Script Writting Research

Tonight I am participating in Bring Your Own Theater.  Writers show up at 8PM, then have 12 hours to write a play.  At 8AM, they hand over their script to a team of directors and actors, who then rehearse for 12 hours.  At 8PM, the show goes on and the plays are preformed.  I am excited, even if my weekend is chaos and this means I won't sleep for 36 hours.

Now, as you may recall, I don't know much about writing scripts.  Can you hear my awkward, embarrassed laugh/rubbing the back of my neck combo?  This does not worry me, because the stakes are pretty low here.  How badly can I fail?  Quality is retaliative when you consider that everything was written in twelve hours, and "The Worst Play in BYOT History" might actually be a badge of honor.

But in order to take this experience seriously, get the most out of it that I can, and show respect to my actors and directors, I should look into this ahead of time.  My original idea was to spend this week doing this and reading examples, but, welp, time makes fools of us all!  In this crunch time, here is what I have learned.

Formatting: 

As it states on this page, "How good could the play be if the playwright doesn’t even know the basics of formatting?"  Also, I've heard that you can time it so that each page of dialogue is one minute of stage time.  This boggles me in the same way that "One page is 250 words" boggles me.  If you just change the margins, spacing, or font, that immediately makes no sense.  So there has to be some standardization here.  Which (just like novel formatting) is fairly easy to look up.

• Courier 12 pt.  ...Okay then.
• Then there's a title page and a "dramatis personae" page, each of which has their own formatting, that I can easily arrange later.  I always considered the dramatis personae to be spoiler-tastic and skip when I'm reading. "Daniel: A figment of Steve's imagination."  Or maybe I'm making that up and it's not supposed to give away that much information. And I guess it's not really there for me to read anyway.  Do you need this if there are only 2 characters?
• Here, we go.  All margins but the left is 1 inch.  Left is 1.5 inches.  
• Character names are in caps and indented 4 inches from the left (rather than centered, as I assumed).  Stage direction is in parentheses and indented 2.75 inches from the left.

So maybe format when I'm done, because that looks like a hastle to reset the indentations all the time.


How Much Stage Direction:

• Stage directions are directions.  Anything the actor can't control should not be there, and actions should be assigned to an actor.
• Vital sets and props should be introduced in scene setting and entrance directions, instead of appearing suddenly.
• "Don't give too much, but don't give too little."  Gee, thanks!  So I guess this is a balance you have to hit with practice?  And it looks like tonight is when I practice!

These were my questions going in.  Seems one was super easy to answer and the other is a kind of non-answer.  I imagine I'll have more questions when I get started and start working with more experienced people.  I will keep you updated.

Secret Plans for a Secret Society

Ink & Blood has ongoing story lines for the characters we've created. And by “characters we've created” I mean “actual people who are completely real and none of them are me in a mask.”

Last month, one of our members died. Three different people claimed to have killed him. There was a funeral, which featured jugglers and a hefty, bungling investigation by the local authorities.

The problem is we only mentioned this briefly, and so very few people know about it all.

So does this make it an even more secret society since we hint at history every so often, yet it's never completely explained?

Or do we need to have a more efficient method of conveying these stories? Right now we're mostly talking about them amongst ourselves every now and then, and posting ten minute word duels about them on the website. But surely if I spent more than ten minutes on them they could be complete stories that are actually informative.

Perhaps this is a project for next week: ten minutes every morning to make one story that works for the website.

Back in the Saddle

I had a crazy week last week and fell off the regular blog post wagon.  And a couple other wagons too.  Think of it like the wagons were in a pile and I was on top, but then I rolled down, bouncing from wagon to wagon until I landed in the gravel in a pile yesterday afternoon and decided to watch TV and eat fro yo. 

When I was a senior in high school, I was diagnosed with leukemia.  (Turns out, when I got a second opinion, that this was bogus, but for a while there I was a mess and I was still pretty sick regardless of the diagnosis.)  So I turned in a bunch of things late, including the only English paper I was ever proud of.  I handed it in and said to Ms. MacDonald, "I feel like I owe you an excuse."  At this point someone behind me shouted, "Boo!  She doesn't want your excuses!"  And I figured that was fair, took my A minus, and went about my business.

So again, Boo!  No one wants my excuses!  Bad things happened, I dealt with them at the expense of other things.  Now they're over and it's time to move on.

Today is about getting back in the saddle.  Today is about letting go.

Point of View and Greater Things that Don't Matter

I made my husband watch The Fall with me last night.  In it, Roy (Lee Pace) and a little girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) are patients in a hospital, where they strike up a friendship as he tells her visually striking stories.  Horror ensues.

One of my favorite things about it is how it's clearly from Alexandria's point of view.  Most of the plot around how Roy was injured and what he's up to are told in the background, overheard in another room while the camera focuses on Alexandria making shadow puppets.  She doesn't understand and doesn't really care.  She cares about hearing more of the story, entertaining herself, and making the people she loves happy, and that is the focus of the movie.  The rest happens around her and the viewer is able to piece it all together without being spoon fed.   

This device is also one of the reasons I love my favorite book, Howl's Moving Castle.  Which is a fantasy story about Sophie, a girl under a curse that makes her old.  She ends up working as the cleaning lady for the Wizard Howl in his castle, which (you guessed it) moves around.

This story is presented from Sophie's point of view.  Even as important things are happening around her, just in her periphery, her main concerns are issues that directly affect her: her sisters' welfare, Howl's antics, the state of the bathroom,  etc.

From the first chapter, "The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers.  Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping.  Sophie sat in her alcove and stitched and heard that the Mayor never would eat green vegitables, and that Wizard Howl's castle had moved round to the cliffs again, really that man, whisper whisper, whisper...The voices always dropped low when they talked of Wizard Howl, but Sophie gathered that he had caught a girl down in the valley last month.  "Bluebeard!" said the whispers, and then became voices again to say the Jane Farrier was a perfect disgrace the way she did her hair.  That was one who would never attract even the Wizard Howl, let alone a respectable man.  Then there would be a fleeting, fearful whisper about the Witch of the Waste.  Sophie began to feel that Wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste should get together."

I like this because it feels true to life.  If someone were to write a story about me, even though great and terrible things are happening around the world, they only have a tangential effect on my life, on my story.  They would be background.  Even though I care about politics, I care about other things more.

I also feel like this is a difficult narrative trick to pull off, and I appreciate how well it's done in both these instances.  For it to work, a writer has to give enough information to allow the reader to piece it all together, but to do it in such a way that it's not like zooming the camera in on it, lingering, and shouting, "Checkhov's gun!  Checkhov's gun!"  They have to do it in a way that feels true to the character, and in doing so, it'll set up a feedback loop, making the characterization better.  "This character does not care about these things, and now you know more about them!"

And then they all died. Again.

I've been watching Supernatural lately.  Since I've been watching it in full binge mode because it's on Netflix instant watch (or at least today it is,) I've noticed a theme I want to talk about today.

The two main characters die constantly.

One of them dies and the other brings him back, then the other dies and the first one brings him back, or one of them dies and it was just a dream or a time loop or what have you.  They just die all the time.  And although there are some really interesting issues that crop up with their various methods of dying and being brought back, I've become acclimated to it.  The last time it happened my response wasn't anything visceral, but rather "Huh.  Wonder how long he'll stay dead."

I care about the characters, but death is no longer a stake that I can take seriously.  I'm more worried that one of them will be sad (even though that happens all the time too.)

Part of this is just the nature of serialized television.  Of course they aren't going to kill off a main character.  I doubt the show would work with only one of them running around.  I doubt the fan-base would stand for one of the guys leaving the show.  The other part is that I'm about 5 seasons behind and I know that they're both still on the show.  I'm well aware they're both walking around, but I guess one or the other or both of them might be a friendly ghost or sharp-witted zombie or something.  If that's the case, it doesn't look like too much has changed.  Maybe the deaths would have been more dramatic if I was watching it as it aired.

So somehow, killing them repeatedly has actually lowered the stakes.

Thinking about this reminds me of another show I watched--an anime called Attack on Titan.  Everybody dies.  Everybody.  No one is safe.  In watching this, I got to the point where I purposefully stopped remembering the characters' names, because as soon as I learned their names they would die in the next episode.  I started doing this thing where, when I realized I was starting to emotionally invest in a character, I would pull back and say to myself, "No.  He's going to die soon.  It's not worth it."

So in Attack on Titan, the stakes stayed high, but they were raised at the cost of me caring about any of the characters.

I can't decide if these two situations are the opposites of one another or if they're basically the same: so much character death has made me less invested in some aspect of the show.  Maybe they're so far in opposite directions that they end up in the same place.

Be not afraid of growing slowly

About a month ago, I started going to yoga. 

I think yoga gets a bad rap from people who don't know that much about it.  Bendy girls in sports bras talking about breathing deeply while they contort themselves in silly ways.  Well, yeah, technically that happens.  But that misses the heart of it.  Yoga is about accepting what you can and can't do, it's about pushing yourself, and then letting go of your failures.  If you can't do one of the poses, that's fine.  It's not about being perfect or comparing yourself to others.  It's about doing what you can and building on that.  There are easier versions of every pose that you can start in and work your way forward, or you can use them if you're just having an off day.  It's a practice, which means you have to put energy into it.  It means that you're not going to get everything right immediately.

The theme of Tuesday's class was "Be not afraid of growing slowly.  Be only afraid of standing still."  Our teacher recited this three times during class, each time while we were folded in child's pose, our eyes closed, refocusing our practice at points when our intentions might wander.  It spoke to me on a deep, personal level, and can be applied to just about everything in my life right now.

Like juggling.

Like querying.

Like writing.

I'm always hearing this slowly-but-surely method encouraged in writing...Write a little every day...Never give up...Winners don't quit...Write and write and write and write and then throw it all away...I reblog something about it almost every day on Go Write Right Now in hopes that they will motivate someone, or speak to someone the way a few have spoken to me. 

I wonder if they work.  I'll probably never know.

So, okay.  I'm not where I want to be on my word count.  But you know what?  That's okay.  At least I'm moving forward.  It will get done eventually.  These things just take time.  (LOADS of time.)  The only time I'm letting myself feel guilty about how little I did are the few days when I end up writing nothing.  That's standing still.  Boo!

Draw a Scientist

Education, science, and methodology day!

There's this activity that's pretty common, which made me really happy when I first saw it.  It's called the Draw-a-Scientist Test.  Basically, a class of kids is asked to describe a scientist and draw a picture.  They all draw white guys with wild white hair, wearing a lab coat, holding some kind of bubbling chemical in a beaker.  The class then goes on a field trip to Fermilab, and when they come back, they adjust their description and picture.  All of a sudden, scientists are normal people in jeans, in front of computers.  There are women and people of color thrown into the mix.  Check these out.


So neat!  Warms my little science heart!

But wait.

A group of researchers looked as these results and probably noticed that eighth graders drew the same picture of a scientist in a lab coat when asked to draw a scientist, even if they took the field trip to Fermilab as seventh graders and supposedly learned that scientists are just like you and me.  That, or they noticed that the pictures of scientists drawn after the field trip basically reiterate the theme of the trip, which was repeated over and over: scientists are normal people!

So they asked the kids instead to "Do a drawing which tells what you know about scientists and their work."  All of a sudden, the drawings looked a whole lot like the drawings that were produced after the field trip.  Turns out that when kids hear "Draw a scientist" they assume you're asking "Draw the most stereotypical scientist you can.  The one your teacher is looking for you to draw right now."

So this speaks to the fact that kids (and people in general) will often assume there is a correct answer and are good at judging the answer you want them to give.  You want them to draw an antisocial chemist with questionable hygiene?  Here you go!  You want them to draw the guy they met on the field trip with a speech bubble stating the point of the trip?  You got it!

If you make a face at a fairy, it probably makes one back

There are a few tropes out there that give me pause for no rational reason.  By this I mean that when they crop up I roll my eyes, go "not this again," and then keep reading with this look on my face.

One of them: Fairies.

This came up today, and when I started talking about it, the general consensus of the group was that there is something wrong with me.

I should point out that this is not a deal breaker, I won't throw the book, and I'm not going to badmouth anyone's work where they do crop up.  It's just that they give me pause and it is entirely my own issue.  If there are other things going on, if the plot is interesting, or the writing's nice, I can even enjoy it. (Plug for The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff, which is about a changeling boy.)

But here's why I get annoyed.

Growing up, the only exposure I had to fairies was the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan and the Legend of Zelda games.  Fairies were scatterbrained and excitable and indignant and rude, but ultimately, they were cute and funny and great characters.  And what were they going to do?  Make farting noises at you?  Hurt your feelings?  Pull your hair?  They were awesome.  Navi was the best.  Tinkerbell was amazing.  When I write fairies (which I've definitely done) they're like this.

So I think this love for ball-of-light fairies is where my dislike for hard-core- hierarchical -steal-your-baby-too-beautiful-for-words fairies comes from.  They're not what I picture when I think of fairies.  I get excited to see Tatl and then get disappointed when it's an elf who's cold and alien.

The phrase "Seelie Court" pops up and I make the face.

A lot of the stories that use fairies tap into a literary tradition that I am completely unfamiliar with, and then present it like I should be familiar with it.  I'm supposed to know the difference between the different courts and the different kinds of fairies, but I'm still stuck on "Wait, they're not a flashlight?"  

You're not supposed to thank them?  Was I supposed to know that?  Was this character supposed to know that?  Man, I'm out of the loop. I get more and more anxious and embarrassed as I read, and I keep wondering if I need to go read some epic poems before continuing, and then I just get frustrated and give up.

The versions I like have the mythology encapsulated within the story I'm reading.  In Peter Pan, when the first baby laughed for the first time, that laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.  There.  No need for me to go read an epic poem.  We're all on the same page.

I worry that because I love this simpler version, I must be doing it wrong.  I'm ofending this rich lore by clinging to a bastardized version.  How could I?!  I'm awful!  Just writing this blog post is going to make people hate me for being an ignorant, uncultured waste of space, who spits on the traditions of a whole continent!

Boo hoo!

The Birth of Athena

There's a story that the goddess Athena burst fully formed from Zues' head.

I like to tell this story when I'm teaching kids to factor.  Sometimes, you can just look at a problem and know the answer.  It bursts out of your mind, onto the page, and you're done.  This doesn't happen very often because these kiddos are not Zeus.  Generally, they have to put in the work and think it through and go through the steps.  But, on the rare occasions that it does happen, it's something amazing that we should tell stories about for thousands of years.

There's also something to be said for this story in the context of writing.  No story will burst fully formed from your head, pealing to the broad sky its clarion cry of war.  No.  They need to come out kind of lumpy and screamy.  they need to be molded with hard work.  They need to mature over time. They need to grow into their awkward ears.

And while stories that are born without editing have a magic to them, that's what they are: magic and myth.

In which I am ignorant about scripts

I've been thinking a lot about script writing lately and how much I don't know about it.

One of the ways this has come up recently is that I have fallen in love with the show Bob's Burgers, which is the animated story of a family that owns and operates a burger place.  It was created by Loren Bouchard, who also brought yuo Home Movies and Dr. Katz.

One of the things I love most about the show is how natural and effortless the dialogue is.  It sounds like a real, believable conversation.  The characters talk over each other, laugh at each others jokes, and interrupt themselves to switch to a different topic. What brings it to another level, is that you can tell through these conversations how the characters relate to each other.  If Bob is upset with his kids, he'll still take a moment in his rant to ask about something they said, he'll laugh at something they said or show some concern for their interests even as he's mad at them. 

So I started to wonder what I could learn from this.

And then it got complicated.

You see, large portions of the dialogue are ad-libbed and it's hard when looking at the final product to tell what was in the script and what wasn't.  Did the writers write false starts to sentences or was that the voice actor?  Would I, as a novelist, be able to find this quality I'm looking for by studying scripts? 

No, probably not.

Then I start asking: should I be looking at what just the writers have done?  No!  I should take the final product and learn from that.  I should learn from what the writers and the voice actors have created together and what parts speak to me and how I interpret it, rather than looking at what the writer created alone as just a part of the finished product.

Now, this is probably pretty obvious to everyone.  It's the combined forces of script writer, actors, and directors that create a story for TV or the stage.  It's obvious to me too, but community story telling is one of those things that's, to me, both fascinating and terrifying.