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This past OCT OWC not only was a blast to participate in writing but also to review the creative takes on the challenge. It also indicated many of us (especially self!) need to work on format, dialog, story construct, titles and loglines.
The next likely OWC is three months out. I'd like to propose a simple exercise anyone interested in working through the SS>Screenwriting Discussion>Script Review Exchange Board could participate in each month till then. We'd write, submit and critique the shorts of each other's work to accelerate improvement of our format, dialog and construct before the FEB OWC.
> Think about the criteria for a couple days. (Most entries were self-confessed thrown together in the last 48 hours of the available "week".) > Bang out something for a couple days. (Pirate's Code rules: Close enough is good enough.) > Submit. > Review each other's work for the errors we've been making. What goes around comes around and all that karma cr@p.
Tony Curtis, Hollywood Leading Man, Dies at 85 - Obituary (Obit ... Mr. Curtis earned an Oscar nomination for ?The Defiant Ones,? but the public preferred him in comic roles, as in ?Some Like It Hot.?
Movie Review - 'Let Me In' - Matt Reeves's Twist on Vampire Tales ... In the vampire romance ?Let Me In,? Matt Reeves tells a tale not about sex but rather about the fragility and loneliness of children.
TARP Cost Will Be Less Than Once Thought The reviled mother of all bailouts ? $700 billion to banks, insurance and auto companies ? will expire at a fraction of that cost and may ...
Singapore Math Adopted in More U.S. Schools A popular approach to teaching math emphasizes a slow pace, with a week on the numbers 1 and 2.
Foreclosures Slow as Document Flaws Emerge Evictions are expected to slow as officials look into questionable foreclosure methods revealed by two big home lenders.
Signaling Tensions, Pakistan Shuts NATO Route Pakistan closed a vital supply route for the war in Afghanistan on Thursday in apparent retaliation for a NATO helicopter attack on a ...
Congress Gives NASA New Orders That Bypass the Moon Legislation directs it to turn to private companies to launch astronauts into space, and extends the shuttle program to mid-2011.
Ex-St. John's Dean Accused of Using Students as Servants A former St. John's University administrator, Cecilia Chang was charged with forced labor and bribery.
Standoff in Ecuador Ends With Leader's Rescue Soldiers stormed a hospital where President Rafael Correa was held by rebellious elements of the police forces.
Joe Mantell Is Dead at 94 - Played Sidekick in 'Marty' Mr. Mantell was a character actor who, nearly 20 years apart, delivered two of movie history's more memorable lines, one to Ernest Borgnine ...
Possible stories: - Jamie Lee visits her father on his deathbed only to find he's channelling Michael Meyers during states of delerium.
- NASA brass inspect abandoned space station and find it haunted by dead crewmen from a disaster cover up.
- University biology professor evades detectives and parents after she zombifies volunteer students.
- TV reporters document US military cover up of local Afghan myth actually responsible for shutting down emergency route.
- Ecuador President Rafael Correa forced by rebels to drink blood and eat flesh of cabinet members or of his own children.
Drama, comedy, action, children's, p!sstake - doesn't matter. Length doesn't really matter. Three, five, ten, twelve pages. Who cares? A story, sequence or scene takes what it takes. However, a short piece minimizes exposure to practices requiring correcting. A longer piece increases exposure of practices requiring correcting.
No big commitment. Just a little bit of inspiration, some thought, some work, some reviews and some improvement if all goes well.
Dreamscale/Mike - you can award shiny, spinning trophies if you feel inspired to.
(Moderators: If I need to start a new thread, move this elsewhere or something just let me know.)
NOVEMBER EXERCISE November => Thanksgiving => Family. Theme: Write a short about anything to do with family. Parents, kids, grandkids, grandparents, adopted, spouses, pets, surrogates, whatever. Elements:November 1st, 2010 New York Times Headlines.
Theodore C. Sorensen, 82, Kennedy Counselor, Dies Mr. Sorensen was best known for passages of soaring rhetoric, but his role as an adviser went beyond that of presidential ghost-writer.
Europe's Plagues Came From China, Study Finds The waves of plague that twice devastated Europe and changed the course of history had their origins in China, a team of medical geneticists ...
Mugged by the Debt Moralizers More and more voters are convinced that what we need is not spending but more punishment. The irony is that they will end up punishing ...
Blekko Tries to Filter Out Web Search Blekko aims to show search results from only trustworthy sites, weeding out sites filled with little relevant information.
Proclaimed Dead, Web Is Showing New Life The growth in popularity of closed-off Internet zones like applications from Apple is sapping the Web's innovation, some fear.
Bomb Plot Shows Key Role Played by Intelligence The foiling of the package plot was a sobering reminder that quick response to timely intelligence rules the day.
Istanbul Suicide Bomber Wounds 32 The attack on Sunday morning was aimed at a police unit in the busiest local and tourist district in Istanbul.
Robo-Signing at Companies That Buy Consumer Debts Debt buyers used questionable tactics well before the recent foreclosure mess, lawyers say.
'Aftershock,' Feng Xiaogang's Seismic Suffering - Review Feng Xiaogang's 'Aftershock,' a huge hit in China, traces 30 fraught years in the life of a mother, beginning with a natural disaster in ...
In a First, Brazil Elects a Woman as President In choosing Dilma Rousseff, Brazilians voted strongly in favor of continuing the economic and social policies of the popular president, ...
Sample story ideas: - Medieval peasant family express their love for each other amidst the fear of the growing plague. - A slightly intoxicated dinner party discuss walking away from their upside down mortgage. - A woman utilizing internet search skills searches for a brother, given away as an infant for adoption, just before Thanksgiving. - A family discusses their neighbor's suicide bomber lost son. - A Chinese family appreciates what they haven't lost after a tragedy. - Brazilian Capital housekeeping staff discuss their new President with their illegal immigrant family in the US.
Whatever. Doesn't matter.
Think about it for a few days.
Write the short for a few days.
- Make the title match the story. - Make the logline match the story and be enticing. - Watch your slugs. - Watch your action lines and dialog. - Watch your "special things", like MONTAGEs, SERIES OF SHOTS and FLASHBACKs. Try something new, take your lumps or your positive reinforcement. - Whatever it was you got hit on your OWCs or saw someone else get hit on - fix it. And - Watch your typos, spelling and grammar! LOL!
(Assuming I'm not pulling a Don Quixote, here) I have no idea how burdensome it is for Don to host a PDF at simply scripts, but if you just wanna drop your PDF in whenever you want, freepdfhosting.com allows PDFs to be popped up for 30 days FREE.
This means you can fix (stupid) errors ASAP all by yourself, whenever you want, by modifying/editing your own post. Even link-in multiple corrected drafts in subsequent posts.
These are meant to be exercises rather than treasures forever, who cares if they're not around in thirty days. However, we've seen several suggestions that shorts be made into features, so don't get too self-dismissive just yet.
Additionally, I think it's (almost) equally good to practice critiquing each others' work.
Jeff, I know you're reading (and likely giggling), so I expect a decent p!sstake from you to show us young pups what a righteous format looks like.
Fix what you got hit on for the OCT OWC. (Lord knows there's plenty for me to fix.) It's compulsory. (Sound familiar?)
Review & critique. Get better. Hand out a shiny awards.
December => Christmas => Beginnings. January => New Years => Use "New" or "Year" in the title. February OWC => ??. Try not to get hit on the same stuff as in October.
There's no downside, so I expect a beautiful, uplifting short from you. Two of them, actually. And one from Christopher any minute now.
Thank you, Michael for moving this over to a new thread. Good to know.
Hey, look! Cornetto got a screenwriter of the month award!
The problem with going from one 'challenge' to another is that you don't give the writers any time to pursue their own projects. That's why the OWC is only done four times a year.
It's compulsory. It's a few days. It's to help on format. There were a lot of OCT OWC hits on format. Your format is fine. I can benefit from your help. When other SS members read the the corrections you can provide it helps them say "better not do what Ray just done." Mostly for the 7WC and OWC it's the writers reading each others' work. I imagine this would work much the same. It's a good thing, not a problem.
Do you want to read and review forty FEB OWC that could use simple improvements? I don't think anyone enjoys slamming each other. I'd rather focus on the story, not notice format, and say good things about other people's work which is why I include the good with the bad in my reviews.
BTW, I'll be hitting Mafia Dogs by the end of the week. Overall, was my review for Frankincense acceptable?
Phil - Shocking to learn I have a background in graphic design for newspaper and magazine layout, eh? Be darn grateful I can't get anywhere near QuarkXPress on these posts.
I think you sometimes work too hard on your critiques, Ray. Your illustrations and colors and stuff sometimes makes it hard to read. Otherwise, it was deep and informative.
For those that think their writing needs work, I think it is a good idea to keep writing. So, I would suggest that all of you who want some practice to give this exercise a go. It's a very short script and writing from a news article is a great skill to learn.
Glory & Pride by Ray - Short, Drama - The ceremonial delivery of an envelope is not received by a family with the same passion in which it was earned. 5 pages - PDF format
Just read your script. This was was a very noble effort and your writing style is improving immensly compared to your OWC. Still a bit flowery, though. Stop trying to be so eloquent and grandiose.
Examples:
Small black screen of an older model television on the kitchenette table somehow occupies the entire scene. (I don't even know why you chose to mention the TV, but oh well)
Centered on the table stands a thin framed portrait photo of a pleasant young man, 22.
A small TV sits on table. Beside it a framed photograph of a young man, 22
FATMA, 50, wears black hijab, washes dishes by hand at the sink as ANDALEEB, 20, in plain hijab, pulls a curtain to peer onto the street.
FATMA, 50's, dressed in a black hijab, washes dishes in the sink as ANDALEEB, 20's, in a plain jijab, peers out a window.
From her window over the sink Fatma sees her neighbor peer from behind the curtains in her own kitchen.
Fatma sees a neighbor peer out her window from across the street
Sorry, Ray, but I've got to stop. I'm sure my revisions could be revised even better, but hopefully this helps. On a positive note, it's an interesting premise. Good job.
Thank you, Mike for reading and reviewing with me.
Stop trying to be so eloquent and grandiose. I am not trying to be any such thang! WYSIWYG. Sorry.
I dummied it down as far as I did. But I see your point that I can dummy it down more. Rat fat!
So, when other readers come back at me demanding more "sizzle!" in the wording - without simply more description, mind you - have you any thoughts or solutions for that? Thank you.
Um... the ubiquitous TV is a fairly decent device for speedy communication. However, I suspect that if any of us had our kid do something... controversial and it was disturbing the missus that we'd respectfully turn the thing off. So, there it sits. Black screened. Small. Old. Because these are kinda poor, plain but decent people. It's a old, little TV in a kitchenette. They ain't rolling in the dough.
To me the "thin frame" on their lost son's small (5x7) photo further demonstrates they have not a lot of money.
But they aren't groveling for the check they just received. Mom would rather have her son than the martyr check. And she doesn't want to listen to Al Jazeera reminding her of it. Not today. Mom just wants to move beyond these ugly milestones.
Thank you for telling me you found the premise interesting. I was working more for format than story, but I did care about the latter, still.
Write a screenplay and try to tell as much of the story as you can in dialogue. See how much of the story you can tell and not in an on the nose sort of a way. With real dialogue.
Then go through the screenplay and see which essential (not who turns this way or that way) parts of the story you think no one is going to understand. Try once again to adjust the dialogue.
Then make another pass through and if you think people will just not get it then add a short action line. Limit yourself to one line.
Then one last look over it and add one other line if you think it really needs more.
I'm asking you to show me who the characters are, what they feel, what they're hiding, who they're talking to, what they're doing through the dialogue. I don't want to see it in the action or wrylies. And I want you to do this without specifically saying it in the dialogue.
SMALL POWERS by Ray - Fantasy, Short - While a heated argument wages over the legitimacy of a map to eternal feasting, furry friends can't help but use their magical powers to toy with each other. 9 pages - PDF format
Okey doke, Michael. I gave the dialog heavy and description/action light thingie a try. Kinda succeeded. Kinda didn't on the "one line only action part". Completely deviated from the news thing. Whatever. Pirate's Code. HA!
Let me know what worked and didn't, including the loggie. ("Yes", I know it doesn't go on the title page. Put it there just for convenience.)
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Ray W's Magnificent Electric yet Newsy Exercise
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