My brain is in a kind of sensory overload right now. I have to be at work tomorrow morning so I should totally be asleep but my brain was all YOU MUST WRITE and seeing as I haven't blogged it about a million years, here I am to unload all my current thoughts. Prepare for the word-vomit.
Firstly, I'm still overloaded from the interview I just had with one of the teaching guys at Sydney Film School. Pretty much got accepted. Celebrations will be had as soon as my 'letter of offer' arrives in the mail. Should be by next week. I'm pretty thrilled. Also really not keen to do the rest of the portfolio IFSS wants me to do, because my harddrive has crashed and so it means extra work to try and pull together photos. Haven't entirely ditched this possibility yet so will probably try a little for this next week.
Film school looks like it's going to be REALLY intense. I mean, the the teacher interviewing me today even kinda warned me it was intense. So I'm a little freaked out about that. Granted, everyone said that TAFE was going to be crazy intense and it really wasn't until the very last month. This, however, is probably a different story. Preparing myself for crazy-intenseness.
I have to say I'm a little worried that I won't be able to keep my cafe job if film school gets crazy. Every time I think about that my brain goes 'but you have to save money for your trip!' and then I try not to think about that. It will happen. It must. Also praying that something opens up at the dvd shop, because how cool would it be to study and film school and work in the dvd shop at the same time? I basically live there anyway....
Moving on to unrelated topics, I'm in the mood to right one of those average present-day kind of stories but have ZERO inspiration. Absolutely no scenes or key ideas are coming to mind. I can't even form a decent character or even decided on a name. It's killing me. I touched up a few scenes of the super power novel last week, but haven't done any writing since. Annoying. Got a crazy work week but hopefully some inspiration will come to me on my day off.
Been watching loads of movies lately, as per usual. Need to get back into some proper film reviews/ACTUAL BLOGGING, but for now will just list the stuff I've been watching lately to catch myself up:
Zodiac. David Fincher's true-story-about-a-serial-killer was quite brilliant. My love of Fincher has officially increased as expected. Also my love of Jake Gyllenhaal. Totally adorable.
The Godfather. YES I FINALLY SAW IT. Was a very good film. Keen for part two.
Rendition Road. Crappy film with a totally weak ending as I expected (was in the mood for something that required little thought), though half-decent acting from Ruffalo, Connelly and Phoenix. Also slightly depressing what with the 'bereavement themes' and all.
There Will Be Blood. Reallllyyyyyy strange, strange film. Beautiful cinematography though, so well worth it.
PIRATES! Caught one of the very last sessions in the cinema with Justin. Quite hilarious and very cute. Also a heavy user of this trope, unfortunately.... The amount of times we turned to each other and whispered "how is this G-rated?!"
Anyways, gotta go to bed. Would love to keep writing but my eyelid are drooping. Sleep beckons. Will lastly mention that I bought Film History: An Introduction by Bordwell and Thompson, it's big and fat and wonderful I can't wait to start reading it. Tata for now lovelies, glad to be back.
Showing posts with label I CAN DO THIS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I CAN DO THIS. Show all posts
May 15, 2012
November 25, 2011
Okay.
Laptop? Check. Notebooks? Check. Markers and highlighters? Check. Flashcards? Check.
Three-Act Plot Guideline? Check. Juicebox? Check.
Let's finish this plot planning once and for all.
September 18, 2011
ARLKSJDKLASNBIAMEXCITEDFORMYWRITING.
Flipping holidays can't come soon enough! Holiday time means writing time (and friend time, but that's not what this post is about...).
Having one of those moments where the story idea in my brain is positively bursting with AWESOME and I just want to write it. As you've probably heard I'm revisiting my superpowers story, and revamping the characters that have been with me since 2008. It still shocks me that they've been around that long. Finally, I think I've figured out what their story is supposed to be. And who doesn't belong in the story. Many a character has been scrapped. Also many have died. But that's a different novel, to be written one day when I'm famous and my readers are begging for the backstory....
Totally pumped for the epicness that will be this book! I'm using NaNoWriMo to bust out 50k for it, which is kind of cheating since I've already started the story, but seeing as NaNoWriMo is made for personal gain, I guess I can use it for the best benefits possible. Right? Heh. We're all NaNo rebels sometime or other (or every time if you're me...).
I was talking to Keira yesterday about the authory things that I wish I could do but don't yet have the skill. Number One is better foreshadowing. I wish I could master foreshadowing for a huge series like Harry Potter. JK Rowling is a genius. Don't believe me? Go read The Prisoner of Azkaban again.
The second thing is pushing my characters one step further in the way of er ... torture. I don't know how else to put it. Basically, when you write a story your character has to get past many bad obstacles, and each time they escalate, pushing the character to their limits. I can never seem to get my characters to the step that breaks them, or nearly breaks them, depending on your character. A perfect example of this is Amy in The Doctor's Wife. While she and Rory are lost inside the TARDIS (I still don't know if I'm supposed to capitalise all the letters or not!), Rory gets shut behind and door and Amy finds him only seconds later, or so she thinks. Turns out for him it's been hours. That's step one. Step two is when she's tricked into thinking Rory has waited his whole lifetime for her, and to her horror she finds an old Rory still sitting behind the door. Now, if I had written this episode, that's as far as I would have taken it. The genius bit comes in step three, the moment that breaks Amy. The moment that pushes her over the edge, and gives us a real insight to her character, and makes us care. Because we knew that the old Rory was just a fake one put there by the badguy, so now that the scene is over we don't care anymore. The writers need to scare us. To make us feel what Amy feels. So when Amy next turns the corner she sees DIE AMY DIE graffitied all over the walls and the dead skeleton of her husband Rory, and she just breaks down. Now don't lie, your stomach twisted when you watched that didn't it? You felt it that time. Now the writers have got you to care. And when the real Rory comes around the corner, perfectly fine, confirming that what Amy saw was just a hallucination, the relief that you feel is the WIN for the writer. Yeah that's right, they've got you to love their characters. And THAT is what I want to master. Not everyone realises how important step three is in pushing your character to the limits. It's the final hurdle. Right when you think everything is going okay, something ten times worse gets in the way and you groan at the TV or shake your book in frustration because you just want the character to get through and be all right! You care now. I want to make my readers care like that.
Anyways, the post just sort of became a rant and ended up twice as long as I thought it would. So I'm going to go now. Off to continue this stupid plastering. Have a lovely Sunday!
P.S Had a ridiculously long conversation with Keira last night about names. We came to the realisation that Karen Gillan is a really, really terrible name (especially when you add that her middle name is Sheila! What is wrong with her parents?) and that Amelia Pond is a beautiful, wonderful, roll-off-the-tongue name. I love writers and how much thought they put in to names. :)
Having one of those moments where the story idea in my brain is positively bursting with AWESOME and I just want to write it. As you've probably heard I'm revisiting my superpowers story, and revamping the characters that have been with me since 2008. It still shocks me that they've been around that long. Finally, I think I've figured out what their story is supposed to be. And who doesn't belong in the story. Many a character has been scrapped. Also many have died. But that's a different novel, to be written one day when I'm famous and my readers are begging for the backstory....
Totally pumped for the epicness that will be this book! I'm using NaNoWriMo to bust out 50k for it, which is kind of cheating since I've already started the story, but seeing as NaNoWriMo is made for personal gain, I guess I can use it for the best benefits possible. Right? Heh. We're all NaNo rebels sometime or other (or every time if you're me...).
I was talking to Keira yesterday about the authory things that I wish I could do but don't yet have the skill. Number One is better foreshadowing. I wish I could master foreshadowing for a huge series like Harry Potter. JK Rowling is a genius. Don't believe me? Go read The Prisoner of Azkaban again.
The second thing is pushing my characters one step further in the way of er ... torture. I don't know how else to put it. Basically, when you write a story your character has to get past many bad obstacles, and each time they escalate, pushing the character to their limits. I can never seem to get my characters to the step that breaks them, or nearly breaks them, depending on your character. A perfect example of this is Amy in The Doctor's Wife. While she and Rory are lost inside the TARDIS (I still don't know if I'm supposed to capitalise all the letters or not!), Rory gets shut behind and door and Amy finds him only seconds later, or so she thinks. Turns out for him it's been hours. That's step one. Step two is when she's tricked into thinking Rory has waited his whole lifetime for her, and to her horror she finds an old Rory still sitting behind the door. Now, if I had written this episode, that's as far as I would have taken it. The genius bit comes in step three, the moment that breaks Amy. The moment that pushes her over the edge, and gives us a real insight to her character, and makes us care. Because we knew that the old Rory was just a fake one put there by the badguy, so now that the scene is over we don't care anymore. The writers need to scare us. To make us feel what Amy feels. So when Amy next turns the corner she sees DIE AMY DIE graffitied all over the walls and the dead skeleton of her husband Rory, and she just breaks down. Now don't lie, your stomach twisted when you watched that didn't it? You felt it that time. Now the writers have got you to care. And when the real Rory comes around the corner, perfectly fine, confirming that what Amy saw was just a hallucination, the relief that you feel is the WIN for the writer. Yeah that's right, they've got you to love their characters. And THAT is what I want to master. Not everyone realises how important step three is in pushing your character to the limits. It's the final hurdle. Right when you think everything is going okay, something ten times worse gets in the way and you groan at the TV or shake your book in frustration because you just want the character to get through and be all right! You care now. I want to make my readers care like that.
Anyways, the post just sort of became a rant and ended up twice as long as I thought it would. So I'm going to go now. Off to continue this stupid plastering. Have a lovely Sunday!
P.S Had a ridiculously long conversation with Keira last night about names. We came to the realisation that Karen Gillan is a really, really terrible name (especially when you add that her middle name is Sheila! What is wrong with her parents?) and that Amelia Pond is a beautiful, wonderful, roll-off-the-tongue name. I love writers and how much thought they put in to names. :)
June 27, 2011
I'm on a mission!
Well hello there! It's been almost a month since I last blogged, but in that time I have come to a decision.
As most of you know, I really, really want to be a writer. One that gets things published. And I have come to the conclusion that this will not happen unless I (at least attempt to) stick to one project. Ever since I finished my one book back in 2008, I've been working on numerous projects. Fat Beagles Are Unattractive, Veridical, and Eloquence are and have been some of my biggest works, but I haven't completed any of them.
Yet.
When I wrote my fantasy novel it was the only book I worked on. I wrote it from start to finish, and then continued with a good nine or ten chapters of the second book, intending for it to be a four-book series. That is, until I discovered that my writing was actually not as good as I thought it was and I would need to work hard to make it better, and the best way to do that was to start a new project.
That's when Veridical was started. It too was a bit of a failure and though I wrote over 40,000 words with my ensemble of six characters I struggled with the chronology of the story and after a couple of years, ended up with a huge pile of inconsistent plot and three or four Mary-Sues. Some of the scenes I wrote in that time are still in my mental list of Best-Scenes-I've-Ever-Written, so once again I'm happy with what I did but not nearly satisfied.
And so we come to the now. I have an amazing novel in my mind. A murder mystery set in a mild-steampunk world based off 19th century England, with a huge dollop of political drama and class/status epic thrown in. It's the story I've been dreaming I could write since I penned my first six pages of fiction at age seven.
I adore my characters.
I love the mood and the genre.
I'm still excited about the plot two years after I began to develop it.
Yet I'm struggling to get this story on paper.
Why?
I get the feeling it's because I have not disciplined myself enough when it comes to my writing. This is because of two things. One is that I do not have a proper schedule, and so I can go days without writing and then hate myself for it later on. This will be fixed. I plan to come up with a proper schedule in the holidays. The other reason my story is not getting written is because when I do write, I distract myself from my main story with other ideas, like super powers and rewriting Fat Beagles and numerous other things that come into my head. When I get a good idea I get the urge to write about it immediately. I've decided that this is not the way to do things anymore. Now, when I get a good idea I will write it down and store it away in my filing cabinet for later, and knuckle down and solely writing Eloquence until the first draft is complete.
Ha, easier said than done.
Wish me luck. I really, really, want to do this. I hope I can manage it sooner than I think.
As most of you know, I really, really want to be a writer. One that gets things published. And I have come to the conclusion that this will not happen unless I (at least attempt to) stick to one project. Ever since I finished my one book back in 2008, I've been working on numerous projects. Fat Beagles Are Unattractive, Veridical, and Eloquence are and have been some of my biggest works, but I haven't completed any of them.
Yet.
When I wrote my fantasy novel it was the only book I worked on. I wrote it from start to finish, and then continued with a good nine or ten chapters of the second book, intending for it to be a four-book series. That is, until I discovered that my writing was actually not as good as I thought it was and I would need to work hard to make it better, and the best way to do that was to start a new project.
That's when Veridical was started. It too was a bit of a failure and though I wrote over 40,000 words with my ensemble of six characters I struggled with the chronology of the story and after a couple of years, ended up with a huge pile of inconsistent plot and three or four Mary-Sues. Some of the scenes I wrote in that time are still in my mental list of Best-Scenes-I've-Ever-Written, so once again I'm happy with what I did but not nearly satisfied.
And so we come to the now. I have an amazing novel in my mind. A murder mystery set in a mild-steampunk world based off 19th century England, with a huge dollop of political drama and class/status epic thrown in. It's the story I've been dreaming I could write since I penned my first six pages of fiction at age seven.
I adore my characters.
I love the mood and the genre.
I'm still excited about the plot two years after I began to develop it.
Yet I'm struggling to get this story on paper.
Why?
I get the feeling it's because I have not disciplined myself enough when it comes to my writing. This is because of two things. One is that I do not have a proper schedule, and so I can go days without writing and then hate myself for it later on. This will be fixed. I plan to come up with a proper schedule in the holidays. The other reason my story is not getting written is because when I do write, I distract myself from my main story with other ideas, like super powers and rewriting Fat Beagles and numerous other things that come into my head. When I get a good idea I get the urge to write about it immediately. I've decided that this is not the way to do things anymore. Now, when I get a good idea I will write it down and store it away in my filing cabinet for later, and knuckle down and solely writing Eloquence until the first draft is complete.
Ha, easier said than done.
Wish me luck. I really, really, want to do this. I hope I can manage it sooner than I think.
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