Z-Z-Z-Zombies! 04/03/2010
I'm Script Frenzying it up tonight! I have a solid 14 pages down, only 86 left to do during the month of April. So far, I'm having a pretty good time, but then again, first drafts are ALWAYS fun. You have no constraints to work with. No critic except for the internal one, and as long as you shut him up with a little stubbornness, you're good to go. In many, many cases, someone starts on a first draft, gets a page or two in, then gets frustrated/bored/pissed off and walks away. Forever. FOR-EV-ER. And that once golden idea you just had, well, doesn't ever come back. How do I beat it? I'm so glad you asked. Here are five writing tips I use to crank out content. 1) Know your ending. You should have an opening A and a closing B. Anything between those two points can happen, but you must, MUST have and end game in mind. Even J.K. Rowling wrote the epilogue to Deathly Hallows way before she started writing Sorcerer's Stone. With that being said... 2) Don't set things in stone. Sure, your main character might wind up happily married with two kids, but that doesn't mean he didn't fight off three sharks, have a dangerous affair with an exotic babe and own a yellow dog named Lexington who saved his life by pulling him unconscious from a raging stream after he fell in while fly fishing. To some extent, allow the ending to change too. Maybe he has two kids with the exotic babe instead of who you thought would be his wife. 3) Write from another point of view. If you get stuck writing with one character, try analyzing the scene or situation from another character. You may not use any of the material you write, but maybe if you understand what Lexington saw and felt when he dove into the raging river to save his master, ultimately losing his life in the process, you might be able to better write about the anguish the dog owner felt afterwards. If you lose your keys, you don't stand in the same place and look for them. You get on your knees, checking under tables, trying to get a different perspective. Writing is the same. 4) Do an exercise. Sometimes people try to write cold, and get stuck after only a few paragraphs. Take some time to write something creative — get warmed up. Read a passage of your favorite book and ask yourself why you like it so much. Try to copy it in terms of style and tone. 5) If you get bored, get unbored. It's your first draft, and it can go anywhere, be anything. Throw in a car chase, a terrible secret from the past suddenly unearthed, a mysterious man with a bowie knife. Play with it! There's nothing more exciting to a writer than wondering what is going to happen next in his or her writing (except for maybe getting a check for millions of dollars from their first bestseller, but that rarely happens so we just kind of pretend it doesn't). That's why I like Script Frenzy — I have 100 pages to write about whatever the hell I want, in a format restrictive enough to give me focus, but free enough to keep it maniacally addictive. I may not be getting a grade, but darn it, writing about zombies is fun! CommentsJess Kinkade 04/07/2010 21:26
You're doing Scriptfrenzy? That's freakin' AWESOME. I didn't know anyone else I knew did that! Good luck! :) 04/29/2010 06:49
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Reporter. Physicist. Film-maker. Teacher. Welcome to my random life. Matt Nelson maddoxnelson @gmail.com CategoriesAll ArchivesJanuary 2012 |
