Today I dropped the kitchen timer in my bowl of soup. It still worked...for a few hours. Now it is dead. Sigh.
I downloaded this very cool freeware screenwriting(/storyboarding/lighting and stage diagrams/god knows what else that has to do with pre-production, plus templates for live theater scripts, audio plays, and novels) program* yesterday for writing MY MUSICAL, which apparently I am doing. Actually, apparently what I am doing is writing scenes in script form and then writing them again in prose form. Gah.
I'm much more comfortable with prose, and to be honest I think I'll probably end up writing this that way once I get all the scenes that are buzzing about most vividly in my head written in Celtx, but the writing in script format has been instructive. (Far more so than the one I wrote for the screenwriting class back in undergrad...perhaps because that script was so terrible that I've tried to forget it ever existed.) I'm much more aware of needing to transmit information to the audience when working with only what can been seen/heard on screen than I am in a prose work, where it's all much more, hmm, organic, maybe? In the first couple scenes, for example, I was constantly aware of having to have someone say the characters' names, because otherwise no one would know what they were, which is obviously not a problem in prose.
On the other hand, things go a hell of a lot faster in script form, especially when you're me and like to write paragraph upon paragraph of description when given the opportunity. Also, I have a three-page outline to work from, and I've...almost never written fiction from an outline before, or at least not one that was more than a dozen words. (Admittedly, it helps that this is not shockingly original. It's basically an excuse to screw around with some romantic comedy tropes I enjoy, so there aren't a lot of hard decisions to make or resolutions to agonize over.) I need to see if I can try to take some of that mentality of being driven by what information needs to be revealed at given points along the timeline over to my prose-writing, because it seems to be a good way of keeping myself on track and maybe finishing the damn thing someday.
* In what is possibly its best feature ever, it also allows you to copy and paste between it and Word and respects the formatting of both programs. Amaaaaaazing.
I downloaded this very cool freeware screenwriting(/storyboarding/lighting and stage diagrams/god knows what else that has to do with pre-production, plus templates for live theater scripts, audio plays, and novels) program* yesterday for writing MY MUSICAL, which apparently I am doing. Actually, apparently what I am doing is writing scenes in script form and then writing them again in prose form. Gah.
I'm much more comfortable with prose, and to be honest I think I'll probably end up writing this that way once I get all the scenes that are buzzing about most vividly in my head written in Celtx, but the writing in script format has been instructive. (Far more so than the one I wrote for the screenwriting class back in undergrad...perhaps because that script was so terrible that I've tried to forget it ever existed.) I'm much more aware of needing to transmit information to the audience when working with only what can been seen/heard on screen than I am in a prose work, where it's all much more, hmm, organic, maybe? In the first couple scenes, for example, I was constantly aware of having to have someone say the characters' names, because otherwise no one would know what they were, which is obviously not a problem in prose.
On the other hand, things go a hell of a lot faster in script form, especially when you're me and like to write paragraph upon paragraph of description when given the opportunity. Also, I have a three-page outline to work from, and I've...almost never written fiction from an outline before, or at least not one that was more than a dozen words. (Admittedly, it helps that this is not shockingly original. It's basically an excuse to screw around with some romantic comedy tropes I enjoy, so there aren't a lot of hard decisions to make or resolutions to agonize over.) I need to see if I can try to take some of that mentality of being driven by what information needs to be revealed at given points along the timeline over to my prose-writing, because it seems to be a good way of keeping myself on track and maybe finishing the damn thing someday.
* In what is possibly its best feature ever, it also allows you to copy and paste between it and Word and respects the formatting of both programs. Amaaaaaazing.
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