Script Frenzy: Update the Eighth

The Cowgirl has entered my storyline and she has, in fact, brought the awesome with her. Yes, I have made the push to get through issue #12, which introduces the mercenary supervillain with the groan-inducing sobriquet of Cowgirl. I, uh, suck at names in case you hadn't noticed. But it doesn't matter because Cowgirl is such a great character. Easily my favorite so far. She's a breath of fresh air rushing into my script, energizing the entire process.

If I was doing this all over again, I'd try and figure out some way of getting her into the narrative much earlier on. As it is she shows up in the opening pages of the 3rd arc to set up her arc which follows but she doesn't really touch down until the end of that 4th segment. It's unfortunate, I think, looking back that my first few issues have to suck by design. They're the introductory issues that set up the central characters and themes of the book and they're necessary for everything that follows but I wish there was some way I could punch them up somehow - getting Cowgirl in there might just do the trick. But now that she's here we're flying through the story as I'm on to the parts that I'm actually excited by. Subplots are ticking over, dominoes are falling, ad the grand design I've been weaving is starting to take shape.

In other words, it's wonderfully crazy - I'm well over the page count mark, I'm insanely busy with other things, and I'm running a heavy sleep deficit already - but I'm going to keep on keeping on until the clock runs out.

Now, including today - and I seem to be suffering a case of the lazies - that leaves me with six days to finish six issues.

Including the next one which I've inadvertently discovered has to be a double-sized issue in order to cram everything I want to get done into it. It might seem like an innocent little diversion, a refreshingly simple tale of adventure and discovery, after my character suffers a humiliating defeat at the hands of Cowgirl in the last arc. A quick jaunt to a place I call the 18th Dimension and a wacky blend of retro 60s/pulp era Adam Strange/Doc Savage escapism. But it's actually rather central to the overall story - just not the one I'm telling right now. I need to hit this nail on the head for a lot of things to make sense down the line.

I'm going to take a bit of time to think about it now - and not just because I can't seem to write worth a damn at the minute (Seriously, cannot get anything done today. We're on revision three of this post and I'm still hovering over the delete key. That's usually a sign that I'm pressing too hard and I just need some time off.) - to figure it out. But I think I might have to take the cheap way out and just get the story blocked. Taking my outlined notes through to a rough stage just short of being done. A psuedo-script that's lacking a lot of detailed description and a sense of what goes where on the page but where the overall plot and dialog and the rest is fairly well sketched in. It's going that last yard and getting everything polished so that someone other than me can read it that takes the longest while being the hardest - I'm constantly having to shuffle pages and panels and even delete whole passages that I'm rather fond of in order to squeeze things in. But the Backspace key has no part in the Frenzy!

I don't know, I want to get it all done but something's going to have to give in order for me to have enough time, at this point.