After all that storming through this script I find myself more or less in the same position two days past.
Why?
Not enough time my friends!
Today the mission is to at least type up some of the stuff.
I know, it's a pain, especially when you're transferring word text to celtx because the formatting goes all wrong... but, if I don't do it that will mean that until sunday afternoon I won't have added anything to my celtx file... if I do this means that I'll probably be able to at least add what I've typed since the re-formatting doesn't take as long as the typing itself. Double work but best done...
In any case, yesterday, already in bed, already past one, already feeling tired, I did actually manage to write 4 short short stories for a Zine that some friends of mine are compiling.
The stories are all a bit surreal and inspired by Gene Wolfe.
I can't really tell you what they're about.
(well, I could... but that would spoil the effect somehow...)
After the Zine is done (I still don't know if they'll feature there or not) I'll post them here for your delight.
(hopefully!)
Wishing you well.
peace.
Friday, 17 April 2009
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Intimacy/TAF Update
Well, this one is more or less wrapped up.
I was home Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and managed to more or less finish off this script.
It was a tortuous one, I tell you. I wanted to create a kind of Bergman feel to it. Really dense in psychological arguing but also with some hope, with some light at the end of the tunnel.
To be quite honest, half way through I didn't really know how it was going to turn out because there was just so much bile going on that I was feeling that these characters never wanted to see each other again.
But I hope that they touched rock bottom.
That's what I wanted to show.
That sometimes you need to say all the wrong things, share all the truths you've kept hidden - however ridiculous and childish they may seem - in order to come back.
I think Micah and Danielle do this in the film. I think they are honest to one another to an extent they never really managed to before. Perhaps even to themselves.
Maybe there are things left unsaid that are still relevant but, if there are, there are still further drafts and polishing up for them to surface. In any case, there's just so much that you can say with words and perhaps that's something that comes clear in the script. We cannot always fully satisfy each others need for a total explanation of things.
There were a few moments that writing seemed to be going downhill, almost out of control. I could see them clearly in my head and hear the dialogue. Almost as if it were a part of me. Something I had seen at some stage in my life. A recollection feel and at the same time the knowing that this is the first time I'm seeing these things.
I was quite surprised with this script because I knew quite clearly the starting point and the end point. It was the middle, two people locked up in a house for weeks, trying to sort their lives out, that was going to be the though thing. No (hu)Man's Land...
There were several aspects to solving this.
First I knew I wanted a Ingmar Bergman feel to the whole thing. I wanted it to be deep and troublesome. I wanted to be rational but also emotional. I wanted the script to be able to point out problems clearly but also provide answers. On a direct way but also on a more subtle level.
I even considered watching a couple of Bergman's films but since I wanted his black and white period, his early days, and I didn't have any around me, I kind of put it aside.
The second thing was a talk I had with a friend. We had just seen THE FOUNTAIN and we started chatting about it.
She didn't think much of the film. I loved it.
But she raised a very important point. The characters - Isabel and Tomas - in the film aren't really explored. Their love, which is the central thing, isn't really explored. Darren Aronofsky is more concerned in telling us the plot than in talking about the characters personal history. For instance, if he had showed us a bit more of the Izzy/Thomas - in present day - relationship we would've felt a lot more for Thomas' loss, thus making the whole bigger than life journey trying to defeat death for the love of his life so much more powerful.
To me this aspect didn't affect me so much because I had read the comic and, in the comic, the rules of storytelling absorption are somewhat different. For instance, Kent Williams sketchy drawings actually pull the characters closer to you. The fact that you can't see much about their faces and you only a perception of mood more than anything else, makes you instinctively fill in the blanks. The writing works better in the comic as well.
(And there were a few lines in the film that I didn't really buy to be honest...)
But that got me thinking about characters really seriously.
I kept telling her that I didn't know what to write next.
And then I started talking about Micah and suddenly he became more fully alive. I told her the back history of that story (which I'm not going to share here, sorry) and what were the elements that I wanted to integrate and why.
By the time I finished (I must've talked for at least half an hour) I had already a few scenes to write for the next day.
And that's what I did.
I started writing them longhand because it felt more natural. And lo and behold: the pages started to pile up.
And this was the third thing that I picked up. That I really like to write scripts the best in long hand. I know it's a pain typing it all back and, in a way, a waste of time. But the fact is that I write more if I do it in this way. And I'm already revising the text when typing it back. Sometimes efficiency is not just using a computer. Efficiency is knowing how you work best and hone yourself in the process.
In any case, I have also found that if I'm writing a short story or ideas for a script I prefer to use the computer... If it's just text, typing on a keyboard seems to be the preferred medium...
Sometimes not even I understand myself...
So, on Monday and Tuesday I more or less wrote the remaining 40 or 50 pages of the script. I wrapped it all up and typed the final words on Wednesday morning and finished with 106 pages of script.
Done.
Well... not quite. I still need to do at least a scene or two more. I need a scene with their kids. A scene that will show the audience how their life together was before they got there. In order to make it all more believable. I need a scene that will establish their ongoing conflict, but also their love of their kids, the pressure that this creates on their kids, their decision that they need to sort themselves out.
And quite possibly another scene - even if it's a couple of shots with voice over - of their early days together. The happy days that now seem gone without a trace.
Hopefully inspiration will come before the month is over and I'll write these two scenes, add them to the script, organise it a bit and leave it at that before I revise it at some point.
And that's all I have to say about INTIMACY.
Now about TAF...
Yesterday I got home late, watched a couple of episodes of AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER (I'm hooked on it you know...) and proceeded to read and map out what I had done so far with TAF.
Not much it seems. Even though I already had about 40 pages of script... this one is going to be a lot longer than INTIMACY.
But it doesn't really matter. Since this is a comedy, it's better that I have more scenes than needed so that I can then choose the best ones and compress it all a bit.
My initial plan was easy. Show this crazy physical ed teacher's week. We start on the Sunday and we end on the Saturday so that we establish his routine very well.
Then on the Saturday "the event" occurs...
And everything changes and that's when the comedy side of it really kicks in.
I was on Tuesday and already on page 30...
So yesterday I started long handing it and, early this morning - I think with 12 more long hand pages - I got to Friday night. So, I'm hoping that by page 50 I'll be on the "Saturday event"...
After this it should be fairly simple because I already have a whole heap of scenes that I want to do. And these will be a one minute or two minute gags. Again, I want to have quite a number of them so that I can choose from them afterwards.
What I'm going to do today is type up the longhand pages and add them to the rest of the script. Then I'm going to write on a list all the other gag scenes. And a couple more that I've thought off in the meantime.
Then I'm going to organize them in chronological order (kind of...)
and start writing them, longhand.
Hopefully it will all work out in the end.
And soon!
Peace!
I was home Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and managed to more or less finish off this script.
It was a tortuous one, I tell you. I wanted to create a kind of Bergman feel to it. Really dense in psychological arguing but also with some hope, with some light at the end of the tunnel.
To be quite honest, half way through I didn't really know how it was going to turn out because there was just so much bile going on that I was feeling that these characters never wanted to see each other again.
But I hope that they touched rock bottom.
That's what I wanted to show.
That sometimes you need to say all the wrong things, share all the truths you've kept hidden - however ridiculous and childish they may seem - in order to come back.
I think Micah and Danielle do this in the film. I think they are honest to one another to an extent they never really managed to before. Perhaps even to themselves.
Maybe there are things left unsaid that are still relevant but, if there are, there are still further drafts and polishing up for them to surface. In any case, there's just so much that you can say with words and perhaps that's something that comes clear in the script. We cannot always fully satisfy each others need for a total explanation of things.
There were a few moments that writing seemed to be going downhill, almost out of control. I could see them clearly in my head and hear the dialogue. Almost as if it were a part of me. Something I had seen at some stage in my life. A recollection feel and at the same time the knowing that this is the first time I'm seeing these things.
I was quite surprised with this script because I knew quite clearly the starting point and the end point. It was the middle, two people locked up in a house for weeks, trying to sort their lives out, that was going to be the though thing. No (hu)Man's Land...
There were several aspects to solving this.
First I knew I wanted a Ingmar Bergman feel to the whole thing. I wanted it to be deep and troublesome. I wanted to be rational but also emotional. I wanted the script to be able to point out problems clearly but also provide answers. On a direct way but also on a more subtle level.
I even considered watching a couple of Bergman's films but since I wanted his black and white period, his early days, and I didn't have any around me, I kind of put it aside.
The second thing was a talk I had with a friend. We had just seen THE FOUNTAIN and we started chatting about it.
She didn't think much of the film. I loved it.
But she raised a very important point. The characters - Isabel and Tomas - in the film aren't really explored. Their love, which is the central thing, isn't really explored. Darren Aronofsky is more concerned in telling us the plot than in talking about the characters personal history. For instance, if he had showed us a bit more of the Izzy/Thomas - in present day - relationship we would've felt a lot more for Thomas' loss, thus making the whole bigger than life journey trying to defeat death for the love of his life so much more powerful.
To me this aspect didn't affect me so much because I had read the comic and, in the comic, the rules of storytelling absorption are somewhat different. For instance, Kent Williams sketchy drawings actually pull the characters closer to you. The fact that you can't see much about their faces and you only a perception of mood more than anything else, makes you instinctively fill in the blanks. The writing works better in the comic as well.
(And there were a few lines in the film that I didn't really buy to be honest...)
But that got me thinking about characters really seriously.
I kept telling her that I didn't know what to write next.
And then I started talking about Micah and suddenly he became more fully alive. I told her the back history of that story (which I'm not going to share here, sorry) and what were the elements that I wanted to integrate and why.
By the time I finished (I must've talked for at least half an hour) I had already a few scenes to write for the next day.
And that's what I did.
I started writing them longhand because it felt more natural. And lo and behold: the pages started to pile up.
And this was the third thing that I picked up. That I really like to write scripts the best in long hand. I know it's a pain typing it all back and, in a way, a waste of time. But the fact is that I write more if I do it in this way. And I'm already revising the text when typing it back. Sometimes efficiency is not just using a computer. Efficiency is knowing how you work best and hone yourself in the process.
In any case, I have also found that if I'm writing a short story or ideas for a script I prefer to use the computer... If it's just text, typing on a keyboard seems to be the preferred medium...
Sometimes not even I understand myself...
So, on Monday and Tuesday I more or less wrote the remaining 40 or 50 pages of the script. I wrapped it all up and typed the final words on Wednesday morning and finished with 106 pages of script.
Done.
Well... not quite. I still need to do at least a scene or two more. I need a scene with their kids. A scene that will show the audience how their life together was before they got there. In order to make it all more believable. I need a scene that will establish their ongoing conflict, but also their love of their kids, the pressure that this creates on their kids, their decision that they need to sort themselves out.
And quite possibly another scene - even if it's a couple of shots with voice over - of their early days together. The happy days that now seem gone without a trace.
Hopefully inspiration will come before the month is over and I'll write these two scenes, add them to the script, organise it a bit and leave it at that before I revise it at some point.
And that's all I have to say about INTIMACY.
Now about TAF...
Yesterday I got home late, watched a couple of episodes of AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER (I'm hooked on it you know...) and proceeded to read and map out what I had done so far with TAF.
Not much it seems. Even though I already had about 40 pages of script... this one is going to be a lot longer than INTIMACY.
But it doesn't really matter. Since this is a comedy, it's better that I have more scenes than needed so that I can then choose the best ones and compress it all a bit.
My initial plan was easy. Show this crazy physical ed teacher's week. We start on the Sunday and we end on the Saturday so that we establish his routine very well.
Then on the Saturday "the event" occurs...
And everything changes and that's when the comedy side of it really kicks in.
I was on Tuesday and already on page 30...
So yesterday I started long handing it and, early this morning - I think with 12 more long hand pages - I got to Friday night. So, I'm hoping that by page 50 I'll be on the "Saturday event"...
After this it should be fairly simple because I already have a whole heap of scenes that I want to do. And these will be a one minute or two minute gags. Again, I want to have quite a number of them so that I can choose from them afterwards.
What I'm going to do today is type up the longhand pages and add them to the rest of the script. Then I'm going to write on a list all the other gag scenes. And a couple more that I've thought off in the meantime.
Then I'm going to organize them in chronological order (kind of...)
and start writing them, longhand.
Hopefully it will all work out in the end.
And soon!
Peace!
Friday, 3 April 2009
Frenzy!
The Frenzy has started!
And yet the world seems to go about unchanged...
Strange?
Not really. I mean we're talking about the ScriptFrenzy here, where over 10,000 people world wide take their swing at writing scripts...
We remain ignored for the most part - but alive and kicking!
I have two projects this month.
One is a comedy.
The other a drama.
One is for teens with some cheekiness.
The other is for adults with some explicit scenes.
One is live action.
The other an anime.
One is called T.A.F. (or NON-STOP, I still haven't decided...)
And the other is called INTIMACY.
One I know exactly how it's going to end.
The other I don't have a clue.
For both I already have a few scenes in mind.
And I love both of the ideas.
What can go wrong?!!
I've written 20 pages to INTIMACY but only 9 for TAF.
My aim this month is to juggle three things. These two babies and the comics epic that's been around these posts for months now...
I feel like that old man in Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea. Catching the fish of a lifetime and struggling against everything to conquer it. Even bringing it to shore for the whole world to see kind of loses some of its meaning.
I just want to have it ready.
That's it.
Simple.
(upwards and onwards...)
peace.
And yet the world seems to go about unchanged...
Strange?
Not really. I mean we're talking about the ScriptFrenzy here, where over 10,000 people world wide take their swing at writing scripts...
We remain ignored for the most part - but alive and kicking!
I have two projects this month.
One is a comedy.
The other a drama.
One is for teens with some cheekiness.
The other is for adults with some explicit scenes.
One is live action.
The other an anime.
One is called T.A.F. (or NON-STOP, I still haven't decided...)
And the other is called INTIMACY.
One I know exactly how it's going to end.
The other I don't have a clue.
For both I already have a few scenes in mind.
And I love both of the ideas.
What can go wrong?!!
I've written 20 pages to INTIMACY but only 9 for TAF.
My aim this month is to juggle three things. These two babies and the comics epic that's been around these posts for months now...
I feel like that old man in Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea. Catching the fish of a lifetime and struggling against everything to conquer it. Even bringing it to shore for the whole world to see kind of loses some of its meaning.
I just want to have it ready.
That's it.
Simple.
(upwards and onwards...)
peace.
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
A View Of The Mountain - Nearing The End
Hi!
Again more news but still not the ones I'd like to give!
Yes. It's still not completed.
And tomorrow (after midnight) starts the script frenzy - and I'm all up for that!
So I don't know how this coming month will be in terms of our Sage and King...
But I'm hoping I'll continue working on it.
I think it would be foolish to let it go now. Now when the story is clearer than ever in my head.
I think I'll use it as a means to rest in between the other two scripts that I'll be writing.
T.A.F.
and
INTIMACY
The thing is: I'm loving this story more and more.
Recently I've been watching ROME and AVATAR: The Last Airbender and, perhaps strangely, these two series have shed some light on what I'm doing. Not really conceptually, but in the way you structure things.
I guess that's always been the major problem.
If I was doubting the series a while ago, now it's really more a question of having it finished because I really want to see its "roundness" showing...
Anyway, I'll keep you posted on my advances...
...as best as I can!
peace.
Again more news but still not the ones I'd like to give!
Yes. It's still not completed.
And tomorrow (after midnight) starts the script frenzy - and I'm all up for that!
So I don't know how this coming month will be in terms of our Sage and King...
But I'm hoping I'll continue working on it.
I think it would be foolish to let it go now. Now when the story is clearer than ever in my head.
I think I'll use it as a means to rest in between the other two scripts that I'll be writing.
T.A.F.
and
INTIMACY
The thing is: I'm loving this story more and more.
Recently I've been watching ROME and AVATAR: The Last Airbender and, perhaps strangely, these two series have shed some light on what I'm doing. Not really conceptually, but in the way you structure things.
I guess that's always been the major problem.
If I was doubting the series a while ago, now it's really more a question of having it finished because I really want to see its "roundness" showing...
Anyway, I'll keep you posted on my advances...
...as best as I can!
peace.
Friday, 20 March 2009
A View Of The Mountain - The End Is Near(er)
Can't even remember when was the last time I posted here...
That's how spaced out I am...
The only thing I know is that everyday I've looking at all those pages of script and using a lot of red ink.
For a while it felt that, for every solution encountered, three new problems surfaced.
But I think solutions and problems are at a tie...
Still have 20 pages of long hand notes, changes, new scenes and the odd bit of information to type and go through.
Ive been changing the order of quite a few scenes and, quite frankly, I think that there are going to be whole whole sequences chucked out.
Not just re-written.
I read NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Cormac McCarthy) recently and it truly is an amazing book.
This was probably the read I needed the most while correcting this script. Everything in this book serves the story. So much so that it shed some light on what I was trying to do.
And sometimes I feel I'm more connected to the words than to the message that they're supposed to deliver.
Also the importance of preparing the terrain in order to deliver that essence we're trying to communicate.
The ending of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is exemplar in that matter.
A book I have a lot to learn from.
I don't think I'll be able to be as strict and strip my story so much as Cormac McCarthy but, I don't think that's my objective anyway.
The idea is to dabble with a few ideas and make it a bit fable like.
Some realism, but not overly.
I don't want people to continously think "what's the message here?", "what's he talking about now?". I want the experience to be a bit smoother. Things seeping in throughout.
Some moments, some sequences, will definitely have a clear message.
But others are just for the fun and heck of it.
(even though it is clearly becoming a "serious" story...)
Anyway 20 pages to go... at best I'll have this new(er) version of the whole script by sunday evening (and at this point I'm going to go to the IMAX to see WATCHMEN...)
And a new printout by monday.
Which will mean a whole new week of revision for the full script...
I'm hoping that by the end of it everything will be more or less in the right place...
...and I'll have a readable draft!
That's it for now.
Back on the job...
peace
That's how spaced out I am...
The only thing I know is that everyday I've looking at all those pages of script and using a lot of red ink.
For a while it felt that, for every solution encountered, three new problems surfaced.
But I think solutions and problems are at a tie...
Still have 20 pages of long hand notes, changes, new scenes and the odd bit of information to type and go through.
Ive been changing the order of quite a few scenes and, quite frankly, I think that there are going to be whole whole sequences chucked out.
Not just re-written.
I read NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Cormac McCarthy) recently and it truly is an amazing book.
This was probably the read I needed the most while correcting this script. Everything in this book serves the story. So much so that it shed some light on what I was trying to do.
And sometimes I feel I'm more connected to the words than to the message that they're supposed to deliver.
Also the importance of preparing the terrain in order to deliver that essence we're trying to communicate.
The ending of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is exemplar in that matter.
A book I have a lot to learn from.
I don't think I'll be able to be as strict and strip my story so much as Cormac McCarthy but, I don't think that's my objective anyway.
The idea is to dabble with a few ideas and make it a bit fable like.
Some realism, but not overly.
I don't want people to continously think "what's the message here?", "what's he talking about now?". I want the experience to be a bit smoother. Things seeping in throughout.
Some moments, some sequences, will definitely have a clear message.
But others are just for the fun and heck of it.
(even though it is clearly becoming a "serious" story...)
Anyway 20 pages to go... at best I'll have this new(er) version of the whole script by sunday evening (and at this point I'm going to go to the IMAX to see WATCHMEN...)
And a new printout by monday.
Which will mean a whole new week of revision for the full script...
I'm hoping that by the end of it everything will be more or less in the right place...
...and I'll have a readable draft!
That's it for now.
Back on the job...
peace
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
A View Of The Mountain - Uprise & One Last Chance
Yesterday I polished up a short script that I wrote on sunday. I'm calling it ONE LAST CHANCE for the time being.
(the title fits but doesn't feel completely right...)
It talks about doing the wrong things for the right reasons. It's a silent story and it's 30 pages long.
I found it really interesting to write this script for various reasons.
First it started simply with me chatting on the phone with a good friend of mine, also here in London, Marco A..
We were talking about writing, techniques, plot, characters, etc (the usual) and I started telling this story simply to illustrate a point. The idea was that we only get the story figured out as soon as we finish writing it. That's when we have everybody on board and we can start really making things click.
So I told this story about a kid and his girlfriend. And then started working backwards and telling him, now we could do this to make it more intense, and then that to heighten the human side and so forth. By the end I was saying: now I really like this story! I should write it!
And so I did.
But what I deliberately set out to do was to eliminate any speech baloons or captions. Initially this was simply to save time in telling the story. But then it became more of a challenge in being able to communicate ideas simply by using images.
I think it worked out pretty well.
And I realised that this is a brilliant and easy way to get stories out in a really condensed form. If I don't focus on the words then there's little or no backstory coming through. Or, rather, the backstory that comes through is precisely what I need to tell the main thing.
As I was writing it I kept hearing the characters wanting to come and play in my mind. To tell me what they felt, what they were experiencing. Little bits of dialogue between them. But I wanted to simply leave the images so that everybody will get to write those bits of dialogue in their heads, fill the gaps with their own experiences and make the story theirs. That's ultimately the goal of storytelling. The story becomes part of the reader rather than the writer.
In this respect I totally agree with Gene Wolfe. The reader is ultimately more important than the writer. If the receptacle isn't there why bother telling these stories?
I mean, I know them already...
(sort of...)
In any case, I felt this was a good exercise to keep in mind. Next time I'm stuck in a sequence with the dialogue, maybe the whole thing can be sorted out just with images.
Actually I did this yesterday in A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN.
I finally patched up Empire Growth and inserted it in the main text (after removing the old version, of course!), then a quick read (and page numbering!) on the next scene, inserted the new bit of text that I had written straight after Empire Growth (and more page numbering! Always one of my favourite moments...) and...
stopped.
I'm now on page 60.
And I have to re-write this sequence since it no longer holds true with the rest of the story. it's only 3 or 4 pages long so I should be able to do it still today, before I leave.
Since it has a couple of ideas that I want to keep, i'm going to be lazy about this and just re-write the dialogue...
And then... maybe I'll insert some of the script that I wrote yesterday.
I mean, if a guy starts talking about uprises, I guy should show some of that, correct?
That's what I did yesterday night up until 2am, with me falling asleep over pen and paper. 4 pages long hand with some 10 pages of silent panels.
Some good scenes though.
But they're a bit violent.
Well, not that much but, since this comic hasn't had any violence until now I'm a bit undecided if I should insert them in the script or not... The best solution I've come with so far is to insert a part here and keep the rest for the second half of the story, when the Prince is older and can hear about how things really are... At that point I'll probably add some captions to it.
In any case these next 20 pages should be easier...
Hopefully I'll be on page 80 or so by tomorrow...
And this was what I was talking about with Marco over the phone. you don't really get to know the story well until you've told it. Before that, more often than not, one feels that one doesn't know what one is doing... And this is the feeling that gets you - that gets me at least! - you don't know this, you don't know that... you don't even know that this or that is missing! Then the characters change and you don't know why... we have powerful scenes but disconnected from one another... it's a bloody mess. We don't even know where to start and, soon enough, we start thinking that this story isn't good enough to be told.
And we leave it at that.
But time passes.
And memory quickly forgets yesterdays depression and sense of failure.
And another story creeps in and, for some incredibly beautiful moments, this is going to be it. This is the story. the one you always wanted to tell. The one you will tell and that will turn heads and make them nod and smile and know.
But, as soon as you start writing, the question marks drip also into the text alongside the rest of the words.
There is only one solution:
to write.
I know that, as soon as I reach the end of A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN I'll have all the elements to actually clearly understand what this story is about.
I mean, I know the main things, of course, but there are subtler things, details, things that can tighten the story so much more (like Ardul's love of books or somebody else's obsession with war, etc) that only then will I be ready to truly tell it. That's when the structure starts to make some sense.
And it's s strange feeling because, if I think of it, right now, the structure is pretty much arbitratry (with a strong chronological component, though). It doesn't feel right. But, as soon as I go through the motions and tell every bit of this story... then it will start feeling as the best structure possible - and I'll know which bits are out of place.
Now, this is a perfectly alien feeling to me.
So, the main thing is to trust the story and to trust yourself.
Don't worry if you're writing too much. If new scenes keep being added. If you don't know where it's leading you. If everything seems so messy right now.
I get that most of the times.
It's easy getting lost when you have to find your way and the only things you got are a battered old compass that you don't even know if it works properly and a vague sense of direction.
The story needs that space to grow and to find itself.
So tell yourself you trust yourself and, most of all, you trust the story.
I do it all the time.
(it works most times.... other times I just need to be patient until the story is ready to come out...)
I just need to remember that.
And be patient and persevere.
And now I'm going to shut up here and pry my ears open somewhere else...
Probably somewhere with a view over a mountain...
peace.
(the title fits but doesn't feel completely right...)
It talks about doing the wrong things for the right reasons. It's a silent story and it's 30 pages long.
I found it really interesting to write this script for various reasons.
First it started simply with me chatting on the phone with a good friend of mine, also here in London, Marco A..
We were talking about writing, techniques, plot, characters, etc (the usual) and I started telling this story simply to illustrate a point. The idea was that we only get the story figured out as soon as we finish writing it. That's when we have everybody on board and we can start really making things click.
So I told this story about a kid and his girlfriend. And then started working backwards and telling him, now we could do this to make it more intense, and then that to heighten the human side and so forth. By the end I was saying: now I really like this story! I should write it!
And so I did.
But what I deliberately set out to do was to eliminate any speech baloons or captions. Initially this was simply to save time in telling the story. But then it became more of a challenge in being able to communicate ideas simply by using images.
I think it worked out pretty well.
And I realised that this is a brilliant and easy way to get stories out in a really condensed form. If I don't focus on the words then there's little or no backstory coming through. Or, rather, the backstory that comes through is precisely what I need to tell the main thing.
As I was writing it I kept hearing the characters wanting to come and play in my mind. To tell me what they felt, what they were experiencing. Little bits of dialogue between them. But I wanted to simply leave the images so that everybody will get to write those bits of dialogue in their heads, fill the gaps with their own experiences and make the story theirs. That's ultimately the goal of storytelling. The story becomes part of the reader rather than the writer.
In this respect I totally agree with Gene Wolfe. The reader is ultimately more important than the writer. If the receptacle isn't there why bother telling these stories?
I mean, I know them already...
(sort of...)
In any case, I felt this was a good exercise to keep in mind. Next time I'm stuck in a sequence with the dialogue, maybe the whole thing can be sorted out just with images.
Actually I did this yesterday in A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN.
I finally patched up Empire Growth and inserted it in the main text (after removing the old version, of course!), then a quick read (and page numbering!) on the next scene, inserted the new bit of text that I had written straight after Empire Growth (and more page numbering! Always one of my favourite moments...) and...
stopped.
I'm now on page 60.
And I have to re-write this sequence since it no longer holds true with the rest of the story. it's only 3 or 4 pages long so I should be able to do it still today, before I leave.
Since it has a couple of ideas that I want to keep, i'm going to be lazy about this and just re-write the dialogue...
And then... maybe I'll insert some of the script that I wrote yesterday.
I mean, if a guy starts talking about uprises, I guy should show some of that, correct?
That's what I did yesterday night up until 2am, with me falling asleep over pen and paper. 4 pages long hand with some 10 pages of silent panels.
Some good scenes though.
But they're a bit violent.
Well, not that much but, since this comic hasn't had any violence until now I'm a bit undecided if I should insert them in the script or not... The best solution I've come with so far is to insert a part here and keep the rest for the second half of the story, when the Prince is older and can hear about how things really are... At that point I'll probably add some captions to it.
In any case these next 20 pages should be easier...
Hopefully I'll be on page 80 or so by tomorrow...
And this was what I was talking about with Marco over the phone. you don't really get to know the story well until you've told it. Before that, more often than not, one feels that one doesn't know what one is doing... And this is the feeling that gets you - that gets me at least! - you don't know this, you don't know that... you don't even know that this or that is missing! Then the characters change and you don't know why... we have powerful scenes but disconnected from one another... it's a bloody mess. We don't even know where to start and, soon enough, we start thinking that this story isn't good enough to be told.
And we leave it at that.
But time passes.
And memory quickly forgets yesterdays depression and sense of failure.
And another story creeps in and, for some incredibly beautiful moments, this is going to be it. This is the story. the one you always wanted to tell. The one you will tell and that will turn heads and make them nod and smile and know.
But, as soon as you start writing, the question marks drip also into the text alongside the rest of the words.
There is only one solution:
to write.
I know that, as soon as I reach the end of A VIEW OF THE MOUNTAIN I'll have all the elements to actually clearly understand what this story is about.
I mean, I know the main things, of course, but there are subtler things, details, things that can tighten the story so much more (like Ardul's love of books or somebody else's obsession with war, etc) that only then will I be ready to truly tell it. That's when the structure starts to make some sense.
And it's s strange feeling because, if I think of it, right now, the structure is pretty much arbitratry (with a strong chronological component, though). It doesn't feel right. But, as soon as I go through the motions and tell every bit of this story... then it will start feeling as the best structure possible - and I'll know which bits are out of place.
Now, this is a perfectly alien feeling to me.
So, the main thing is to trust the story and to trust yourself.
Don't worry if you're writing too much. If new scenes keep being added. If you don't know where it's leading you. If everything seems so messy right now.
I get that most of the times.
It's easy getting lost when you have to find your way and the only things you got are a battered old compass that you don't even know if it works properly and a vague sense of direction.
The story needs that space to grow and to find itself.
So tell yourself you trust yourself and, most of all, you trust the story.
I do it all the time.
(it works most times.... other times I just need to be patient until the story is ready to come out...)
I just need to remember that.
And be patient and persevere.
And now I'm going to shut up here and pry my ears open somewhere else...
Probably somewhere with a view over a mountain...
peace.
Saturday, 7 March 2009
Empire Growth - A View Of The Mountain
Been doing panels for a scene I was working on yesterday.
Sometimes you spend quite a lot of time trying to figure out how you're to do this in order to fit that when it's just easier to re-do the whole thing rather than trying to use bits and pieces.
That's what I'm doing now. Instead of cutting and pasting I just created something new visually that I'm hoping will reflect in part what the script is about.
I don't even remember where the original scene takes place, but this one is going to be inside the throne room.
The whole debate (and ongoing theme during the comic) rotates around the lasting implications of war in a feudalized society (of which we are still an example - though in disguised form).
The objective is to establish some tension between some characters and introduce some themes that will be explored with more detail further on...
hinting at stuff amid the verbal storm...
I'm still on page 43 of the script, though... but it's cool. I've re-written this whole scene and I think it's flowing much better than before.
Now I just need to figure out if the next ones fit well into the story...
peace.
Sometimes you spend quite a lot of time trying to figure out how you're to do this in order to fit that when it's just easier to re-do the whole thing rather than trying to use bits and pieces.
That's what I'm doing now. Instead of cutting and pasting I just created something new visually that I'm hoping will reflect in part what the script is about.
I don't even remember where the original scene takes place, but this one is going to be inside the throne room.
The whole debate (and ongoing theme during the comic) rotates around the lasting implications of war in a feudalized society (of which we are still an example - though in disguised form).
The objective is to establish some tension between some characters and introduce some themes that will be explored with more detail further on...
hinting at stuff amid the verbal storm...
I'm still on page 43 of the script, though... but it's cool. I've re-written this whole scene and I think it's flowing much better than before.
Now I just need to figure out if the next ones fit well into the story...
peace.
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