This week’s Unleaded entry is further thoughts on the weekend movie project:
I also posted a non-Wednesday update:
This wasn’t a project that I talked much about, largely because it’s one that I expected to end in absolute failure. However, in penance for skipping Balticon this year (see you at Capclave and Balticon ’11) the wife and I decided to take on a project: writing a movie in a weekend. Yes, it was a three day weekend, but we could have ultimately done it starting on a Friday night of a typical two-day weekend.
Now, we weren’t aiming for quality. Just the opposite, the goal was to create a script worthy of The Asylum and Syfy movies of the week. We called the effort Trilobite Terror, and it is an exercise in dubious science, cliche dialogue, and thin plot. However, it does have a plot, it is a complete plot with a three act structure, and it does all wrap up nicely at the end. It was really just a fun exercise in seeing what we could do when we sat down and just churn out, putting ourselves in the roles of contract writers who were given a title, two already cast stars, and a weekend to spit out a first draft.
The schedule:
Saturday night we finally sat down and outlined the plot. It took about half an hour and three sheets of paper to scribble down all the bullet points that we wanted to hit. We were neither writing what we hoped would be a good movie, nor one that would ever actually get produced, else we might have spent a whole hour just to make sure there was a b-plot. As it is, the movie is a little under length at just 64 pages of script when I’d really hoped for at least 75.
Sunday I started writing. Act one was half finished by breakfast, and done by lunch. Act two was written between lunch and dinner. Act three was started but not completed as I burned out around 9pm. Along the way I kept giving the script in half-act chunks to my wife for her approval, and kept getting green lights to go.
Monday I finished act three, and did just a little bit of editing. No point really stressing over edits for something that’ll never see any light of day. Maybe one day The Asylum will have a script writing contest and we’ll clean it up for that.
As a writing exercise, it was great mental acrobatics, just to practice working in screenplay format, proving that we could quickly turn out a plot, and showing that I can actually script write rather quickly when given the chance. My characters tend to talk in paragraphs, so that’s something I’ll need to work on, but in terms of speed, I worked at a pace that I’d have to work at if I ever became a contract script writer. Which is nice to know I can do.
We’re already considering out next project, potentially for the weekend of June 26-27. Might do another Syfy quality script, though we’ve also been considering a Dodgeball-style comedy called Shuttlecocks.
I was asked, way back when I agreed to be a weekly contributor to Unleaded, to share how I came up with some of the 2070s technology I’m using in the novel Capsule. The simple answer is: tech blogs. I’m addicted to these for reasons other than my writing, but found that addiction helped me shape how far technology might go by 2070 and what directions it might go in. Just to share my two absolute favorites, which I tend to check four or five times a day: [more]
As I mentioned, I’m going to start being a weekly contributor to the Unleaded blog, and potentially the podcast as well. I’ll be cross-posting my contributions here.
Greetings from your new Wednesday contributor. I’ve been asked to join in this blog to provide the occasional perspectives about horror, near future science fiction, self publishing, and whatever else comes to mind to write about. But I thought I’d start a little about who I am for people who don’t follow my blog.
My name is DL Thurston, and I’m a member of the Cat Vacuuming Society, the writing group that has largely spawned this blog. I’ve written science fiction, horror, the occasional dalliance in humor, and various combinations of the three. Currently I’m working on a novel called Capsule, which is a a sci-fi horror novel set in the mid 2070s, which has given me the opportunity to do a lot of research into tech trends and predictions for where near future technology is leading us. I’ve also written a Gothic horror novel called Conqueror Worm, and an apocalyptic humor novel called End of the Line. Outside of novels, I’ve collaborated with my wife on a teleplay pilot and will soon be writing a camp horror screenplay called Trilobite Terror. In general I dabble in whatever interests me at the time.
Currently available for the Kindle.
Currently available from SmashWords. (Coupon code available)
Coming hopefully soon to the iBook Store and the Sony Reader store.
This online distribution stuff is fun.
