Monday, March 17, 2008

Script Frenzy: Angrying Up the Blood

I've been debating whether or not to do the Frenzy this year. I had fun doing it last year. Although, like with NaNo I "won" not with a finished product but, rather, through my unimpressive ability to string a lot of vaguely related words together. Oh, and my impressive ability to self-rationalize. That helped, too. In other words, I went well over the word count but didn't wind up with a finished script. Not until much later when I finally polished it off.

And, yes, it completely sucks. And I'm still proud of it.

And I do like the script format since it plays to what I perceive as my writing strengths: an ear for characterization through dialog and layered foreshadowing (Granted, most of it never pays off since I tend to get bored with things well before I finish them but I think I'm passingly adequate at getting that gun above the mantle, so to speak. Setting things up to pay off down the line since I tend to think in complicated webs of images and impressions.). And cover for what I perceive as a big weakness which is my tendency to focus on either dialog or description to the detriment, if not exclusion, of the other. Since a script is all about breaking up speach into dialog and description into discrete actions and the entire manuscript into small units that are easier to deal with my tendencies actually work with me rather than against me. Scenes come naturally to me. Plotting out how to get from one to the other is innate.

I'd really like to write more of them.

But, then, I could say that about a lot of things.

At the moment, though, I'm leaning against participating. It's the same reason I've been away here: too busy, too little time, too much going on. If the Frenzy were to happen in June or July, the way it did last year, then it wouldn't be such a big deal since I'd have more free time. If nothing else, I'd at least have fewer classes and finals to worry about. As it is, most of the night and weekend classes I'm taking this year wind up in the first week of May, meaning that April is the stretch run through them. Throw in work and everything else I'm committed to and, well, I don't know if I could do yet another project justice. As always, I'm not worried about reaching the finish line - which is measured in pages rather than word count this year making it, I'd think, even easier to accomplish - that would come in due time. What I am worried about is making it there with something worthwhile. I don't want to just write a bunch of drivel, in other words, this year, at this point, I'd like to have something I could shop around when I'm finished.

Then again, I just found out that, this year, you can write a comic book.

<-- Torn.

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