One thing kept me fairly sane throughout the month of April – a month where crunch time is in full effect and plenty of major projects are coming due: working on my script for Script Frenzy [LINK]. Although I’m nowhere near DONE with the script [and much cutting is in my future with it], I did manage to cross the 100-page mark needed to win Script Frenzy!

I’m really proud of myself because it’s the first time I’ve written creatively since November with NaNoWriMo [LINK], and it’s the first time in about 9 months in which I’ve written something that I actually want to go back to and edit and revise and submit.

Below is an excerpt for the screenplay, the screenplay of NO NAME. LOL It will have a title some day, but the one I originally had, Hell’s Angel, doesn’t really fit the story or character any more.

Remember, this is a VERY ROUGH, haven’t looked at it at ALL draft of the script. LOL Judge accordingly if you must judge.

Here’s a quick synopsis of story: A woman returns to her life after a 10-year bid for killing her husband with one thing on her mind: reuniting with the daughter who hates her.

INT. COFFEE SHOP – MORNING

Peighton, dressed up, is sitting at a small table in the corner, typing on a laptop.

She looks deep in thought.

DETECTIVE DEEKS

Good morning, Peighton.

Peighton looks up and is none too thrilled to see Detective Deeks before her.

DETECTIVE DEEKS (CONT’D)

You look nice.

Peighton doesn’t respond.

DETECTIVE DEEKS (CONT’D)

See you’re fitting into the world quickly.

Detective Deeks points at the laptop.

PEIGHTON

I used computers in prison…while I was getting my degree, Detective.

Detective Deeks looks outside the large windows and spots a motorcycle in a parking spot. He points toward it.

DETECTIVE DEEKS

Is that your cycle out there?

Peighton nods.

DETECTIVE DEEKS (CONT’D)

And you rode it here? Dressed like that?

Peighton looks up to him and nods.

There is a pause.

DETECTIVE DEEKS (CONT’D)

(clears throat) You mind if I sit here?

Peighton shrugs.

PEIGHTON

If you must.

Detective Deeks sits, stares at Peighton.

DETECTIVE DEEKS

I’ve done some research on you…

Peighton snaps her attention toward him. She’s angry.

PEIGHTON

What the hell for? I haven’t done shi…

Detective Deeks lifts his hands.

DETECTIVE DEEKS

I know you haven’t. I don’t suspect you of anything.

(softer) This is about your past. About what happened to you.

PEIGHTON

And why is that any concern of yours?

DETECTIVE DEEKS

Because my son is seeing your daughter, and I want to know everything about her. And that includes you.

Peighton returns her gaze to the laptop.

DETECTIVE DEEKS (CONT’D)

And I’m sorry.

Peighton eyes Detective Deeks.

PEIGHTON

For what?

DETECTIVE DEEKS

For seeing you just as a murderer when I didn’t know all the facts.

PEIGHTON

(shrugs) Doesn’t matter. Most of the world goes off indicting people without knowing all the facts. Why should you be any different?

DETECTIVE DEEKS

Because I work to be different. And I think you’re a good person.

PEIGHTON

And you tell me this, why?

DETECTIVE DEEKS

Because I don’t want you to get hurt.

PEIGHTON

By what?

Detective Deeks sighs.

Peighton shakes her head and points in his direction.

PEIGHTON (CONT’D)

Don’t even go there.

DETECTIVE DEEKS

I know things. Things you don’t.

Peighton closes her laptop and places it in her bag. She drops money on the table and stands.

She bends to Detective Deeks’ ear.

PEIGHTON

You just can’t believe people can change, can you?

Detective Deeks turns to face Peighton. Their faces are close. There is a pause as they stare at one another.

DETECTIVE DEEKS

I believe people can change. I don’t believe the people you hang out with have changed.

Peighton stands and takes a step back.

PEIGHTON

Well, they haven’t done nothing to prove me wrong yet.

Detective Deeks raises an eyebrow.

DETECTIVE DEEKS

Really? Nothing?

Peighton looks away.

DETECTIVE DEEKS (CONT’D)
Just protect yourself. If things start to feel funny, protect yourself and get out of the way of danger.

Peighton gives him a parting glance. Nods.

PEIGHTON

Heard you. OK.

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Last night, I thought I was in church.

I began reading chapter one of Robert McKee’s STORY, and every five seconds, I was AMENing and nodding and shouting YES like he was the pastor of words.

In the pages I read, McKee discussed the decline of story and the loss of craft.

These are just some of the awesome tidbits:

The Decline of Story

…critic Kenneth Burke tells us, stories are equipment for living.

:::

…all fine films, novels, and plays, through all shades of the comic and tragic, entertain when they give the audience a fresh model of life empowered with an affective meaning.  To retreat behind the notion that the audience simply wants to dump its troubles at the door and escape reality is a cowardly abandonment of the artist’s responsibility.  Story isn’t a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.

:::

A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling.  When society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates.  We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society.  If not, as Yeats warned, “…the centre can not hold.”

The Loss of Craft

The novice [writer] plunges ahead, counting solely on experience, thinking that the life he’s lived and the films he’s seen [or books he's read] give him something to say and the way to say it.  Experience, however, is overrated.  Of course we want writers who don’t hide from life, who live deeply, observe closely.  This is vital but never enough.  For most writers, the knowledge they gain from reading and study equals or outweighs experience, especially if that experience goes unexamined.  Self-knowledge is the key – life plus deep reflection on our reactions to life.

:::

As for technique, what the novice mistakes for craft is simply his unconscious absorption of story elements from every novel, film, or play he’s ever encountered.  As he writes, he matches his work by trial and error against a model build up from accumulated reading and watching.  The unschooled writer calls this “instinct,” but it’s merely habit and it’s rigidly limiting.  He either imitates his mental prototype or imagines himself in the avant-garde and rebels against it.  But the haphazard groping toward or revolt against the sum of unconsciously ingrained repetitions is not, in any sense, technique, and leads to screenplays clogged with cliches of either the commercial or the art house variety.

Got two things to say:  A…and MEN.

If you’d like to pick ANY of these quotes to discuss, definitely jump in and do so…would love to talk writing with you guys!

Oh, and BTW, I wrote 13 pages today on my script, Saying No to the Big O.  Up to 34 pages now.  Excited.

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It was pretty appropriate that I received my copy of Robert McKee’s well-known book STORY in the mail yesterday.

For the first three days of Script Frenzy, I had been really sick.  I think it was the devil trying to mess with my spirit and get me off my game.  He succeeded, for a few days, and then came McKee.

Last night, before falling to sleep, I cracked open STORY and read the introduction.  It almost felt like talking to a lost friend.  It made me miss the days of my MFA program when my classmates and I would sit, drink, and for hours on end wax literarily about writing.

Afterward, we would all be so amped, we would rush home, turn off phones and TVs, and write until a slip of light leaked through blinds, alerting us to morning.

Many of the points McKee makes in his introduction weren’t new to me, but they were food for my literary stomach and filled me completely.

Story is about principles, not rules.

Story is about eternal, universal forms, not formulas.

Story is about archetypes, not stereotypes.

Story is about thoroughness, not shortcuts.

Story is about the realities, not the mysteries of writing.

Story is about mastering the art, not second-guessing the marketplace.

Story is about respect, not disdain, for the audience.

Story is about originality, not duplication.

Want to know what these mean?  Get the book [here].  If you’re a writer, any style of writer, you owe your writing spirit this book.

As I read McKee’s thoughts on these points, my own thoughts were reaffirmed, solidified.  Things I have been thinking for years but allowed the market or others to sway my thoughts had been made firm again.

I went to bed with McKee’s words swirling about my head and my latest screenplay idea beating in my heart.

I was excited for the fourth day of Script Frenzy, for I would start a new screenplay – negative thoughts be damned.

The goal of Script Frenzy is to write a 100-page screenplay in 30 days.  Sounds easy, right?  I mean what’s 3, 4 pages a day.  No one says they have to be good, LOL

It’s not so easy when you have life and sickness and obligations coming from every direction and your writing begins to seem…so…hobbyish as opposed to being an integral part of what makes you, you.

So, today, I vowed to do coffee first and writing second.  NOTHING else would get done if I didn’t get pages written on the script.

I read through my outline I wrote a week ago and I charted what parts I wanted to get done by what dates to insure a script was done by the end of the month.

I sat and thought about my characters and the storyline.

I remembered McKee’s words.

And I wrote.

And I’m pleased.

Today, I wrote 21 pages. I’m 1/5 of the way through the 100 pages though in the end, I’m worried more about having a story written than having exactly 100 pages written.

Writing is on the agenda tomorrow.

McKee is on the agenda as bedtime reading.

Maybe he’ll inspire me again.

We shall see.

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