Script Frenzy: The Problem

I am not happy with my script, as the saying goes, as it is currently construed. The problem, I think, stems from a lack of preparation. Although I have a pretty sizable outline document it's proving to be next to worthless. It's nothing more than a collection of plot ideas and character hooks.

Have you ever seen that one Seinfeld episode? The one where he had a brilliant idea in the middle of the night? Scratched it down on a handy notepad, chuckling all the while. Wakes up the next day and it's an incoherent mess. The rest of the episode he's showing everyone his note trying to make heads or tails of the scribble thinking it's got to be devastatingly funny. Finally, at the end, he understands what he's written and goes, “Oh. Well, that's just not funny.” That's how I feel about my outline. I had what seemed like a good idea at the time but it's not doing me any good at the moment.

It's not a story. It's a collection of random elements. Not something that's lending itself to creating an actual plot. And, as you might imagine, it's turning into a rambling, ball of nonsense. I was hoping that, as things went on, I'd be able to pull some order out of the chaos but it's not happening right now.

Another thing bothering me about the script is also how it's getting away from me. I'm not quite sure how long exactly a movie should be – I mean, I know one page equals roughly a minute of film time, but how much story do you pack into a 20k word script? So, I tried to have as much going on as possible, as many ways of padding, if need be. But, at the moment, I figure I've got about 2k worth of words down. Or roughly 10% of the script done. Based on that, I have way too many subplots and stories to resolve. I've got enough for a few movies, not just the one I'm writing. Fixing it means taking an axe to it, which I'm not ready to do just yet.

I don't know, something's got to give.

Well, I had other things going on today, so I'm going to get my hour or so of writing in for the night now. We'll see how that goes.

Script Frenzy: The Invisible Hand of the Author (Progress Update 1)

Is it wrong to want to strangle one of my characters? She's completely annoyed the hell out of me. Which is probably a bad thing when I'm trying to write her as a precocious preteen hipster temptress.

So, yeah, I haven't done much on the script just yet. I decided to try my hand at introducing one of the main character's love interests (In the broad sense of the term, as we're going for the clueless lovable loser angle here.). If you'll remember, my main character is a young teen suffering the withering horrors of thinking he's smarter than anyone else around. Nose in a book, ruminating on philosophy, mild case of Asperger's syndrom, that sort of thing. This girl is something of a reflection of that. She's not quite an intellectual but she does consider herself more mature and sophisticated than anyone else around (Key words there being “she considers herself”. But, hey, being delusional is part of what being young's all about. Especially about your self-image.). She's slightly younger, maybe a grade or two behind my main character, and she seeks him out, gets drawn to him, because she sees him as something of kindred spirit. My main character, of course, is completely oblivious and has no idea what to make of her.

The plan is to have a few of these female characters to bounce off the main character and he'll eventually wind up kissing one of them – the dramatic tension being you know he's going to get kissed, you just don't know by who and how exactly this dweeb (at the start of the film) is going to manage it. I'm at three now, although this girl is the first one I've actually put into the script as yet (The romance angle that forms the main plot is probably going to be the hardest one to write, convincingly, since the characters involved are so young and, well, goofy. I'm not exactly doing a comedy so much as I am something off-kilter with heart. But there's going to be some character driven humor as much as there will be some real drama. On a related note, I really liked Knocked Up. Maybe I'm just depressed because I'll never write that good – although if it's like other Apatow films, it's more than likely massively improvised.). Four, maybe, if I include that adventurous, boisterous cousin for that forbidden fruit flavor. Because, hey, who doesn't want to see a heart-warming treatment of incest in a family picture? The thing is, I'm not entirely sure which girl's going to wind up being the winner of that particularly uninspiring sweepstakes. It's one of those open questions I'm hoping I'll solve in the process of writing the script. So, this girl could wind up being my main character's first love.

She's supposed to be the one he keeps bumping into by accident wherever he goes. I'm having a real hard time nailing down her voice. I know I want her to be trying hard, real hard, to sound smart and witty but, so far, it's coming off like she's sitting there with a thesaurus in hand. I think – out of nothing more than spite - I'm going to actively sabotage her chances now. I've already, by complete accident, given her the most annoying laugh ever.

I don't know. This script has problems. And I haven't been very motivated today. Partly because of the sweltering heat the moment I step outside wicking away my enthusiasm. Partly because I decided to go and watch the game with some friends on the “pain is best shared” basis. I really had to force myself to write it out today. I'm not sure how much I wrote, but it's far less than I did the other day (Which is okay since I was well ahead of the pace yesterday. I figure I'm, maybe, at 2k right now. Which, after 2 days, isn't too bad.). And it's a lot more piece-meal and, frankly, sucky. Still, according the NaNo spirit, I'm not going to delete it. I just kept going until I hit my limit. I'm not exactly pleased with the results but part of the whole idea is to just write and write and eventually you'll get something worth keeping. Some days, though, you just have to clear the crud out of your pen.

Red Striped

Well, the basketball game sucked. Hard to believe, going in, that it would be the Pistons that ran out of gas.

The weird thing to me is that, on the basis of this series, the Cavs have made the jump. Largely because LeBron's made the jump. Cleveland's going to rule the East for the next 6~10 year, the way things stand. I don't know how they do it, honestly, because once you get beyond LeBron there's not a player on the Cavaliers who's more than barely above league average.

Anyway, boo end of the Piston's season. Hooray Frenzy!

My main character's name – for the time being is Artie. Somehow, whenever I write a slugline, it comes out ARITE. The first hit on a google search for arite is a used auto parts store. I have no idea what this means, but it means something.

Probably that I need to quit for the night.

Progress!

Not much has been made, really. I did manage to get a hell of a lot of blogging done, although it won't pay much dividends today. But, as for the Frenzy, I don't know. I'm not really feeling very confident. I'm not sure I like my script idea (If you'll remember, I selected one from three potentials. And you don't even want to know how many more ideas I have bouncing around my ideas.) I'm not sure I'm writing very well. I'm not sure I'm interested in continuing with this particular script. I might just want to switch to something else.

The idea I really want to write about, right now, is one I can't because I went and wrote a little bit of it already. Just to get used to writing a script in advance because, again, I've never done it before. But, according to Script Frenzy rules, you can't work on your script in advance of the competition. So, I'm screwed. It's probably for the best since, although I'm interested in it, I'm interested because it's the sort of horrible complex and convoluted idea that I normally let run away with my writing. I'm trying to actually finish my script this month, not just get to 20k words and pat myself on the back. So the sort of grand, moving, war time opera I want to tell is not going to help me there.

I did get some work done on my script, although I'm leaving my word count bare for the moment. I really don't count my words up minute by minute or even day to day (At least not until the finish line gets close). I'm guestimating I have around .75~1k of pure script so far. Most of my work went into further fleshing out my outline/story bible (Which is a lot larger than my script at the moment.). My main problem at the moment is I can't tell, exactly, what year I want to set this story in. It's a coming of age plot set sometime in the 90s, the early 90s, but nailing down the exact date is proving troublesome. And that date would be important to the overall plot, of course, depending on what it actually is, it's a matter of picking which date and which plot direction I want to head in. As always, my problem isn't getting started, it's getting focused. I think I'm close, though, as I've whittled it down to two major choices that I'm going to research carefully before coming to a decision.

I put some work in building up some scenes and character details about my main character's older brother. I'm planning to work in “arcs”. Distinct story units which I'll be able to break up and piece together into a coherent plot line. So, it'll be less a set line of rising and falling actions and more of a series of vignettes arranged around a central theme (Somehow crammed into the 3 Act structure by the main plot arcs, I hope.). And I had a few ideas about that older brother I wanted to get down. I'm also probably going to include another older brother, this one around 15 or so, who'll be learning to drive to add yet another thread to carry throughout the story. But, mostly, I worked on what I call the “yardwork” arc. Or, the one that makes sure I'll never ever be able to film this movie.

I dunno, maybe I'm upset because I haven't nailed the “Bunny Holocaust” yet. I'm going to have to rewrite that one a bunch, I think, but that usually makes it better.

Or maybe I'm just overthinking things (You think?). I'm not really into the free flowing, free moving spirit of the pen that embodies NaNo/Frenzy yet. Tensing up because I've been looking forward to this and I want to do it right. And, you know, I'm not sure I can. Still, a quick look around the Frenzy boards (I really have to drop some posts there and connect with people. But I've been too busy writing today to get it done.) has renewed my vigor somewhat. I'm going to put on my miner's hat and get back to digging, I think. I'll find what I'm looking for yet.

Big Pistons game tomorrow. Don't know if that'll be good or bad for my word count but, at this point, I'm pretty much obligated to watch for whatever small mojo I might bring to the proceedings. Hopefully, I'll have time to get my thoughts down on the matter tomorrow but, in brief, while I think the saving grace of the series, as far as the Pistons are concerned is the pucker factor - they were in this same spot last year and managed to turn the tables on Cleveland and they haven't forgotten it - and the Cavs and LeBron are due for an emotional let down after Game 5's double OT theatrics, the Cavs have matured with leaps and bounds over this series. This isn't the same team that lost a 3-2 lead last year and I'm pretty sure they're going close it out.

Okay, not so brief, then.

Edit before I hang it up: I'm weak. I checked my word count. I had to. But you know what it was at? 1337. That's just how I roll, player. Okay, I'm done for the night.

Script Frenzy: How We Do

Okay, it's June 1st, the Frenzy has begun and I'm taking a short break from writing to...write...a...blog entry. Yeah, I have issues. Anyway, I just thought I'd detail my plans for handling this month's challenge.

First, the SCRIPT:

As you can see here, I'm going with idea #1, a script I'm calling “First Kiss” in lieu of, you know, a title that's actually good. It's the heartwarming story of a young boy coming of age in suburban Detroit in the early 90s (I hope.). And it sounds more autobiographical than it is.

The EQUIPMENT:

Instead of installing a dedicated script writing program like ? or ?, I've decided to stick with my normal OpenOffice Writer. I've been using it almost exclusively since I installed it late last year and I'm pretyt comfortable with it. It's not quite as feature intensive as the latest release of, say, Microsoft Word, but it does what I need and it's butter smooth to use. Plus there's that whole open source software for geek credits thing. I've done a few test runs at script writing and I find it's not that hard to format things well in Writer, so I'm fine with it. A dedicated program might make things easier but it means one more niche program cluttering up my harddrive. I try to go by the small kitchen rule for that sort of thing – avoid unitaskers which can only do one thing well in favor of multitaskers which do several things well enough.

The PACE:

It's 20,000 words in 30 days. That's 666 words a day. I think I've written more than that today just answering e-mails already. So, it's not exactly hard.

However, I'm weird in that I'm not going to obsessively check my word count. Really. I know, it freaks people out when I say it, but during NaNo, I hardly bothered to check my word count at the end of the day – I'd be lying if I said I never did it at all. But I've written enough by now to have a good sense for how much I've written, adjusted for font size and page spacing, that I don't really need to. I'll write and write and I'll get there eventually, I'm not exactly worried about reaching 600+ words a day.

The SCHEDULE:

Although I don't have much going on right now, I'm going to try and stick to a schedule for when (And, to a lesser extent, where) to write. It worked fairly well during last November, my first NaNo, so I'm not going to mess with what works. That means I'm going to set aside a few hours each day in which to write. Maybe I'll write more, maybe I'll write less but since I could routinely crack the 10k plateau during NaNo, I don't think it'll be too much of a hindrance to my progress. I find it's better for my output, both in terms of quantity and quality, to just set a limit and more or less stick to it. I'm not saying I set an egg timer and when it rings it's hands off the keyboard. I'll finish a thought or jot down notes about where I was heading or whatever. But when I hit my limit, it's time to call it a wrap before I get too tired. That's when I start writing drivel and wake up the next day bereft of ideas. So, no matter how hot the fires of creation have been stoked, I leave off. Script Frenzy's a marathon, not a sprint, after all. And I'm not so much worried about making it to the end as much as I am making something halfway decent. Slow and steady is the plan here.

Also, whenever I find myself stuck or at a loss, I tend to throw myself into something else in the hopes of kick starting my idea machine. It might or might result in a lot of posts around here. It's very likely if last November is any judge, but that was also right when the blog was first starting so I'm not sure it can be taken as anything other than an outlier. But, write a blog post, post on a forum, do a writing exercise, draw some sketches, sing a song, whatever, as long as it's something creative.

The WORD WAR:

Soluna (She cracked, like, 100k during November. I hunt big game.) shut down her blog and seems to have disappeared into the ether. I keep meaning to post something in the hopes that, like invoking the e-king, it will cause some kind of spectacular resurrection but, you know, I'm not sure if it wouldn't be bad luck – I was about to post a post/response to something she wrote and that's when I noticed she was gone. But I haven't heard from her or any of my NaNo friends. Then again, I haven't really looked. All of my real life friends look at me with sad, pitying eyes whenever I bring up this Frenzy thing, plus, they all know how much verbiage I can throw down by now. So, at the moment, I have no ass to kick up and down the margins. Ah well, I'll find someone soon enough.

I Found Soluna[1]!

And she already has 1k of words in the bank. I have, um, none. Of course, you realize, this means war.

Soluna! I must break you!

[1] - Found via searching around for some names from my NaNo buddy list. You think they'd have made that easy to export, too, as long as they were letting you transfer the name and password but I can see where that would have been a nightmare.

No Toggle Stance

For no reason that I'm prepared to explain, the following popped into my head tonight. What I wish some politician would say:

“I'm sorry, but I'd like to respond to that juvenile interpretation of strength. My opponent thinks I'm weak because I'm willing to listen to others. That I'm indecisive because I take the time to think before acting. That I'm wishy-washy because I'm capable of changing my mind. I'm not sure just what it is he expects me to do once I'm in office but let me tell you, I intend to gather the best and brightest minds around myself. Whether I agree with them initially or not. I'll ask them their opinions about the issue at hand. I'll listen to what they have to say and give it the due consideration. And then I'll make up my mind and move forward. That's not weakness. That's wisdom.”

Yeah, this culture warrior's on frenzy.

Why Rudy Will Never Be President

I hope, anyways. He says things like this:

In a potential preview of next fall’s presidential contest, Mr. Giuliani, who is seen as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, directly attacked the leading Democratic candidate, Mrs. Clinton, over a speech she gave Tuesday in New Hampshire bemoaning the return of “robber barons” and promising to pursue “shared prosperity” by increasing taxes on Americans making more than $200,000 a year.

“This would be an astounding, staggering tax increase,” Mr. Giuliani told reporters yesterday after a visit to a restaurant on the edge of California’s Silicon Valley. “She wants to go back to the 1990s…. It would hurt our economy. It would hurt this area dramatically. That kind of tax increase would see a decline in your venture capital. It would see a decline in your ability to focus on new technology.” (Emphasis added.)

Um, yes, I would like to go back to the 90s, please. That's not a bad thing. I remember it as a decade where there was a lot of peace, a lot of prosperity, we won a war in the middle east and then smartly got out before we were ensared, and there was a president in the oval office that I could actually respect. Unlike the average neo-cronny 28 percenter, apparently.

Oh, also, conservative religious types hate Giuliani.

What's the over/under on when he's going to catastrophically meltdown, anyway? He's too crazy not to before too long.

NBA: Game Fifen Post Mortem

Short recap: frowny face.

I've calmed down somewhat from last night when my only recourse was to throw things around in frustration. As I said before, it's panic time now. The Pistons are down 3-2 and, yes, that has happened every year for the past four years and they've managed to pull it off every time. But even if they pull this series out of the fire – and that's a very big if with the way Cleveland has been playing not to mention that the odds have to catch up with them eventually – they'd move on to the Finals exhausted to play a very game, very good, and very rested San Antonio team. The season is practically over. And probably the championship window for this team as it's currently construed. Free agency is going to gut this team over the summer, it seems, even though Billups has played himself out of a bigger paycheck.

But, yes, I'll be watching Saturday.

My sister reports that although her tickets were cheap and far enough up that they'd developed their own microclimate and instead of an usher she was guided to her seat by a sherpa, her view was pretty good. And it was, indeed, an awesome game to sit through. By the end everyone was holding their collective breath and wondering just who was going to the knockout punch.

I said going in that the Pistons needed Hamilton and 'Sheed to have big nights. Well, Wallace started off making big, key shots but he faded by the end. Hamilton looked like he might be ready to seal the game away in the 4th when he caught a bit of fire but the Cavs switched their line-up and stuck Snow on him and he never got that heat back. I also said Billups wasn't going to matter much, as the Cavs had him effectively defended into irrelevance. So, of course, he goes and makes some real clutch 3 pointers and free throws to send the game to overtime. But, then, he also couldn't make the shot to tie the game at the end of the second overtime.

Again, it was a game the Pistons could have had but the Cavaliers were better down the stretch. I wonder how much the McDyess ejection cost them, especially with two overtimes. I have to say, it was a flagrant but it looked like a flagant 1, to me, not a 2 and an automatic trip to the showers – combined with some other non-calls you have to wonder how much the fix was in here or if Commissioner Stern is angling for Cleveland to make the Finals. But, I don't think it was a decisive factor. The Pistons started strong and it was nice that they actually led after the half. But they didn't put the Cavs away in the 3rd. After that, it was time for the Bron-bron to take over. And, man, did he ever put that team on his back and carry them to a win.

I'm one of the ones who believes the comparisons to Jordan are ill-founded. The best match to James's talent and inclinations is Magic Johnson. You're talking about a guy who makes everyone around him better with his athleticism and passing and can, when needed, put up the points. Not the other way around. So, to me, James's performance reminded me of nothing so much as that one Laker game where Kareem went out and Johnson had to take over his spot and just went off. Criticisms over his Game 1 decision to pass the ball aside, James is showing that he can really close out a game this series.

Of course, here's what I was screaming at the TV the entire 4th quarter: “Put him on his ass! Foul him! Foul him for fuck's sake!” I'm still not sure why he was getting so many open lanes to the basket without taking a hack or two. And why sending him to the line – where he'd been struggling all night – wasn't a higher priority. The last play, however, where he managed the winning score was just sloppy defense. And I think it's because the Pistons just wore down over the course of the game. Which doesn't bode well for the future, does it?

And that's the scary part. The Pistons aren't playing horribly. They're not playing perfectly and, sure, there've been some boneheaded plays and coaching moves, but this isn't like the middle of the Chicago series where they're taking a nap on court and relying on veteran wiles to pull things out. They're actually trying to win. Throwing their best punches to make the Cavs stagger but Cleveland comes right back and throw their own. And it's the Pistons who're reeling. I'm still not sure how they're doing it with LeBron and a bunch of second-stringers and stiffs. But, again, the Pistons have been outplayed all series long.

Time to start watching baseball, I guess.

Interesting Lawsuit – IGE Sued

You had to figure it was coming sooner or later, but a bunch of WoW players have filed a class action suit against IGE for, well, being IGE. (I doff the propeller beanie to Mr. Koster.)

I should say, first of all, that IGE and I have a bit of a sorted past ourselves as they bought out a few websites I was volunteering for and, from which, I eventually fled in horror not quite able to tell anyone what happened. Or something. I don't actually remember the details right now, I just remember being horribly pissed off at IGE and gold farmers in general at the time. So I might have a bit of an axe to grind, if I was the petty sort of person, but really that all happened well above my head.

But, anyway, this kind of suit is only going to get more common. Video games, MMOs, and the virtual worlds within them have been mainstreamed and there's very little established law on just how to treat them. Or, for that matter, things like the ToE. Which is the sort of shady contract that corporations go to great lengths avoiding having challenged in courts. And the violation of which is also a major part of the suit. I'll leave it to those more schooled on legal matters to comment on that.

But what I do want to mention is the second big claim of the suit, namely that, by farming and selling gold, IGE is harming the plantiffs by decreasing the value of their own gold. Now, there's a host of issues here starting with whether those gold piece are an actual object.

According to Blizzard, they're not and they don't have any intrinsic value. They're just registry entries on a database. Just like everything on your character, and you're only paying for the privilege to connect to those databases and have fun by shuffling the values around. And, for that matter, you're not allowed to trade them for anything of real world anyway so we're just going to stick our fingers in our ears and scream until this problem goes away. The plantiff, and a lot of others, I think, might argue that their virtual property is just as valuable and important to them as their actual property. Blizzard doesn't like that position, understandably, because if virtual proper is the same as real property then they're open to all sorts of lawsuits when they have a server crash or someone gets ripped off in scam. Yet, at the same time, these virtual objects are something more than numbers tripping back and forth in some circuitry. You could say the same thing about someone who keeps all of their money in a bank account and only transfers it online or through wires. That money is represented by figures in some table somewhere and stored on any number of memory chips. But it has value – and a degree of legal protection - because it can, at least potentially, be converted into real life goods and services. If these gold pieces are being traded – and they are, including for real life money whether Blizzard says it's okay or not – then they also have the potential to be converted into something of real, physical value. So they're not completely worthless.

Then there's the whole argument about whether gold farming is, in and of itself, okay, which I'm not going to get into beyond saying that moral is not the same thing as legal. But as far as I know, no one's managed to outlaw IGE yet.

But what really interests me is the notion that the plantiffs have been damage as a result of the actions of IGE. The claim that IGE actively harms the in-world economy. Not by making things easier for those who have more time than money but by making it harder for those who don't engage in gold buying and selling. They're devaluing gold, in so many words, by making it worth less than they would if they weren't around.

A common defense I've heard of real life trading is that it doesn't actually harm the economy – the exact opposite of this lawsuit's claim, in other words – because it makes goods cheaper for the average player. Gold farmers don't tend to farm gold – at least not in WoW, as I understand it – they farm items they can turn over quickly for lots of gold. They use the auction house, they fill trade channels, and because the “farming” actually creates objects and wealth where none existed before, the net effect is that they depress the prices of, say, the Uber-Leet Sword of Awesomeness +3. They camp whatever spawns it, run whatever dungeon has it on its loot table, and create as many of them as possible. The more they supply, the lower demand gets and the price sinks – according to Econ 101, anyway.

To some people, that's a benefit because it means the average player needs less gold to afford that Uber-Leet Sword of Awesomeness +3 that's really nice to have. Even if they don't trade some hard earned cash for the gold to buy it, they have to scrounge around in game for it less than they would otherwise. More people get the sword, and they have more gold in their pockets, and that's a net positive.

It's a persuasive argument but I'm not entirely convinced. It seems to me that what the lawsuit claims is true. The deleterious effect on the economy of professional gold farmers isn't causing overinflation, it's deflation. While it might be easier to buy an Uber-Leet Sword of Awesomeness +3 (And, yes, I'm kicking myself for coming up with such a long name right about now.) it's not nearly as easy to sell one. The result is that you'll work harder to earn what you wanted in the first place which, from what I know of economics, is a bad thing. If you fight your way through whatever digital hell it takes to get one, then you won't be as rewarded for your efforts as you would be if there weren't dozens of others flooding the market daily. It might cost you less gold to have one but having one will put far less gold in your pocket. At a certain point, it becomes untenable for the average player to go and spend the time it takes to get one (There's a catchy economics term for this that I forget. And boolean searches aren't very good for concepts. My google fu fails me. Still, the general idea is that there's a point where the labor involved in making something is more valuable that the purchase point of that item. At that point, it's better to just plunk down the cash. And it's especially true when it comes to an MMO because it's all about subjective value. It's also why, while the price of an Uber-Leet Sword of Awesomeness +3 might fall, it'll never bottom out, as long as people still want it.). It's just not worth it when you could spend an equal amount of time gathering up gold or fairly priced items (If there are any.), buy up your sword, and still have cash left over.

That feeds into the cycle of real money trading but also impoverishes the overall economy. Not only are you not farming for the Uber-Leet Sword of Awesomeness +3, you're not grouping with other people who might do so, you're not picking up the incidental loot that might drop there, you're shifting your attention to another area, another monster, and the value of everything in your inventory has been altered. And the overall effect is that you're left with something less than you would have been otherwise. I'm not sure that companies like IGE exert more influence on the economy than any other group of players who's behavior alters things but they're definitely doing something. I'm not even sure if that something is necessarily bad – we're talking about a video game here, not whether people starve, so while deflation might ruin a normal economy it might actually benefit a virtual one.

Still, should be an interesting lawsuit. Especially if it actually gets resolved and some actual case law goes on the books.