Script Frenzy 2011 - Preamble
Yes, it’s time for a non-story blog post. I am (probably) going to be doing Script Frenzy in April, so I thought I would do a nice intro to it. After all, Script Frenzy is the scripting equivalent of NaNoWriMo, and I did a preamble blog for them.
Script Frenzy requires I produce 100 pages of script in a month, which doesn’t sound too hard. After all, I wrote a sitcom script a couple of months back, and ended up producing 35 pages in less than three days, so I’m going into this primarily with the attitude that it’ll be a fun aside that won’t dominate my life.
If it does take over my writing time completely, I will probably ditch it and focus on the novel, but I have found a scripting project I actually want to do, so hopefully this won’t be too futile. I have a novel I wrote for NaNo a few years back which I thought might make a decent comic book. (Or “graphic novel” if you’re unwilling to admit you read comics.)
Thus I’ll be attempting the adaptation process. This carries the added bonus of not requiring a new idea, only a bit of re-planning.
Fans of this website will be sad to hear it may stop me producing Friday stories during the month of April, sorry about that. I may attempt some blog posts about Script Frenzy; if not, there will definitely be updates on my Twitter. Oh, and if you too are doing Script Frenzy, feel free to add me as a “Writing Buddy” or whatever people do.
NaNoWriMo - Afterthoughts
A while ago now, I wrote a post saying I was considering doing NaNoWriMo in November. As you’ll probably know if you read my Facebook/Twitter updates in that period, or even spoke to me in real life (gasp), I ended up doing it. And then, I “won” it.
Not just based on the criteria outlined in that original post, no, I ended up doing the full fifty thousand. Why? Do I regret it? Did I learn anything? Well, in order to make my post understandable in an increasingly short-spanned world, I have broken this down into three points.
NaNoWriMO - Vascillation Continues
I’ve been back and forth on doing NaNoWriMo in 2010 for some time now. It is always fun, but also stressful, life-consuming and tends to leave me with manuscripts that are based on decent ideas, but not really well written enough to do anything with. At least, not without ridiculously extensive editing.
Around two weeks ago, I concluded I’d probably try and get a chunk of words done on a new novel in November, but would have to play somewhat fast and loose with the official NaNo rules. I’ve always done this anyway, as I never actually finish the stories in the allotted 50,000 words.
So, I have made up some ridiculously complex personalised rules for myself. I won’t bore you with them, but it involves trying to do about 1,000 words a day, then read over them to make the writing less clunky. And if I miss a day, so be it. No cumulative backlog power-dumps.
This means I’m likely to end up writing… maybe 25 - 30,000 words at an absolute maximum? Which, by NaNo standards, is crap, but is a decent chunk on a new novel and might help me decide if this story idea is working. And hopefully they will be words I don’t venomously hate.
So, yeah, I’m doing NaNoWriMo very badly. Good luck to those of you doing it properly and if you wish to add me on the official NaNoWriMo site, feel free.
(Also, I’m so busy tomorrow with regular blogging/MA stuff that I may not even get my words done. On the first day. This hardly bodes well.)
