Tag: Robert McKee

Priorities, people!

On By C. L. BlackeIn Craft WorkLeave a comment

I am a deadline fiend. Give me a date and a time when I need to have something done by, and I will do whatever it takes–stay up late, skip school, call out of work, etc.

In grad school, I thrived on deadlines. As part of a low-residency program, the creative writing degree required four submissions per semester via email to our mentors. Each submission consisted of two craft annotations, revisions from the previous month’s work, 30 pages of new material, and a cover letter detailing our experience. On top of that, we had to read between four-to-six books per month directly related to the genre we were working in or on the craft of writing books.

For the first two weeks of the month, I worked full-time, read all my books, and wrote my two papers. For the last two weeks, I took Fridays off from work and spent the entire weekends writing. On Fridays I would write from about 10:00 AM until 2:00 AM. Saturdays were the same except I would break from about 9:00 PM to 12:00 or 1:00 AM to play video games with my friend then back to writing until I fell asleep. Sundays I wrote from about 10:00 AM (or whenever I woke up) until 9:00 PM. I tried to write about one and a half chapters or roughly 15 pages per weekend. I got less done on Fridays because I always reread my manuscript from the beginning to get into the character, mood, feel, voice, etc.

The reason I excelled at this type of deadline was not just because I was getting something out of it (a terminal degree) but I didn’t want to let my mentors down either.

I have since tried to make my own deadlines to finish this novel or that screenplay, but I have never been able to enforce them or meet them. I blame it on my lack of priorities. I can sit at the computer and level my World of Warcraft toon until I use up all my rested XP or I hit the next level, but I can’t just sit at my computer and finish what I say I’m going to by my deadline. I guess I’m just not tough enough on myself.

Recently, it’s come to my attention that I am missing two opportunities to send my manuscript out to different publishers during their open submissions this month and missing an opportunity to enter a screenwriting contest with one of the prizes being a reading with Robert McKee. And it’s all because I failed to meet those self-imposed deadlines over the past few years. Oh, I get stuff done; it just takes forever.

Well you know what? I don’t have forever. I don’t want to miss anymore of those open submission calls. I’m sick of being a loser. I want a backlog of  manuscripts/screenplays ready to send out a moment’s notice. I mean, really, is this so hard?

(And don’t even get me started trying to complete NaNoWriMo or ScriptFrenzy. They happen in the two busiest months for me school-wise.)

I’ve decided what I need is to not call it a deadline. Because seriously, no one’s going to fail me if I don’t finish by a certain date. My “goal” is to finish revising/rewriting a specific manuscript by the end of the year (where have I heard that one before?).  And the reason why I think it might be doable this time is because I have a list of priorities.

The story needs some help not only with plot but with character. I also want to change from first-person, present tense narration to third-person, past tense narration. That will require one set of revisions. At the same time I’m going to focus on sentence variety (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex) and beginning sentences with more than just a noun, pronoun, or article.

Secondly, I’m going to do a major rewrite because my protagonist seems to have come down with multiple personality disorder. (I blame the photo I found for inspiration). I’m hoping this will lead the story to a plot more in line with my original vision.

And lastly, I’m going to tackle the first chapter. I’ve never really liked it and I think it’s because I’m not happy with the protagonist, so hopefully that by starting my revisions/rewrites after it, I won’t get frustrated and give up before page 10.

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Pre ScriptFrenzy Frenzy

On By C. L. BlackeIn ScreenwritingLeave a comment

If you’ve ever tried to write a 90 page script or a 50,000 word novel from conception to completion in 30 days, you’re just as crazy as me. What I’ve found from multiple attempts is that it can’t be done. At least, not with anything worth a damn at the end of the month. I’ve read different blogs and posts by participants that all say the same thing: they went off on tangents just to hit the word count. They wrote characters who had no purpose, they wrote plots that led nowhere, and they often wrote a mess that was not even rewritable let alone revisable when they were done because they did not want to fail.

What is the purpose of this? Isn’t the point of writing to express yourself in some way? And hopefully to become published? Do we really have time to write a bunch of crap that is basically useless and would take way more effort to fix than to just spend quality time writing quality prose? Granted the allure of finishing a feature-length screenplay or a novel is enticing especially if, like me, it takes you years to complete one, but I find ScriptFrenzy and NaNoWriMo incredibly stressful. I blame that on poor planning. (Plus the fact that I always start late anyway.)

Last year, I tried to participate in ScriptFrenzy by writing a screenplay I had conceived of at age 11. The only problem was, I had tons of research to do for it because obviously it had changed in concept in some ways, and I labored over the opening scene for about three weeks until I decided that it just wasn’t gonna happen.  Had I taken the time to get all of my pre-writing done ahead of time, I might have had a better shot.

Likewise, I tried my hand at NaNoWriMo one year. I’m used to writing novels, so I didn’t think it would be that bad. And although I tend to write without a whole lot of focus, I do spend much of my time editing as I write, which does not work well with time constraints. It could take me an entire weekend to write one chapter of 7-10 pages. But it’s a damn good chapter.

So the advent of 2012’s ScriptFrenzy is almost upon us. (It starts on April 1st in case you’re wondering.) And I vow to complete a screenplay based on my WoW character’s secret life. (If you’re interested in what this entails, follow my blog at www.rumertales.wordpress.com) But in order to complete this insane quest, I’m going to spend the month of March doing all my pre-writing exercises. And I’m going to share them with you, so you too can succeed at ScriptFrenzy.

I know what you’re thinking. “Why should I take advice from this nobody? She can’t even finish a screenplay in 30 days?” Well, I’ll tell you. I am somewhat adept at the art of screenwriting. I’ve studied it at UCLA and I’ve taught Introduction to Screenwriting courses at Westfield State University. I even presented my Capstone seminar on screenwriting.

So there you have it. I’m an expert and you should listen to me.

For the next four weeks, I’ll be posting a series of exercises meant to focus your ideas into a cohesive and fluid storyline. You’ll learn how to write a premise and create a beat sheet, how to create characters and scenes, and how to structure your story using the ten elements of screenwriting.

And if you don’t want to listen to me, you should listen to this guy: Robert McKee, screenwriting guru and author of Story. http://www.mckeestore.com/Robert-McKees-book-STORY_p_11.html

I can’t promise anything, but if you join me, you might just finish that script after all!