like doing a sequel. But perhaps a few short stories. Or a long short story would be in order.

(not again!!!)

I've been reading a few of Gene Wolfe's amazing short stories and I'm trying attain a greater depth in my storytelling. The man is quite clearly a god of writing and he teaches his mastery at every phrase, at each page and word. There is much I still need to learn. Everything flows so well with him. There never seems to be any rush to get anywhere and, yet, the story is always there. It's always present, taking care of the reader.
I'd like to be able to write like this.

But I'll continue writing even if I don't!

Today I'm hoping I'll start patching the huge scenes quilt that I have managed to weave today. There are bits missing and I want simply to start at the beginning and start filling the gaps. Missing panels and missing links between certain scenes.
After that I'm going to go through my extensive list of notes and tick all the "objectives" for this story. All the themes/subjects that I wanted to cover.
Then I think I'll print it out and read it all over again, make whatever changes I feel necessary and, finally, deem it a first draft!

(I'm very curious about how many pages the comic will actually have... the is the biggest story I've attempted to write yet!)

peace.

Writing A Retreat Away

Even though my daily, early morning, meditation practice hasn't been the best lately, I have been complying to the type-up-your-retreat-stuff-quickly-so-that-you-can-move-to-do-other-stuff everyday.

But I already have 8 LIFE INSIDE MIND short comics (usually one or two pages long), 9 MINDFUL vs MINDLESS cartoon strips (four panels each, typically) and added some more stuff to LAND OF FOG, LOVE RITES, RIGOR MORTIS and LAST RITES among other things.

I'm typing everything up. Even the things I now feel don't work as well as when I felt them inside of me there and then. And I'm then creating the panel descriptions where needed. This is actually why it has taken me so long with some of the things. Most times, when I'm writing comics scripts, I simply focus on the dialogue with the odd note to the setting here and there. From all the stuff that I wrote in Myanmar, most is simply dialogue with a brief description of the general idea behind it - if needed.

Today I have also been planning the next few sessions for the Graphic Novels Reading Group and this idea I had about giving out wacky awards to our favourite comics creators.

If you're interested in finding out more about the group this is the place to go:

http://community.livejournal.com/lambeth_comics/

Tomorrow and friday I'm off so my plan is to type up and finish as much of the stuff that I did in Myanmar as possible and make a start on A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN. I have three print outs that I need to stitch together and then chop up and then combine... it's going to be a good arts and crafts day...

Apart from this another brief revision of LAND OF FOG seems to be in order. Maybe I'll do this before I leave today... after all it's only the last three chapters that I really need to look into...

peace.

Back From Old Burma

Yes, well, all things must change and thus, here I am, finding myself in a strangely familiar situation.

The myanmar meditation retreat was excellent. As always. Lots of ups and downs and remembering things I had forgotten, re-learning things that I still remembered and finding new things altogether.
So much so that a part of me wants to type up the journey and publish it online.
Perhaps even adding stuff from my previous retreat.
But I must be realistic and say - not for now! It's more important that I actually focus on that book about it rather than in creating more work. The important thing is the content and that book really has all the key things. My hope is that it will reflect not only my experiences - only important because they serve as examples for the practice - but also the deep relevance of the practice.
You'll be hearing about it soon...

Obviously, as I meditated I had a bunch of ideas...
Some of these are cartoons about the practice (which I have called Mindfull Versus Mindless) and are quite comical.
But some of the other stuff contains not only ideas for stories that I had already been working on but also a couple of new things. A series of one page comics called Life Inside Mind and yet another, more lenghtier series called either Rigor Mortis or Shunted Light... I still haven't got my head around it.

In any case I think I have learned a few valuable lessons this time. Part of me really wants to share them but I don't know if this is really the space. What I will do is write an email, both in english and in portuguese and send that out to some friends.
Maybe I'll post it here.
Maybe.

I had some new ideas for LAND OF FOG and so, now the book has two more chapters.
(3 or 4 pages more)
And there are also a couple of ideas for a couple of short stories that take place after the events in LAND OF FOG.
And they end up tying in with another book I started writing last year but that won't see the light of day anytime soon. This is probably the conceptually most daring thing I've ever considered doing and I want to be more mature in order to make it all that I think it can be. A deep exercise in creativity. I think it will write itself through the upcoming years.

So. I've been polishing a new draft for LAND OF FOG but also some letters that I wrote to friends while away. Also a series of comedy sketches in portuguese... and, of course, RIGOR MORTIS that simply just doesn't get out of my head. I'd like it to be a 60 or 70 page comic but I feel that the potential is really for an ongoing series. At the same time I think doing a series is just milking it a bit. It needs to be dense and powerdul. Actually it could also work as a feature film. Quite well I would say. The only problem is the ending. For the time being it's an open ending. There's really no punchline. Or, the punchline is, things are as they are: we merely choose when faced with them. And the journey is ongoing.

Things to do for the next few days;
Get back on track with A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN, finish LAND OF FOG and write up a first draft for MS, a children's book.
And a bit more on RIGOR MORTIS.
And finish those comedy sketches...

Hope you are all well!
peace