Script Frenzy: The Project!

So, as of today, Script Frenzy's 15 days from starting. I've got a drawer full of ideas – plot points and character hooks – just raring to go. But, again, I'm a novice script writer so, for the past few weeks, I've been trying to gear slowly but surely up. Angry up my blood, so to speak, to unleash a world of pain on my upcoming script project. My admittedly brief dabbling in the medium has been promising. The word count goal for the Frenzy is a mere 20k words. That's less than 1k a day and since I managed to crank out 50k (Mainly out of dialog, too) during November, I wasn't too worried. Having tried writing a few short scripts, I'm more worried about what I'm going to do with the rest of the month once I get done than whether I'll finish or not.

Still, that's just piling words on top of each other until I pass the finish line. Actually writing a half-way decent script is a completely different matter. I'm not quite confident I can do that. But to prepare myself, I'm going to embark on yet another of my harebrained schemes. With 15 days left, I think there's enough time for a personal, mini-frenzy all my own. Just to challenge myself, to push my limits, and challenge what I think are my weaknesses. Which, at this point I see as dealing with the narrative aspect of scriptwriting and less so the dialog. I think I'm going to go for a movie rather than a stage play if only because then I can have a bigger brush (Okay, so mainly it's so I won't have to deal with the stage directions.) but, as anyone can tell you, movies are a very visual medium. Dialog is dialog but I'm much more used to working with description and scene setting in prose. I'm not quite sure, still, how you go about it with a movie script. Without, as I've learned should be avoided, getting overly “directorial”.

The script's just the first stage, after all. You want to set the scene, establish that mental picture while still leaving room for the actors and the director and the camera to add their parts. It's, from what I can tell from reading various scripts, more about sketching in a scene rather than getting into lots of moving, establishing description.

Anyhow, here's my deal, I want to work on that aspect of scriptwriting and I think the best way to do so is to write a script that feature next to no dialog. With the time remaining, I think I have the time to do a short film or something equivalent. But, instead, I think I'm going to try something different – a comic book.

Like any good comic fan, I've always wanted to write one, so I figure why not? The best part is that I think my drafting skills haven't degraded too much so, if I can crank things out, I can take that script and work up the next step – actual panels. I'm hoping it works because storyboarding my script might help me to work through some roadblocks. So, that's my plan for the next few weeks. Write a comic script, draw that script, and work on my descriptive powers in that form. I'd say more but, as always, the surest way never to write a post is to mention you're writing it.