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rough first draft of my latest screenplay's first act is in the books. I'm having fun with the story and really writing it as I go which is a big change from ACYW.

I can also tell where I've learned from class and can see the improvement that it's made on my screenwriting. I'm able to do more with less.

Looking forward to ramping up the action in Act Two...

All Queued Up

hanks to feedback from a screenwriting classmate, I now have 18 log lines for potential screenplays ready to go. I've also done extended preliminary work (what I call 'pipelining' for whatever reason) on five screenplays - fleshing out characters, subtexts, locations et al. These early notes get me percolating and have lead to longer notes about specific scenes and culminating moments all of which bodes well for nice, tight synopses.

Which of the 18 do you like most? Drop me a line and I'll send 'em over.

Finding Soul in Screenplays

while back I wrote about how there seemed to be a lack of poetry/soul/beauty in screenplays - dialogue aside. As I spend more time writing and editing my screenplay, though, I'm finding places for soul.

First, where the scene is set. It's easy to go back to the same three or four sets, but a shift in setting can color an entire scene.

Second, the description of that new setting adds even more texture to the image.

Third, if the dialogue presents the foreground activity of a scene, slugs of description between lines can color the background. What I like about this is that it doesn't take away from the main action the first time you watch a scene, but when you watch it a second time it can add to the scene.

These are the areas I've been concentrating on lately as I finish up the screenplay for class.

Perhaps the best way to describe it is that writing fiction is like painting a large mural with long brush strokes while writing a screenplay is like painting with shorter, more poignant strokes. There's art in both, but they're painted in different ways for different audiences and media.

Banging it out

ith a little more time on my hands lately, I put it into adapting ACYW and on Monday morning I finished. Yeehaw! I can now put it aside for a spell, take a look at it before I start the screenwriting course later in September and for the time being move on to other projects.

I can think of three stories that have been on my mind of late; the story of a meal, a story about searching for one's lost sense of humor and a romantic comedy along financial-political lines. Each story challenges me in different ways and I believe each story holds a lesson for me to learn from simply taking the time to ruminate on the issues they explore.

On to the next...

Rehab

t the pace I'm on, I'll finish adapting ACYW in about a month; just in time to begin the Gotham Writers' Workshop screenwriting course at the end of September.

I'd like to write more, but to be honest I'm at the point where I feel that taking this course is like checking myself into rehab. I've overdosed on this project and now need to dry out, to see the essentials of it, to boil it down, to finish it up and to move on to other projects which I look forward to thinking about, exploring, developing, getting high on, riding that buzz and then moving on to the next hit.

My lack of productivity has also translated into a change of identity. I'm no longer seen by those who know me as a writer, but as a cook, as a baseball fan, as a softball player, as an alumni coordinator, not as a man of letters and that I miss. I've lost a step, I can feel it. I look forward to getting back in literary shape.