Scriptywriter

Bad blogger!

2009-08-13T16:03:00.002+01:00

I've been such a bad blogger, I haven't touched this site in months.

I didn't realise it had been so long until I passed the address to a company this afternoon. I've been swept away by life for the last couple of months; working like crazy in a bar to pay off huge debts, falling in love and then winning my love away from her fiancé, re-writing old scripts, starting a new project which has evolved into a sprawling glorious mess, trying to produce and direct my first short film, going to interviews with production companies...

Really there's been a lot to talk about! But I've been more involved with living my life than reporting it. I've been a bad blogger.

But I promise, I haven't forgotten about you entirely.
Forgive me?

Review: DOWN IN THE BAYOU

2009-04-29T17:29:00.000+01:00

Script review for triggerstreet.com

DOWN IN THE BAYOU - by Kathren Murray

A family animation with an aquatic setting: Finding Nemo and The Little Mermaid have that nailed. A family animation about captured animals escaping into the wild: look no further than Madagascar. The biggest obstacles for Down In The Bayou to overcome are its familiarity and the world-class quality of the films it draws comparison with.

There are, of course, some nice original elements. A white alligator protagonist is a cute and unusual choice – but using a predator as a children’s hero carries inherent risks. If all the animals and insects are characters who can talk, when is it OK for the hero to eat some of them? Right on p.1 we’re shown a fly weeping over the body of another fly swatted by Gat – yet there’s no empathy shown for the dragonfly Caddo catches on p.60. I found this inconsistency strange. The Lion King sidesteps this issue by having Simba eat only insects which aren’t given the same personification as mammals and birds – I’d recommend doing the same; remove the personification of the fly and make it clear that Caddo eats only insects.

A bayou is a separate arena to the ocean but more needs to be done to differentiate it. The ocean is a broader canvas and can accommodate a huge range of species and settings – how many species are present when Sebastian sings Under The Sea, or across the vast journey to find Nemo? Remember Arial fleeing the shark through the sunken wreck? Or the way a reef is like a whole town for Nemo’s community? Compared to these technicolor wonders the bayou we’re shown seems a little flat. There are plenty of nice touches; the crawfish and oysters playing zydeco music, the herons and the snakes. Benoit’s dialogue is one of the scripts strongest elements for anchoring its location, but I still feel more can be done here. At the start, Benoit lives in a log. In the storm Caddo’s hiding place is battered by a log. When Caddo flees Crusty, he does so through a log. There needs to be more visual elements to the bayou’s underwater world than mud and logs, it’s too dreary for a genre traditionally splashed with primary colours.

The familiar elements need to be spun in original directions. Benoit the sidekick crayfish is obviously comparable to Sebastian the sidekick crab, but his spirituality and accent do enough to make him unique. However, when he ends up in a kitchen action sequence, just like Sebastian did – the similarities are too much. The Jumbalaya device is integral to Benoit’s story so the scene is necessary, but it’s essential that the original elements are emphasised to avoid easy comparison. Sebastian is simply trying to escape the rampaging chef – Benoit is trying to rescue his kin. I recommend re-working this element to include the other crayfish in the action. Perhaps have Benoit organise their ladder building and escape from the pot earlier, without Cook noticing – then have Benoit direct them like a general directing an army in their battle with the Cook and Hal. Having Cook fight a battalion of crayfish would definitely spin the scene in a unique direction.

My primary concern with the story is Caddo. His story should be the most interesting and powerful but it’s overshadowed by Benoit’s. Timon and Pumbaa only ever support Simba, and Sebastian and Flounder only ever support Ariel, but Benoit has a whole plot of his own which is more complex than Caddo’s and Benoit’s personality is more developed and attractive. Caddo’s goals are never strong; he’s a weak personality who just drifts along as directed. He doesn’t think to escape, Jack suggests it. He doesn’t manage to escape, the storm frees him. He doesn’t fight to survive, Benoit directs him. Only very, very, rarely does Caddo take any action of his own initiative. I strongly recommend the writer focus on this for their next draft. Have Caddo ask Jack if there’s anywhere a white alligator can live without becoming a pair of boots. Have him try to escape and fail, perhaps have him pray for help escaping before the storm comes. Have him try to catch dragonflies and fail before asking for Benoit’s guidance. Turn Caddo into a little fighter right from the get-go rather than that becoming the pinnacle of his growth. He also needs more personality than his current lost and scared little boy stereotype; he needs to be witty, mischievous, ballsy, ambitious, or something!

My secondary concern is with Caddo’s antagonists. Caddo’s goal is to reach the sanctuary and his antagonists are those who stand in his way; Crusty, Armand and Gat. Crusty seems to have it in for Caddo because the little guy stole his audience back at the farm, this becomes rather weak motivation for his continued antagonism once they’re both out in the bayou, and indeed Crusty is talked around extremely easily. Armand just wants to eat Caddo and is an incidental antagonist. The snakes are reminiscent of Ursula’s eels, but in The Little Mermaid they’re the servants of the antagonist, here they’re just a passing nuisance. Gat is his true adversary – but they can’t come into conflict directly, Caddo is in the water, Gat is in the boat, so their conflict is diluted through Hal, a gaff hook and nets – drastically reducing the impact of their confrontation. I’d recommend having Gat be a champion alligator wrestler who dives into the water as soon as possible to catch Caddo, rather than waiting until Crusty forces him overboard. Rather than seeming incompetent, Gat needs to convey intimidating natural aptitude and strength – that way Caddo’s survival is much more of an achievement.

With regards to structure, I recommend shaving as much as possible from the beginning of the script as the first act is currently overlong. There’s no need for the story to start at Caddo’s birth – we could enter the story once Caddo is isolated in his own enclosure with the ‘normal’ gator kids teasing him without it making any difference to the flow of the story. I also highly recommend the opening scene involve Caddo rather than Gat.

As it is, I think the script is quite good – certainly good enough for children to enjoy. But without any musical numbers or in-jokes for the adults there’s not enough here to satisfy the modern demands of the genre.

I did enjoy reading and the writer should be proud of their achievement but there’s still plenty of scope for improvement. I hope my analysis and suggestions have been helpful, if you’d like to discuss any of them further please feel free to get in touch.

Review: THE SUNSHINE BLONDE - REVISION #3

2009-04-22T21:23:00.000+01:00

Script review for triggerstreet.com

THE SUNSHINE BLONDE - REVISION #3 - by Marilyn Mallory

When I saw a romantic comedy appear on my assignment list I was pleased, rom-coms are light, fun and breezy affairs. After battling my way through The Sunshine Blonde I feel like the victim of a cruel joke; where was the romance? Where was the comedy?

The Sunshine Blonde is a serious and jaded account of a gold-digging nurse who eventually overcomes her greed to marry another money-grabber who has done likewise. That’s not a rom-com, it’s a redemption drama and should be pitched as such to avoid disappointing and discouraging the audience. A couple of witty moments do not make it a comedy, and the romance is so confused and buried under her victim’s plight that it barely leaves an impact.

I tried to list the elements I liked but could only think of one: Sunshine’s pure white house is a striking visual which could be used to symbolise interesting things about its inhabitant’s psychology (not that I could tie any of those implications to her actions in the script, but the potential was there).

The story doesn’t suffer from any major plot-holes; there are clear desires at play and coherent chains of cause and effect throughout. The writer should be applauded for developing the story thoroughly.

Plot-holes are one thing but plausibility issues are an entirely different matter and The Sunshine Blonde is riddled with plausibility issues: people doing or saying things that I could not ever find believable. Here’s one clear example: Franco’s goon shoots Mack in the shoulder, but Sunshine won’t call an ambulance, instead she waits for April to fly from San Francisco to Passadena by which time Mack is so weak from blood loss they can drag him to the car. Excuse me? How exactly was the sick old man who’d been shot stopping the healthy young woman from calling him an ambulance? We never see this happen, so all we have to go on is Sunshine’s line on the phone when April tells her to call an ambulance: “He won't let me. If you come here, the two of us could overpower him and get him to the hospital.” So apparently, yes, the sick, old man with a gunshot wound was still physically restraining her from using her phone to call an ambulance, yet she could use it to call April. Apparently 1 + 1 = 7. That’s the most extreme example but time and time again people say and do things which just don’t add-up to plausible behavior. My second example would be Ms. Murray randomly deciding to bury a loaded shotgun just below the surface of her flowerbed. Why would anyone ever do that? A dog could dig it up, a child could find it – that’s a horrendously stupid thing to do and it made me wonder if Ms. Murray was meant to be insane. As it turned out, no, she was just planning for that bizarre action sequence where Ross falls on the gun and it shoots Franco’s cane. Even shotguns have trigger guards so how falling on a buried gun could make it leap out the ground and go off, only the writer knows.

Sunshine’s character is loopy! I never managed to get a handle on why she is the way she is at all. Is she meant to be a goody or a baddie? Who knows? She has sympathetic traits – she’s a nurse (a caring profession), she’s been hurt in the past (and refuses to remarry), she can’t deal with death (and goes on vodka/valium rampages), she’s trying to earn money for her daughter’s college fund (which she lost in a share crash). But she also has many unsympathetic traits – she’s greedy, she uses people, she’s manipulative, she only sees others in terms of what they can give her and she recklessly endangers others. Overall she comes off as a woman who should spend several years seeing a shrink. She’s not likeable at all, but she’s not wicked enough to like as an antagonist. Mostly I felt sorry for her; a character with such stunted and arbitrary values needs help.

Mack’s not much better. Towards the end April makes a comment about him perhaps having Alzheimer’s. There’s no perhaps about it, throughout Mack demonstrates all the cogent reasoning of a man well on his way to utter senility.

I won’t continue listing the points I found strange because there are many and I don’t enjoy assassinating scripts, so instead I’ll do my best to offer some advice.

Go back to the concept and abstract it away from any real-life inspiration. Look at it as a script puzzle – what’s the best way to reconfigure the pieces to make a streamlined whole. The core story is a romance – but it’s not the fake romance between Sunshine and Mack, it’s the real romance between Sunshine and Ross. Keep that thread front and center. As a secondary character Mack’s screen-time needs to be dramatically scaled back and his relationship with April should be deemphasized. The story should not be about who inherits Mack’s wealth, it should be about how Sunshine and Ross manage to kick their gold-digging habits and embrace real love. You have to make Sunshine likeable (and that’s the real challenge!) despite her gold-digging ways, the audience needs to get behind her and want her to change for the better. Her daughter is one option for this – show more of her and Rita spending quality time together – people will accept a woman being a bitch to the world if she’s still an angel as a mother. Contrast the Sunshine who bakes cookies in the afternoon then exhorts gifts from her patients in the evening. You need to satisfactorily explain her vodka/valium rampages whenever a patient dies – as it is she just can’t deal with death. I’d spin that, so that whenever a patient dies she’s forced to think about how she used that patient, and now they’re dead she can’t apologize or make amends, so she’s overwhelmed with self-loathing and loses herself in drugs/booze. You can borrow a lot from drug addiction stories – her gold-digging behavior is the habit she’s trying to kick. You need to spin it so that we don’t judge Sunshine by her behavior, we judge her by her efforts to change her behavior.

I’m sorry I couldn’t offer a more appreciative review, but I hope my comments and suggestions can still be of some use for your next rewrite. Good luck.

Review: SCAM (REDRAFT)

2009-04-22T21:22:00.001+01:00

Script review for triggerstreet.com

SCAM (REDRAFT) - by Ross McQueen

Scam is a script that wears its heart on its sleeve. It should open with a flashing neon sign that screams “Tarantino is God!” It’s a dialogue heavy, non-linear, heist caper – heavily influenced by Pulp Fiction. This isn’t a problem for me, I’ve always enjoyed this approach and there continues to be a healthy market for this style of writing – I’d point to Lucky Number Slevin, Smokin’ Aces and RocknRolla as three more recent contemporaries.

The writer handles the non-linear structure with a great deal of aplomb, layering the scenes in such a way as to keep the audience repeatedly reconfiguring their understanding of the linear chain of events. It’s an effective technique, making it challenging to get a handle on the story and predict where we’re going – it keeps the audience guessing. It takes a great deal of planning and organisation to implement this approach with the degree of success present in Scam and the writer should be proud of their achievement.

Once reconfigured the overall scam story is complex, interesting and mostly well interconnected. Many threads have issues with character (which I’ll move onto shortly) but there’s only one problem I spotted with the plotting itself.

One thread is currently too isolated, that of Randal trying to muscle into The Shark’s territory. We see The Sharks catch and torture Randal’s dealer, we see Randal, Boss and String at the dealer’s bedside and we see Boss lend Randal String, and his subsequent campaign to deprive The Sharks of Nuke and Three before the gang-war kicks off. The only flaw in this chain of events is that String specifically says that leaving the dealer’s body to be found was The Sharks’ way of sending a message that they are coming for Randal. The Sharks never follow this up, Nuke and Three are never sent after Randal, the ‘gang-war’ never materialises, and String’s undercover campaign is entirely one-sided. This seems like the only missing link in your web of plots. If The Sharks have just forgotten about Randal (as they seem to have) it undermines their plausibility as terrifying gang leaders – they should be more efficient. You don’t need to add much to rectify this oversight, just remind the audience that The Sharks are still pursing Randal so that when he and String re-enter the story it’s been adequately foreshadowed rather than eliciting the ‘wait a minute, who are this faction?’ reaction (which it currently does).
I have three recommendations to help with this – firstly rename ‘dealer’. This is only a script issue (it wouldn’t matter for the actual film), but ‘dealer’ is a completely generic title so when we’re reintroduced to the character 45 pages after his last appearance it’s not immediately obvious who we’re dealing with (I got it once I read on, but it would’ve helped to make that connection faster) – a distinctive name would help with this. Secondly, let the audience hear the tortured dealer screaming the name Randal – it won’t mean anything at the time, but it will assist the audience in piecing the threads together once Randal’s introduced. Finally, the scene where Nuke and Three chase and kill a nobody called Tom – currently this scene demonstrates an average day in the life of Nuke and Three, except Nuke is out of character and kills Tom when he shouldn’t – but Tom himself is just a debtor they’re chasing up. Re-write that sequence to include Randal escaping in some way and make Tom part of his organisation – that way you foreshadow The Sharks war with Randal without adding any extra scenes.

(after writing all this I just realised that Nuke kills the dealer before Emily can extract a name from him, which is why The Sharks never go after Randal – but String assumes they’re coming. I was reading fairly carefully and I didn’t catch that misunderstanding over the body in the road – I can’t help but feel that device is a gamble! When Randal and String enter the story (as String rather than the detective) it’s a long way back to the dealer (who seemed an incidental character) being shot, so when Boss and String explain the situation to Randal the audience is inclined to accept their assessment - you’re asking the audience a lot if you expect them to cast their mind back and spot the inconsistency that the dealer died before giving up Randal’s name so they’re acting on false assumptions. If the audience don’t catch that, you hit the issue I previously outlined about why The Sharks aren’t fighting back. I recommend either re-jigging the dealer’s torture that he does give-up the name before he dies, or re-jigging the scenes with the boss to remind the audience that actually he didn’t, and they’re acting on false assumptions.)

The main area the writer needs to focus on is character development. The characters, as currently written, are reasonably good. They’re plausible, interesting and occasionally quirky – a good range and balance. Unfortunately, for a script utilising a non-linear structure as Scam does, that’s not good enough. There’s a large cast involved and many characters only receive a limited amount of screen time – there’s little opportunity for them to grow and arc – they need to be captivating characters from the second they appear and each and every one needs to be visually distinct and memorable.

One easy amendment would be the character introduction lines. Currently they’re brief, verging on non-existent – the writer is largely dependant on dialogue to express identity. For example, Nuke and Three’s introduction:

”After a moment Dealer is carried back by NUKE. Nuke has no
difficulty carrying the sizable Dealer.
THREE walks in behind. Three is a big, imposing guy, but
there is something scarier about Nuke.”

So… physical descriptions? Three is big and imposing, and Nuke is scarier looking and can still carry a sizeable man. And… that’s it? Are either of them black, white or Asian? How do they dress? Do either of them have distinguishing hair? Facial hair? A habit for wearing shades? Does Three wear lots of bling?

Criminals are well explored on screen and little visuals clues can say an awful lot about what type of character they are and what sort of vibe they transmit.

The same goes for every character in the script – the writer introduces them with the absolute minimum amount of physical description, which makes it difficult to visualise them as more than generic shapes with distinctive voices. A little flair in those character descriptions would go a long way.

In the same way, a little more flair in several of the characters development would help the intricate plotting to breathe much more vividly than it currently does. Jonathon and the stoners in particular seem a little flat, whereas others like Nuke, Emily and Ian feel like they never quite live up to their potential.

Take Nuke, his name suggests a penchant for going nuclear. When I think of someone going nuclear, we’re talking all-out destruction – you’re lucky if the buildings are left standing! Yet Nuke seems coldly clinical – he shoots the dealer, throws Tom off the roof and clubs Three with a toilet seat. None of these violent acts justifies the name Nuke. Being betrayed by Three should unleash his full fury – that’s where I want to see a psycho going nuclear. That scene should be a destructive rampage – instead it’s like a premature ejaculation, so underwhelming it’s embarrassing.

Emily and Ian are set-up well as chirpy-psycho gang-lords, yet when we get down to the most distinctive aspect of a gangsters regime – how they punish their enemies (eg Brick Top from Snatch feeds his enemies to his pigs) – Emily and Ian fall-back on a traditional torture routine. Again, the flair is in the dialogue but you need some flair in the torture too. My first thought on this was that they have a childlike-glee about them and Emily approaches torture like play-time. Imagine if Emily liked putting make-up on her victims before she tortured them – turning them into china-dolls for her to play with? That would carry some visual impact – get creative!

String, with his Art of War quotes and baoding-balls is great – except his description ‘a big imposing guy’ – needs a little something/anything more!

These character are all nearly there – but Jonathon, the stoners, Wanda and Kelly all needs more pizzazz to make them worthy of a place on the big-screen.

My penultimate recommendation is about ‘drugs’. There’s no such thing as ‘drugs’. There’s cocaine, crack cocaine, speed, heroin, ecstasy pills, M.D.M.A., acid, P.C.P., mescaline, ketamine, etc. The exact contents of the drugs packages are always left vague and the effects on Wanda of the drugs she does with Nuke and Three left me wondering what exactly they were meant to be doing – the lack of specification and the somewhat fantasy combination of traits wasn’t convincing. Pick one specific drug to be in the package and another for Wanda to do – then name them specifically in the script – it’s only a little detail but it’s also the loot in your scam so needs to be right.

My final thought it the title – I don’t think it does much for you, it’s too generic and the script is better than that. For example, Lucky Number Slevin is basically a scam movie, but in that they gave the scam one name, The Kansas City Shuffle, and the movie another based on the name of a key horse in the back-story. Again, get creative!

I hope you’ve found my review helpful, if you’d like to discuss any of the suggestions made please don’t hesitate to get in touch – Scam is a very good script and I enjoyed working on ways it could be further improved.

Review: MARBLES

2009-04-22T21:20:00.000+01:00

Script review for triggerstreet.com

MARBLES - by Alex Mesmer

I always respect a writer with admirable aspirations. Marbles has a good heart; it tries to face difficult issues with integrity and sincerity; it tries to leave the audience with a message of hope and optimism. Unfortunately I felt there were still many issues with the script that distracted from or diluted those positive qualities.

The writing style of the scene directions doesn’t help. Conventional scene directions are sharp, visual and specific but too often Marbles lapses into verbose, emotional and vague description – things that can’t be directly translated onto the screen, they need to be interpreted. It’s not bad writing; it’s just not screen writing, it’s more novel writing.

The pacing throughout is so slow it felt like wading through treacle. The subject matter is unrelentingly downbeat but sincere; there are no light-hearted moments to speed things along, just good people getting slowly crushed by their issues, it has to be endured. Repetition doesn’t help the matter: by the time John takes to the window ledge we’re well aware of his and Norah’s back-stories, but still we must hear them explained in detail again. Almost everything that happens could happen faster, many scenes could be merged, and dialogue could be much more concise.

Marbles is a redemption story; characters attempting to deal with traumatic events from the past. As such it suffers from the standard redemption story issue – the moments of highest drama all occur in flashback as isolated moments rather than as integrated beats in the dramatic escalation.

The range of characters are all difficult to support, they’re passive and weak. When John’s mother learns the truth, she loses the will to live. Even when the truth is out John’s father won’t talk and John can’t make him. Gail won’t bring charges against Vernon. John has to be talked out of suicide. Norah commits suicide. Most audiences like to see characters overcoming adversity, or at least struggling against it. The cast of Marbles just drift morbidly through their sad little lives – they’re good people, but it’s still difficult to care about them because none of them have any spark in spirit.

There are a lot of details we’re told but not shown, such as Norah being a social worker. I know her boss mentions something about a case once, but that didn’t make much impact. I never realised her job was of any importance until she’s thrust into the suicide negotiator role – it would’ve helped if we’d seen her performing social work earlier.

The dialogue throughout is all painfully honest – this town is entirely populated by straight-shooters. There’s no wisecrackers, no poets, no philosophers – and most importantly no subtext! Everything is above board, said nice and clear and out in the open. There’s nothing for the audience to read deeper into, no hidden depths to plumb – what you see is what you get, so you don’t ever need to question anything.

The structure needs a rethink too – which would really help with the pacing. As it is, there’s a lot of time spent setting up John’s life before anything really happens, it’s simply business as usual. The inciting incident is the moment when life starts to change – for John this is when he’s approached by the TV reporter (not when Mr Tuan arrives in the country, that hasn’t yet impacted John’s life) – that doesn’t happen until page 21 (convention drops it on 12, usually between 8 and 15). Because you’re telling two strands, John and Norah you need to interleaf their structure’s carefully and proportionally, not just bounce as and when. Norah’s inciting incident is Vernon’s release, page 1, which puts the two strands out of kilter and is in itself an odd structural choice – John is your main thread, Norah your minor, but you send the audience the opposing signal by opening with Norah. The 28 page ledge scene/sequence (with flashbacks) is a structural nightmare – it runs from the midpoint to the act three turning point, but runs well over its conventional time allocation.

The final act is a lot better. Characters start acting positively, they develop, the pace picks up and it all comes together nicely. Unfortunately, by this point there’s no longer any opposition. They move into high stakes territory but the opposition (Vernon, Mr Tuan) make it easy for them – if the opposition is weak, the achievement is minimal. It’s a case of too little, too late.

What I can congratulate you on is the story – it makes perfect sense, there are no obvious plot-holes, the atmosphere, tone and theme are consistent, the final message is clear and built towards throughout – in those areas you’ve done a thorough job.

There are two areas I recommend you overhaul for your next draft – are character and structure. John is a nice guy, a good son who loves his parents dearly, which is all well and good but it doesn’t make him all that likeable. Norah is currently little more than a traumatised rape victim. They both need a shot of zest, something interesting about them, a special angle on their plights that makes them worthy of an hour and a half screen time. With structure you need to make some hard choices and cut some scenes – try and be brutal. John’s opening scene trying to get work – do you really need it? No. Slash it. Look at the conventional wisdom on structure, inciting incident, turning points, focus points, etc. Try and work out which elements of your story fit those concepts and see where they lay on a proportional graph – that way you’ll know where you need to cut from. The two elements, character and structure, will work together for you – as you cut and condense scenes to fit structure you’ll generate space to demonstrate character flair.

Good luck, and if you want to discuss any of the criticisms and suggestions raised in this review feel free to get in touch.

Review: ORDINARY HERO

2009-04-22T21:19:00.000+01:00

Script review for triggerstreet.com

ORDINAY HERO - by Jared Chase

The biggest problem with Superman stories is that he only has one weakness, kryptonite, so every plot must revolve around the cursed substance in a novel form. Unknown Hero doesn’t even possess this one chink in his armour; he’s completely and utterly invincible, significantly more powerful than any other ‘meta’ and as such there’s never (ever!) any danger that he’ll be defeated. While we all know the hero always wins, in this case that’s made so obvious throughout that it never feels like he achieves anything, victory is never in doubt so success can be taken for granted.

A superhero is only as good as the villains he’s up against. The Terror Squad are an imaginatively animated bunch, their range of powers combining for what could be visually impressive action scenes – except they’re undermined by Unknown Hero’s utter invincibility. I was feeling sorry for them before the first punch was thrown; they just never stood a chance. I doubt that was the sympathy balance the writer had in mind. As for the ‘evil plot’ underlying their criminal behaviour, African genocide is definitely bad enough, but did Ironclad really have to explain it all to Travis? I’m pretty sure the audience had got it by that point and I was imagining Syndrome from The Incredibles thumping his head, shouting “oh my god, you got me monologuing!” The Terror Squad working for the same company as our hero’s secret identity is pretty convenient and coincidental, but that’s standard fare in superhero movies so no real complaints there.

Our hero’s personality and arc is the real meat in this sandwich. He starts the story as a reluctant vigilante, dealing only with meta-crimes beyond the normal police’s ability and turning a blind eye to everyday rape and murder, etc, and determinedly steering clear of the bureaucratic nightmare that is ‘Task Force’ – he’s straddling the grey area. Only when his drug-loving little sister takes a few bullets does he tip over the edge and go full-on vigilante. His initial position, straddling the grey area is interesting. It’s murky; it separates him from the standard hero fare. But it’s also territory mined superbly by Watchmen (and with less conviction by Hancock and My Super Ex-Girlfriend), so it’s no longer as interesting as it once was. Unfortunately, Hero’s utter invincibility comes back into play to undermine the issues raised – he’s effectively above the law and punishment, so that shouldn’t hold him back and once he does turn full vigilante he’s so god-damn good at it that his earlier reluctance seems excessively selfish, further undermining support for a character we’re already scraping for reasons to get behind.

Travis’ only Achilles’ heel is his sister, a skanky little party girl with no redeeming characters – when Travis threatened to cut her out his life I was actually cheering him on! Yes, we know he ‘has’ to love her because Mummy died and he’s all she’s got, but you need to give us more than that – underneath her crackhead exterior must be something worth redeeming, we need at least a glimpse of it to care.

I enjoyed the wisecracking dialogue; it carries most the script’s tone, but there’s isn’t half a lot of voice over comments! And talk about expositional dialogue! There are some passages which clearly serve no purpose except to pass a piece of information to the audience; nobody would ever actually hold a conversation like that. There’s an apt phrase here – show, don’t tell – a little more visual writing should make some of that exposition unnecessary. Travis’ work conversations are especially soap-like, lots of believable dialogue about details that could (and should) be massively reduced to sharper exchanges.

Structure is kind of all-over the place. We start of very episodic, two whole sequences Hector and Miguel then Lamprey, could both be cut completely with no impact to the main plot (which would incidentally help shave the excessive length). I’m trying to figure out what the inciting incident is – I’m plumping for his promotion, that’s the change in his life which leads to the main plot unravelling – that doesn’t kick in until page 24! Conventional wisdom drops that on page 12, usually 15 at the latest. There’s a lot of pages spent setting up the world which could do with being condensed into half the time.

Many of the nicest touches are of only peripheral significance: Travis’ anti-meta pretence with Pam, the Dump Bar and Frost, his relationship with Jake, having to keep his secret identity intact while rescuing his sister, etc. These moments are all handled with consideration and flair that demonstrates an in-depth understanding and love of the world being explored. The script’s saving grace, in my opinion, is the writer’s passion for this world which shines through in every page and despite its many flaws makes it an enjoyable read. It is, in many ways, passionate, undisciplined writing – unwilling to reign in details and tighten up scenes because of the belief that it’s the little things which make the world breath. But this unwillingness to make sacrifices results in a bloated story that never quite delivers with the conviction it hopes too.

I believe some significant changes need to be made for the next draft, but I do believe the writer should pursue another draft because I think they care too much about this story to give up on it. You need to make Unknown Hero weaker, a lot weaker. He can’t just brute-force his way out of every situation; he needs to need his brain! You need to get into the action quicker, you need to get the Terror Squad involved earlier, and I’d give serious consideration to letting the Terror Squad escape to Africa and having Unknown Hero chase them into their territory. I wont make too many suggestions because this script needs a lot of rebuilding and that can only come from you, but you need to get inside your story’s dynamics – figure out why you think Travis deserves our attention, why is his story better than Spiderman’s, or Superman’s – what’s our hook?

I hope you’ve found my review helpful and if you’d like to discuss any of the comments and suggestions I’ve made, feel free to get in touch. Good luck with your next draft.

Review: LAST WEEK (POST SHARK)

2009-04-22T21:18:00.000+01:00

Script review for triggerstreet.com

LAST WEEK (POST SHARK) - Ben Hausler

Last Week is a previous screenplay of the month nominee and the version I’m reviewing has been re-written in light of ScriptShark’s feedback. As such I was expecting good things.

In many ways I wasn’t disappointed. Last Week is a smooth, enjoyable read. The main character, Ray, is a likeable grouch trying to thaw his emotional detachment from the world before death claims him, an arc I enjoyed, and the story throws up some fun moments and memorable visuals through his daily escapades.

Despite the positives I couldn’t get over the script’s overwhelming complaint: at the moment this is very familiar territory. The Bucket List is the obvious touchstone because of the list device, but even more so I was reminded of Stranger Than Fiction, especially in the way Ray accepts his own death to save an innocent’s life. I believe that Last Week demonstrates a great deal of potential but would need considerable redevelopment to explore it’s concept in a way that doesn’t draw comparison to these recent productions.

I’ve concentrated my notes in two directions – firstly trying to improve the script in its current form and secondly trying to push the script towards untapped territory.

The list device works well to create an episodic escalation of daily events that force Ray to push his comfort boundaries and grow, however it currently suffers from two main weaknesses: its introduction is unconvincing and its obstacles are too easily overcome. Dr Morello seems to suggest the list somewhat off-the-cuff; he just throws the idea out there without much reasoning behind it. Ray seems extremely unconvinced, Dr Morello even seems to imply it’s a weak suggestion, but Ray just goes along with it for the sake of the story – and this is how I, as the audience, felt too, I just go along with it for the sake of the story. I recommend re-working the moment where Dr Morello suggests the list to give him greater authority and the reasoning behind the list greater significance. Ray needs to be convinced that working through the list will genuinely help him to settle his inner turmoil before death finds him and that way the audience can buy-into the list alongside him. Next, the obstacles presented by the list need to challenge Ray’s commitment to his chosen path more than they do. For example, when Ray is performing his song the obstacle he faces are the rednecks who object to his terrible rendition – they throw a bottle and hit him first time. If the rednecks were to miss first time Ray would face a choice, flee the stage or continue despite them. By letting Ray sing on despite the bottles flying and the brawl breaking out – then getting hit – he would have chosen to overcome adversity (if only temporarily) rather than running straight into it. The marathon never really tests Ray, there’s never any doubt he’ll complete it. When he crosses the line Jay asks ‘No cheating?’, but Ray never had an opportunity to cheat. If another friend, perhaps Jenny, were to ride past on a motorbike and offer him a lift into town when he’s struggling – then saying no would be resisting temptation. The heist is pulled off without any sort of hitch, and a heist is a perfect opportunity for hi-jinks – hiding, tricking, fighting, chases, etc – yet it’s all a bit too easy for Ray. Because the daily list targets are always achieved without much drama the list device (in my opinion) fails to fulfil its potential.

The romance is actually my favourite part of the story which is rare, I often find romance subplots desperately clichéd or overly saccharine but not this one. It was sweet and genuinely touching – it’s the romance that really made me ‘get’ Ray’s emotional detachment. In my opinion the romance is really the heart of the story, it’s the clash between his love for Kate and his fear of death that’s driven Ray into his hole, and it’s through her he finds the peace to face what’s coming. Again, my only issue is that winning Kate back is really pretty easy for Ray, they bond over Forrest’s death then later Ray turns on the charm – wham-bam, he’s rocking her world. I think Kate should force Ray to tell her about his death-date – that’s what forced them apart to start with, that’s what he’s been trying to get over all this time. He needs to tell Kate, and she needs to come with him to the bargain basement. She needs to see him sacrifice himself to save Jenny and then she’ll believe him, she’ll understand why he couldn’t come with her when they were young and he’ll be redeemed in her eyes. The story will then have gone full circle. As it is, the moment where he leaves her in bed is very touching and the way he faces his death like a man deserves respect – but if you combine those moments by having Kate still with him at the end, then I believe you’ll have a much more powerful climax.

Those are my suggestions for tightening you script in its current form but they do little to alleviate the core complaint about familiarity. So let’s look at the two films I compared it too:

The Bucket List
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0825232/

Stranger Than Fiction
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420223/

(click through and check out the synopsis)

In the Bucket List he’s an old man who learns he has cancer and makes a list of things to do before he dies. In Stranger Than Fiction he’s a young man who hears a woman’s voice narrating his life say that in one week he’ll be dead.

Last Week shares the list device in common with Bucket List, but it shares more in common with Stranger Than Fiction – an emotionally detached character thawing out, an imminent death, a supernatural method of learning about their death, and accepting their death to save an innocent.

To help Last Week become a less comparable story you need to accentuate the differences from both stories. The most difficult suggestion to accept will be dumping the list device – Bucket List was too successful and it’s too reminiscent. My suggestion here is to make it a day-by-day situation, rather than a pre-arranged list. Ray is at a point of utter despair, he’s a week away from death and can’t ignore it any more – he’s paralysed by the knowledge, he gets out of bed and just doesn’t know what to do with his day, he’s can’t carry on as normal any more. So he goes to see the psychiatrist who tells him… rather than make a list, to get up each morning, look in the mirror and pick one thing he wants to do with that day, one thing he’s always wanted to do, and make it happen. By putting that little spin on it you lose the list device, and gain a scene each morning where he’s looking at himself in the mirror. Same goals, same story, different device.

Harold Crick (Stranger Than Fiction) learns about his ‘imminent’ death just a week before it occurs. Ray has known about his for years and it’s only a week before it’s due that he can’t ignore the knowledge any more. You need to labour that point to stress the difference – make it clear that for the last nine years he’s been doing his best not to think about it, just working himself into the ground, getting drunk, being an asshole. It’s only when there’s just a week left something snaps, he freezes, he locks up and can’t function any more. He doesn’t learn about his death at the beginning of the week, he’s known about it for years, that’s why he’s destroyed his life, he couldn’t deal with it. Harold Crick is an emotionally detached man because that’s how he’s always been and he’s slow to grow out of it. Ray used to be emotionally involved and he’s forced himself to detach, that’s why when he snaps out of it he can bounce back much faster – that’s your difference there “I spent nine years destroying my life, I’ve got seven days to get it back”.

I think the Grandfather needs a little more work to make him a true mystic golden-oldie, at the moment he’s a little generic and a lot of the concept hinges on him. He doesn’t have much screen time so he’s got to really own it. Try going out on a limb, sketch a really eccentric character (hell, try a dozen crazy Grandfather’s until you find one that really owns the moment).

Finally, the cashier-killer needs a little more work. Harold Crick gets hit by a bus pulling a little boy out the way. Ray’s death is a lot more violent so you need the foreshadowing to work for that – currently you drop a couple of newspaper headlines early on and then suddenly a flashback at the end. It’s not blatant and Ray’s too slow to not realise it earlier. This is the only area I don’t have a suggestion for – foreshadowing is delicate and can take a lot of tweaking to get right, but I’m sure you can find a solution.

I hope you’ve found my notes helpful – it’s a script I’ve definitely enjoyed reviewing. If you’d like to discuss any of these suggestions or if there’s issues I’ve not mentioned you’d like to talk about, feel free to get in touch.

Review: AETHYRIKA (REVISED)

2009-04-22T21:16:00.001+01:00

Script review for triggerstreet.com

AETHYRIKA (REVISED) - by Edward Ellis

I don't enjoy assassinating Aethyrika, but if I'm honest this was a script I enjoyed very little and felt had numerous shortcomings.

I’ve summarized the story in chronological order to try and extract a clear concept from it.
1) Biblical Times: Lillith was Adam’s original partner in the Garden of Eden, usurped by Eve. She has no soul and must steal others’. She needs to have a child to ‘break her cycle’.
2) Ancient Scotland: Lillith ‘buys’ a husband, Jonathon, who she then kills because he loves another, Heather. Heather is caught performing a pagan ritual from a tome on Jonathon’s body. Lillith blames Heather for Jonathon’s murder and has her burned as a witch.
3) Modern Day: Carly and Steve are lovers. Carly runs a bookstore and finds Heather’s tome in a delivery. Lillith turns up at the same time, following the book and fixates on Steve as the reincarnation of Jonathon. She murders one of Carly’s employees to take her job and worm her way into their life. She drives them apart, kidnaps another of Carly’s employees, then lures Steve to her place and threatens to kill the girl if he doesn’t sleep with her. Fortunately the tome contains warnings about Lillith and Carly arrives in time to save Steve. They kill Lillith.
4) Later: Lillith seems to reincarnate as a little girl fixated on Carly and Steve’s son.

Lillith needs to have a baby with Steve. Why Steve? Apparently because he’s the reincarnation of Jonathon. Why Jonathon? We’re not sure; it could either be because Heather performed a ritual from the tome on him, or because he was the reincarnation of the original Adam.

How does this reincarnation business work? We have no idea at all. All we know is that Jonathon is now Steve, and Carly seems to be Heather. And there’s a hint at the end that Lillith has reincarnated as a little girl fixated on Carly and Steve’s son, Chris. So on one side it seems random, on the other hereditary.

So what’s Lillith been doing for the centuries between ancient Scotland and modern day? No idea. Following the book? Waiting for Jonathon to reincarnate?

Has Jonathon ever reincarnated before this point? No idea.

If it says in Heather’s tome about Lillith being a soul-vampire and needing a baby, why didn’t Heather tell anyone about this and why did Lillith kill Jonathon who could’ve given her that baby? Who knows.

The concept is clearly something to do with Lillith, and her being the original biblical woman so she ‘got their first’ – but it’s an original fantasy/horror creation, so the audience doesn’t already know the rules of the monster – as they’re never clearly explained or demonstrated the concept remains confused.

Moving on from the bigger concept we have the specific story about Carly, Steve and Neal. All three are incredibly passive, pushed around at will by Lillith, barely able to think or act for themselves. There’s no protagonist. The only character making anything happen is the antagonist, Lillith, and nobody else even realizes they’re in opposition to her until page 105! Even if you view Lillith as the main character then nothing she does counts as much of an achievement because it’s all so easy!

Lillith kills Amanda and gets away with it easily. Nobody sees anything, no police ever investigate her.
Lillith takes Amanda’s job incredibly easily. She just walks in and gets the job, no interview, no CV, nothing. I wish the real world was like this!
Lillith spikes Carly’s drink with broken glass and gets away with it easily. There’s no CCTV, the barman can’t remember her face and the police aren’t involved.
Lillith breaks into Carly’s house, kills a cat and gets away with it easily. There are no witnesses; the police are never called, no fingerprints taken.
Lillith calls Carly asking for ‘Stevie’ and gets away with it easily. Carly doesn’t recognize her voice from them working together.
Lillith kidnaps Jaime and gets away with it easily. Again, no witnesses.
Lillith lures Steve back to hers and drugs him so easily. He just does as he’s told.

Everything Lillith does happens so easily for her, it’s just completely implausible. There’s no challenge, so there’s no drama. Carly, Steve and Neal are all so dense and lacking in initiative that nobody ever comes close to piecing anything together and there’s never any danger of them rumbling Lillith. When they do eventually catch on it’s not because they had a brain-cell between them, it’s because the answer was written down in a book that’s been in front of them the entire time.

The story has a juvenile tone to it that did nothing for me, like Neal playing a computer game. Lillith’s only early conflict is the catty argument with Kay and Jaime, which seemed plucked from a school corridor setting. It’s exacerbated in the limited vocabulary of the dialogue – do you know how many times a character says “the hell”, as in what the hell, who the hell, where the hell, etc. Fourteen times. I searched. By the eighth or ninth time I was grimacing every time I read it. And the amount of times people talk to themselves, especially Lillith! It reminded me of an immature teenager, whispering to themselves after being told off so they feel like they had the last word.

The structure is average. The acts don’t exactly move into new territory, just mark key points on a fairly linear escalation. End of act one Lillith kills Amanda, end of act two Lillith splits Carly and Steve up, etc. The key events fall in the right proportional places, but not enough actually happens to justify a two hour run time.

For your next draft I recommend you focus on turning one of your apathetic good-guys into an actual protagonist. It can’t be Steve because he’s placed in mortal peril at the end, but it could be either Carly or Neal. Accelerate events and let them rumble Lillith much earlier, perhaps at the mid point, so there’s time for some actual conflict between them, rather than one climatic run in and shoot her scene. You need to develop Lillith’s concept further or explain it more succinctly and earlier to let the audience get a clear handle on her.

Review: FORGOTTEN

2009-04-22T21:15:00.000+01:00

Script review for triggerstreet.com

FORGOTTEN - by Jay Stanners

I’m so glad I read Forgotten first thing in the morning rather than last thing at night! It reads like a nightmare exorcised onto the page. I wanted to stop reading every ten pages, I wanted to wake up - but I had to see it through, had to know how it resolved. I’d like to congratulate you on a very fine, and very brave piece of work. It’s a mature and unrelenting horror.

Writing a story like this can often be a thankless task. There’s no feel-good factor to fuel positive word of mouth; instead it starts off grim and gets steadily grimmer. The end result is an agitated audience who resent the discomfort they’ve been forced to endure and are therefore unlikely to rush back and acclaim the writer’s achievement. This, in no means lessens the actual achievement. It’s a savage tale, a true descent into hell, and one I’m certain I’ll still remember five years from now. It sounds corny but Forgotten is unforgettable!

The concept and story is just superb. You’ve taken the ultimate get-out clause ending of ‘it was all just a dream’ but put a new spin on it, the dream is her re-living of the events that lead to the imprisonment where she’s been having the dream. This allows you to tell a brutal tale of kidnap, murder and torture through a dream state’s even darker reinterpretation and atmosphere. That’s a very Lovecraft-gothic device, but used in a new context of social issues and serial killers – I think it works perfectly.

Marnie is a strong and resourceful character but she’s got a dark side that makes it difficult to like her. The most difficult aspect of Marnie’s story is the flashbacks to her youth which ultimately make us forgive her that darkness.

The dialogue is most noticeable for its absence. Marnie’s an isolated character and never gets into long conversations. Even the forced interview is terse. This means we’re told very little and we’re shown a lot. It’s good visual writing.

The structure was very good. The three acts each move to a new location and move the story in a new direction at the right time. The arrival of the spider-baby, the first real moment of dream-horror happens bang-on the mid-point.

As for suggestions for improvements, I have just one as I think it works extremely well as it is.

I didn’t think Lee’s final speech worked. It’s a difficult speech because it’s the one you don’t really want to have to write, it’s the “explanation for anyone who’s not got it yet” speech. There’re no other ‘speech’ moments like that in the film and as such it jars. I had one idea – currently you’re delivering the point that she’s stuck in a dream, stuck looping this nightmare forever. It becomes across as a speech because there’s no come-back to it, it’s not part of a dialogue; it’s simply a statement of fact. I thought that if you had that speech delivered by Tammy, merging the flashbacks and the main thread you consolidate it as one dream state in a visual way, more in keeping with the visual style throughout. Rather than that speech being a statement of fact, it could be an invitation from Tammy. Yes, she is stuck in the grave. Yes, she has been looping her memories of the nightmare for the last ten months. But it doesn’t have to be this way; instead she could dream about flying with Tammy. Tammy could invite her to come and dream a different dream with her, but Marnie would rather face what’s happened to her again than face up to her feelings about Tammy so the nightmare loops again.
That’s just my suggestion, I’m sure you could come up with something more fitting but that’s the only area of the script I’d definitely recommend taking another look at. See if you can find another way to get that information over as a dialogue with Marnie, rather than a statement. Marnie deserves more participation in the climax of her story than that.

Congratulations on writing a breathtakingly bleak film. I can’t say I enjoyed Forgotten, because it’s not meant to be enjoyable, but I’m very glad I’ve read Forgotten and would definitely like to see Forgotten be produced.

Review: SHARD (REWRITE 2)

2009-04-22T21:14:00.001+01:00

Script review for triggerstreet.com

SHARD (REWRITE 2) - by Chris Simons

I’ve taken a couple of days between reading Shard (Rewrite 2) and writing my review to let my thoughts percolate because it generated conflicting reactions warranting deeper consideration.

On the one hand I very much enjoyed reading it and thought it contained some excellent writing but on the other hand, upon reflection, I found both the concept and execution somewhat disjointed.

A screenplay needs to catch and hold the readers attention and imagination – and this you achieve admirably. Gib’s opening scenes have a great flow to them and generate a strong sympathy for the mute girl. McKenzie is another well crafted character, an intriguing and endearing protector and mentor. The lodge is an arena of great cinematic potential, an original and evocative visual creation which helps hold together a strong and consistent atmosphere. Dialogue is kept snappy and scene descriptions are usually aptly worded. The plot is well structured with key turning points arriving bang-on the prescribed pages and the story seems carefully developed, without any obvious plot-holes.

Shard reads extremely easily from beginning to end with moments of powerful visual impact and the writer should be extremely proud of their achievement. It’s a very good script but it can still be improved upon and is definitely worthy of further efforts to help it reach its full potential.

Shard is a revenge story, a subgenre which has been explored by some of the greatest filmmakers working in recent years. By comparing Shard to two of the most successful recent revenge stories, Kill Bill and Oldboy, I can hopefully articulate my current reservations and offer some suggestions on how Shard could be streamlined for greater impact.

A revenge story has two principle characters, The Wronged, who takes revenge on The Victim. Either of these roles can act as the protagonist; in Kill Bill we follow The Wronged as she exacts her revenge upon each and every person who wronged her; in Oldboy we follow The Victim as he endures the revenge being unleashed upon him.

My primary concern for Shard is that we follow both sides equally. In Act 1 our focus is definitely with Gib and our heart goes out to her but in Act 2 we focus on the brothers’ relationships, with Gib starring primarily as Caleb’s love interest. In Act 3, Gib retakes centre stage as she takes her revenge. The result, in my opinion, is to split the audience’s support between the two factions. Traditionally, a revenge tale is focused upon whichever party survives, in this case Gib. Any empathy developed for the victims risks undermining support for Gib’s accomplishment.

I think I understand the writer’s intentions in focusing the second act on the brothers to let them develop as strong characters in their own right, with goals and arcs of their own which are cut short by Gib’s revenge, making it less a clear-cut revenge story and more a complex scenario. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this strategy is unsuccessful because it’s Gib who, in the end, is victorious, and Gib whose actions we should really rally behind. It is a classic revenge story and I believe that the closer the writer can adhere to the conventions of the subgenre the greater the impact of the climatic scenes will be.

It feels like the writer was drawn to the brothers’ story, their relationships and back story show significant development has been invested in them, but for the sake of Gib’s story they are simply the adversaries and details such as Carson’s guilt over his Mother’s death are completely irrelevant. That’s not to say such moments aren’t well written and evocative, simply that the story may be better served focusing on other matters.

I know it may seem a fairly drastic alteration, but in my opinion the script would be best served by focusing your next rewrite on Act 2, keeping the focus on Gib as much as possible. There are key moments in her development which are currently only explored in flashback which have great dramatic potential; when she breaks out of her catatonic trance, when she speaks for the first time, when she interprets the ball lightning as a visit from McKenzie’s spirit, when she fixates on revenge, when she befriends the pastor and fakes finding Jesus to speed her release from the institute, etc. Following this chain of events has just as much dramatic potential as the brothers’ post-war re-union, but would also keep the most important thread of the story, Gib’s, front and centre. We could still be re-introduced to the brothers through Gib’s eyes upon her release and learn much of the same information about them, but they would be cast squarely as her adversaries, with her actions carrying more value than theirs.

It would then become vital to make the post-institute Gib remain sympathetic, to keep the audience on her side as she becomes an Angel of Vengeance, rather than risk her becoming a single-minded machine. Fluctuations in her resolve and some inner conflict about the path she’s chosen would work here, perhaps with the lightning theme serving as omens when needed to let her know she’s still on the right path.

In conclusion, the script is currently very enjoyable and well written but if the writer is serious about turning it into a saleable piece I honestly think he’d do well to consider rewriting in the directions outlined to adhere to revenge story conventions. I believe the story has the potential and the writer has the ability, and there’s considerable promise here.

If you’ve found my notes helpful or thought provoking and would like to discuss any of these suggestions in more detail, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Review: GIFTED THE UNDYING

2009-04-22T21:11:00.002+01:00

Script review for triggerstreet.com

GIFTED THE UNDYING - by Russell Edwards

In my opinion, Gifted The Undying is a intriguing but ultimately frustrating script. The concept of immortal, regenerating humans isn’t original; it’s Wolverine’s power in X-Men, and Claire the cheerleader in Heroes – but these high profile successes demonstrate that there’s fertile ground here for exploration. I was initially excited to read on.

Unfortunately the development of that promising concept is lacking any real originality – a girl who survives an accident that should have killed her, an evil research corporation kidnapping a human subject, a secret society of people with powers – these are all off-the-rack pillars of pulp sci-fi.

The characters are mostly thin and two-dimensional, Sarah, the scientists, Brias and his goons, Nathanael, Masterson and Sharpley – are all generic stereotypes. Alex has a little personality, but it’s the two FBI agents, Henderson and Martinez, who are the scripts current saving grace. They have more individuality than the rest added together and their relationship is the only chemistry on display.

The dialogue is, in many ways, very good. It’s usually short, sharp and snappy. However, characters often tell each other things the audience has already been shown, and too often dialogue is expositional, explaining aspects of the story that should have been shown instead.

There are two main issues with the story.
1) There’s no clear protagonist. Sarah should be the protagonist, she’s the character getting dragged out of her normal life and into the world of the adventure, yet she doesn’t come back into the story until halfway through and even then takes virtually no action herself, she’s simply swept up by Alex. Alex gets the most screen time and his adventure actually follows an arc – travel to the girl, rescue the girl, take her home. But this isn’t a special adventure for Alex, this is just what he does. The FBI are actually irrelevant to Alex and Sarah’s adventure; they just sweep along behind them explaining things and they have no real interaction with the adventure until the climax.
2) Not enough actually happens. Alex goes, gets in a shoot-out at the station, finds Sarah, rescues her and takes her back to The Gifted. Really, that’s the first act of a movie, maybe the half-way point at a stretch. It’s certainly not enough story for a whole movie.

Because of these two issues with the story the structure is confused, the second issue means it’s too broad, it’s should be a lot faster, a lot tighter, and the first issue means there’s no clear character arc to build the framework around.

Overall, I’ve marked this script as below average. I’ve not marked it as poor because scene to scene, the writing quality is actually quite strong. It’s easy to read, it never gets too bogged down, and there are some nice ideas and visuals in there. But I don’t think the idea has been sufficiently developed. It reads like a good writer who had an idea one morning and started writing the script immediately.

If you plan to rewrite this script, here are my three main suggestions for you next draft.
- make Sarah the real protagonist
- make things happen much faster
- give the audience more credit, don’t explain so much

Take what you’ve written as the climax of your movie, and start again with that as your opening scene. Have a girl being kidnapped and a man on a bike smashing in to rescue her, with real FBI fighting with fake FBI in the mix. That’s an opening scene that will grab the audience’s attention and introduce all the characters in one shot. You can keep the gas station shooting scene, but use it while Alex and Sarah are travelling back to the The Gifted Mansion, and boom – you’re back at the mansion and ready for Sarah to start her real adventure with The Gifted by the end of act one.

If you’d like me to explain any of my criticisms or suggestions in more detail I’m happy to do so. Good luck with future re-writes.

Review: DYING IN THE SAND

2009-04-22T21:08:00.003+01:00

Script review for triggerstreet.com

DYING IN THE SAND - by Will Lintell

Dying in the Sand is by no means a terrible screenplay. It reads easily, the story skips along at a good pace, contains some nice imagery and has intriguing characters. However, no one area 'wowed' me, and the story is undermined by contradictions and implausibility. Accordingly I've scored it as average across the board, and below average for story.

There are suggestions I could make to improve the characters, dialogue and structure, but for now I think it’s more important to focus on the concept and story.

The heart of your story, as I’ve understood it, is about a killer’s journey to renounce violence. Ignacio killed Ramon for murdering his sister, but allows Francisco to kill him instead of revenging Precosia’s murder.

It’s implied throughout that because of Ignacio’s status as town hero his death will cause the villagers to turn against Francisco and he’ll be forced to take his business elsewhere, so Ignacio is sacrificing himself for the greater good of the town. But Ignacio has already lost Francisco the good-will of Cubrero, who’d previously threatened Francisco, with taking his business through a different town – so in that sense the job was done, the town was already saved, which makes Ignacio’s sacrifice seem redundant.

Your tale is about the moral ambiguities inherent in being the hero-killer, but in trying to explore the grey area the resulting message is muddled.

I’m going to skim through some of the contradictions and plausibility issues as they come to mind.

Francisco is at the heart of the confusion. He tells Ignacio that the town is vital to the drug trade and as such he cannot lose the support of town’s people. That is why he must hire Ignacio instead of killing him. But when Cubrero comes to town, he immediately threatens to pull out and use a different town, so clearly the town isn’t vital and Francisco could have killed Ignacio from the get-go.

Then there’s The Poet. We learn that Francisco paid The Poet to kill Ignacio. Francisco has already explained why he couldn’t kill Ignacio, and had numerous opportunities to do it himself but hadn’t, so what had changed when he hired The Poet? This doesn’t seem to make sense.

How come Ignacio could kill Castillo, a man he seemed on good speaking terms with, yet was unable to kill The Poet, a stranger he knows to be a murderer? The only explanation seems to be the conversation with Precosia between the missions, yet that ends in him confirming his commitment to saving her, and her forgiving him his sins, so how does that translate into a change of heart? Unless it’s meeting The Poet which changes him, which suggests The Poet has a greater effect on him than her, somewhat undermining the love story.

And why didn’t The Poet kill Ignacio? The only clue we’re given is that ‘people change’, which is extremely unsatisfactory. The Poet’s change in heart happens between accepting the hit, and Ignacio arriving (off screen in other words) so we’re left with no way to understand why this has happened, and the revelation that The Poet was hired to kill Ignacio fails as a twist and undermines what’s happened before.

If Francisco knew that The Poet was his hired gun, why didn’t he shoot him when he realized he’d been betrayed at the trade-off where Precosia died?

If The Poet had gone to kill Francisco when he confronts him in the bathroom, why doesn’t he still complete the murder after learning Santiago is out to kill Ignacio? If he’s not there to kill Francisco, why has he gone there at all? Also, in that conversation, Francisco says ‘you know what Santiago is like’, but when has The Poet ever met Santiago, let alone got to know him?

Why is it so easy for Ignacio and The Poet to steal the drugs? If Francisco knows they’re out there somewhere, and the shipment is so important, why are there only two goons there? If Francisco can’t run his operation properly, then instead of being Ignacio’s achievement it becomes Francisco’s failure, undermining Ignacio as the protagonist.

Likewise, why was it so easy for Ignacio to kill Ramos and stay in town in the backstory? If Ramos ran the same operation as the one Francisco takes over he should have had a squad of goons, like Francisco, why did they never come after Ignacio for killing their boss?

We never see Ignacio take a PDA from Castillo when he kills him, so it’s sudden appearance seem like a contrived plot-device to allow Ignacio access to hidden information and contact with Cubrero.

Why does Ignacio contact Cubrero before making the trade for Precosia? Common sense decrees that Cubrero will quickly vent his fury at Francisco, who will in turn pass it on to Precosia. It’s this stupid error that gets her killed; which makes her death totally Ignacio’s fault, and this blatant stupidity further undermines audience support for Ignacio right before the final act!

At the trade-off, Francisco is a good enough marksman to shoot Precosia without even looking, while he cannot hit Ignacio and The Poet at all while they run back to their vehicle.

The big confrontation between Ignacio and Santiago fades out at a crucial moment and is never satisfactorily explained. What exactly happened? We know two shots were fired, one by Santiago which hit The Poet in the leg, one by The Poet which missed Santiago. And then what? How did that result in Santiago being captured? You have a big chase scene which builds up to a confrontation we never see and is never explained. This is very frustrating to the audience!

In the final confrontation, why do Lope and Marcelo get their guns out and then flee from The Poet? More inexplicable behavior in a crucial scene.

There are far too many unexplained actions. If the audience cannot follow a clear chain of cause and effect in the story then it becomes meaningless, just things happening for no discernable reason.

For your next re-write I strongly recommend you concentrate on eliminating plot holes.

TriggerStreet

2009-03-24T23:45:00.002Z

I'm sure many/most of you are already aware of TriggerStreet.com, but until last week I wasn't. Since then I've been fascinated.

TriggerStreet is an online community for writers that operates a formal credit system to reward members who contribute reviews of other writers work.

I enjoy script reading: writing reports, analysis and offering suggestions for improvements. It's a skill I'd allowed to get a little rusty, but TriggerStreet has given me plenty of opportunity to get back in practice.

I've added my TriggerStreet account to the 'About Me' links on the left, and on that page you can see the few reviews I've already written. I've also uploaded a feature film script My Sister and The Bastard Prince but I believe you need to be a member to read scripts (it's free to sign-up though).

This book will save your life

2009-03-22T02:15:00.000Z

I still read a lot but it's been some time since a book took hold of me and wouldn't let me put it down until it was finished.

It's twenty past two in the morning and I've finally finished reading This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes. I started it in the bath this afternoon.

I'm not going to say much except that I enjoyed it immensely and had to to tell somebody immediately.

It's Mother's Day tomorrow. I should write my card and go to sleep.

Sweet dreams scribosphere.

Back once again

2009-03-19T13:11:00.002Z

Back once again/for the renegade master
Default damager/power to the people
Back once again/for the renegade master
Default damager/with the ill behaviour

I've not posted for a month which is terrible, terrible behaviour (one might even say ill behaviour). I won't go into great detail because frankly it's irrelevant, suffice to say that when I let my attention slip it wandered further than expected.

But I'm back today and I'll still be back tomorrow.
Because that's the way, a-ha a-ha, I like it.

Today I can't stop listening to One Day As A Lion, a Zack De La Rocha (Rage Against The Machine) project. Apparently this came out nearly a year ago, but somehow I never heard it before so to me it's brand-spanking new and I'm spreading the word.

So here's Wild International, by One Day As A Lion.

Sorry Kev, but not for me

2009-02-20T23:36:00.003Z

My third and final post about Kevin Haworth's sketch-show.

After a week without a squeak I had to chase Kevin for a reply. I have pretty fundamental doubts about the format he's intent on using, a sit-com with sketch-show interjections, but that aspect of the show is not up for negotiation so I've politely withdrawn from the project. I wish him the best of luck, but it wasn't the right collaboration for me.

BBC looking for sketch writers

2009-02-20T14:13:00.002Z

Radio 7 are looking for new writing talent for a new topical comedy sketch show called 7 on 7.

Check out the Writers Room blog.

I'll be submitting three sketches.
It'll be a giggle.
You should too.

No show = no jokes

2009-02-20T14:01:00.002Z

I'd planned to spread the 'treat a joke like a joke' campaign of my last post far and wide before today's protest but that proved unnecessary. The Government told the Phelps family they would be turned back at the airport and as such they never even left the USA.

Common Decency - One
Crazy Homophobes - Nil

Treat A Joke Like A Joke

2009-02-17T01:57:00.003Z

The Phelps family, lead by Fred Phelps is coming to England, to Basingstoke, not too far from me. He's the crazy Baptist father from Louis Theroux's documentary, The Most Hated Family in America who campaigns that God Hates Fags.

The family are coming to Basingstoke on Friday the 20th to protest a play, The Laramie Project, about a gay guy getting brutally attacked and left for dead. They're a joke.

As far as I'm concerned, the best way to treat a joke is like a joke. I want to spread the word, and come up with as many funny banners, or silly things we can do at the protest to take the piss.

Suggestions so far.

(Me) Banner: Even God likes a fag after shagging
(Sophie) Banner: Jesus was a bit gay
(Me) Prank: They've listed George Michael as a British poster-child of sin, so we should hand out lyrics and get everyone to sing Faith at them.
(Me) Banner: Fred's saving that cherry for Jesus
(Me) Prank: Try and interview them (with a camera) and ask really leftfield questions like "if you were dying of cancer and a gay man invented the cure, would you let his medicine save your life?"

It's late, so that's all for tonight - but tomorrow I'll spread the word and get more suggestions. Please comment if you've got any suggestions!

So the pitch went as expected

2009-02-16T16:59:00.002Z

My pitch to the BBC Community Channel went pretty much as expected.

The pitch itself went well, the words flowed naturally and I got a good round of applause. The panel had several questions and they seemed interested but in the end didn't pick it to be commissioned, they picked two other ideas instead.

Both the ideas they chose fitted much more tightly to the show description from the website, rather than to the show description listed in the schedule (which I worked from). I knew this was a risk I ran, I even mentioned it in my pre-pitch blog, so I have that bitter-sweet pleasure of telling myself 'I told you so'.

Both the ideas they chose were from individuals telling stories about issues that have affected their lives, which they want to raise awareness about. If I'd know for sure that was the brief I would have pitched a more appropriate idea. I lived a fairly unconventional life as a teenager myself and there are issues I would like publicised. So I've not given up yet. Now that I know what they're looking for I'm going to go back to them with an idea that fits their needs.

Shooting people update

2009-02-12T14:31:00.003Z

The sketch writer, Kevin Haworth, liked my ideas and sent me some of his own. I intended to write him a quick note back, just a couple of hundred words and it somehow turned into 1,300 or so. Sometimes the words just keep on coming.

I also responded to another Shooting People bulletin request from a first time director, Simon King, looking for a co-writer/co-producer to make some shorts. I sent him my short synopsis for Krapp-Shaag: he think mockumentaries have been done to death. I disagree, I think they've become an established stylistic approach and one particularly suited to micro-budget comedy without practised comic actors. Despite this difference of opinion I've asked to meet for a drink some time after Friday's pitch at the Future Film Festival to see if there's merit in pursuing things. He's not into mockumentaries but if we get on I'll pitch him a few of my less developed short ideas and see if there's any he wants to help me work-up.

I only signed-up with Shooting People a couple of weeks ago and wanted to get a feel for how it operates before I start sending out my shorts in their script pitch bulletins. I think I've done that now and should submit for next week's bulletin.

Sketch-show through shooting people

2009-02-11T02:21:00.003Z

I responded to a call in a shooting people bulletin for sketch-show collaborators.

The writer, Kevin Haworth, got back to me today/yesterday (when you're sleeping pattern is irregular it's difficult to know whether to describe days from your perspective or the masses') and I've sent him a more comprehensive overview of my comic writings and ideas, including a couple of show concepts I've not posted here yet.

I have no idea if anything will come of it; even if he likes my ideas I have doubts about how effective a comedy collaboration can be from different ends of the country, but I'll remain cautiously optimistic for now.

E-Biz website reviews

2009-02-11T01:15:00.002Z

I've been accepted onto a free E-Biz website review training event back at Bournemouth Uni. It's a one morning course which should lead to some casual work reviewing websites for around £13/hour. The extra income would be much appreciated in these credit crunch days. The training course isn't until March so any of my Bournemouth buddies reading this have time to get involved. Give me a shout and I'll forward you the details.

Pitching to the BBC at Future Film Festival

2009-02-11T00:41:00.003Z

BBC Blast is an initiative encouraging 13-19 year olds throughout the UK to get involved in dance, film, art and music.

Blast and the BFI are putting on the Future Film Festival, "three packed days of film screenings, workshops and debates" for 13 - 25 year olds, between the 13th and 15th of Feb (Fri/Sat/Sun this weekend).

I spotted this workshop:

Film Pitch
Got a hot new idea? Come and pitch your original idea for a new drama or documentary film to our panel of experts and you may see it made and aired on the Community Channel.

There were still openings left in the workshop and I sneak under the age restrictions (maximum age is 25, I'm 24) so I signed up and have been accepted.

Getting a show made for the Community Channel would be an excellent first credit so I'm taking this opportunity seriously. I believe I have a strong idea for a micro-budget documentary on a subject I'm passionate and knowledgeable about. I'm also confident that I can work-up a tight, punchy four minute pitch. My only concern is that while the concept works within the broader remit of the Community Channel it's perhaps stretching the boundaries of the specific show I'd be pitching for, Charge.

Unfortunately I'm not a regular viewer of the Community Channel so I'm uncertain how tightly Charge sticks to it's listed description. There seems the potential for some leeway between "hard-hitting subjects like crime, poverty, health and race issues" (the website show description) and "innovative, provocative and witty, with entertainment at the core. Discover new British talent, get obsessed and have an opinion" (the schedule description).

I'm inclined to stick with the idea I believe in. Even if it's not quite what they're looking for it's still a superb opportunity to meet a BBC panel and learn from another pitching experience. I still need to find out whether I'm allowed to use a visual presentation, or if it's bare-bones verbal. If allowed, I think I'd have time to whip-up a background video which would be ideal.

Robin Kelly: my first follower

2009-02-11T00:09:00.003Z

What is following?
This is.

Writing is intellectual masturbation unless someone else reads it, then it becomes communication.

Robin Kelly, the brains behind Writing for Performance has decided my blog merits following. This make me happy.

I won't make a habit of thanking every follower, but the first time of anything is always a little special. So thank-you Robin. Anyone else reading who's unfamiliar with Writing for Performance, check it out today, it's been described as the "the heart of the UK scribosphere".

Valentines rant

2009-02-10T04:33:00.001Z

Last year, when I had a girlfriend, I viewed Valentine’s Day as a necessary evil. In my experience romance is an elusive beast best caught by surprise. A scheduled, nationwide day of obligatory gifting is about as romantic, to me, as snot in your soup, but telling your beloved that is akin to begging her for nightly headaches until June. So I bought her a teddy bear, cooked a nice dinner and life went on.

When your single but there’s someone you fancy then Valentine’s Day is the most anxious date on the calendar. Either your card will go down well and ignite the kindling of love, or the awkward embarrassment in her eyes will crush that dream forever. Alternatively there’s the anonymous card, signed with a question mark. That’s sent by two kinds of guy, those too scared to risk a rejection and those romantics playing ‘the long game’ (I have serious doubts whether there’s any real difference between the two).

When you’re single and there’s nobody special on your radar you can see Valentine’s Day as the commercialised celebration of mawkish emotion it’s become.

Last weekend I hit the shops with my Mum and spent a few minutes wandering about Clinton Cards while she found something for my Step-Dad. I was pleased and surprised to spot a section for gay relationships, something I’d not seen before. One particular card featuring a male lion licking another lion’s balls forced me to crack a smile. Two other sections I spotted did impress me less. I believe it comes down to your interpretation of Valentines Day and I see it exclusively as a day for lovers and potential lovers. People you like fucking or want to fuck. As such, I found the sections of cards between parents and children and owners and pets extremely bizarre. I’m pretty sure incest and bestiality haven’t become socially acceptable yet, so clearly the card companies are working from a different understanding to my own. The parent to child cards I can understand as pity cards. When even the parents can see their child has all the good looks of an alligator, I can understand Mumsy buying a pity card to make the mite feel loved. But from kids to their parents? If we’re discounting incestuous relationships, surely Mothers and Fathers Days have got that sentiment covered? And the pets’ cards are just too weird. Who sends their dog a Valentines card? Who buys a card to pretend it’s from their cat? I understand the card companies having a vested interest in expanding Valentines’ boundaries to cover platonic love, but I’m shocked so many people buy into it. Perhaps it’s their way of admitting to their subconscious pet-lust.

I suppose that when a couple have been together many years and the relationship has grown stale, Valentine’s Day could be a useful annual reminder to at least try and be romantic. That’s really the only upside I can see.

But perhaps I’m just bitter and twisted because I’m single and lonely. Who knows?

Twitter and username rage

2009-02-09T23:37:00.006Z

It seems the world's gone Twitter crazy recently. I'm from the school of 'don't knock it until you've tried it', so after reading Charlie Brooker's article I've bowed to the inevitable and signed up. To quote Charlie:

"there's something strangely compelling about [Twitter]. It's the online equivalent of popping bubble wrap."

I've been going to Bubblewrap Anonymous for eighteen months now and have that habit well under control. Perhaps Twitter can fill that void in my life.

You can now find me here on Twitter.

My first twittering is about usernames. When I signed up for blogger I requested kriztov.blogspot as that's the username I've used online since I was twelve, but alas it was taken and I whimsically opted for scriptywriter instead. My fuzzy logic was that I'm a scriptwriter, but I'm not actually an employed scriptwriter yet, so I'm really only a bit scriptwritery, which transformed into scriptywriter. I've since grown rather attached to this clumsy moniker.

Upon registering with Twitter I again instinctively typed in kriztov and was rejected. Bemused, (it's hardly a common handle) I checked out the offending account and, would you believe it, found the same Australian computer programmer who nabbed the name on blogger.

Check out the imposter:
https://twitter.com/kriztov
http://kriztov.blogspot.com/

I'm officially declaring this username doppelgänger my mortal enemy and have begun work on an evil plan of epic proportions to make him rue the day he thought using a K, Z and V in the same word would be cool. *insert maniacal laugh here*

Change a letter game (part two)

2009-02-06T02:59:00.006Z

I said I'd come back and write some loglines for my letter game picks: here I am.

Sliver Twist
Twist is an orphan and data-jacker in London, 2075. Taken in by hacker-king, Fagan, he moves into luxury apartment, Sliver Heights, and becomes entangled in a bizarre relationship with the building's voyeuristic landlord AI, Brownlow. When Fagan tries to hack Brownlow, Twist puts his body on the line.

Dude, Where's My War?
Troy and Swoff, two bumbling marines, wake up one morning in the middle of the desert with no memory of how they came to be there. Attempting to find their way back to their station, they encounter everyone from angry Iraqi's who say they blew up their school last night, furious aid workers, a transsexual journalist, and a cult of fundamentalists who want their doomsday device back. Sardonic hilarity ensues.

Smokin' Apes
In the war between humans and talking apes, the apes have taken the upper hand. General Sparazza puts out a $1 million contract on the heads of five top apes and an array of the best assassins mankind has to offer are unleashed in a comic race of monkey murdering mayhem.

Cinderella Pan
Hollywood, 1949. When Peter Pan falls for Cinderella at one of Donald Duck's hedonistic parties the face of children's fantasy takes a beating! Cinderella's enraged fiance, Prince Charming, chases them to Neverland and tricks Pan into a boxing duel to satisfy his honour. Betrayed by a heartbroken Wendy, it takes some fancy footwork in crystal slippers by Cinders to save the day.

Hassel
After winning the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1969, quirky Norwegian chemist, Odd Hassel, takes a break from his lab to travel across Eastern Europe. A celibate academic, Hassel is drawn by tales of promiscuous women to a hostel in Bratislava. Captured by sadistic communists, it takes all of Hassel's brainpower to foil their murderous scheme.

It's just been pointed out to me (in the first comment on this blog, woohoo!) that Hostel to Hassel is actual two changed letters, not one. Which is what happens when you play words games in the middle of the night. Can't believe I didn't spot that. I guess I just got too caught up in the idea of a Nobel chemist in Hostel! Just me, huh? Well, I told myself I'd do five ideas, and as I accidentally cheated on one, I'll do another real quick...

Roy
Biography of musician Roy Orbison. The real story behind the ballads of lost love for which Roy will always be remembered, from growing up as a child prodigy in early fifties Texas, the death of his wife in a motorcycle accident, the loss of two children to a house fire, his resurgent career in the eighties and his own much mourned demise.

Terry Pratchett - Living With Alzheimer's

2009-02-05T15:50:00.004Z

I just watched Terry Pratchett - Living With Alzheimer's on BBC's iPlayer. The show will be available for viewing by anyone in the UK for the next two weeks, and I highly recommend it.

As a lifelong Pratchett fan it was both heart-warming and heart-wrenching to see one of my heroes wrestling with an incurable, debilitating disease. He suffers from a form of Alzheimer's that will cause his visual processing to deteriorate and likely lead to an inability to read and write. For a writer, this is torture. He's struggling to type, to spell, and to sign books for his fans yet his mind, his imagination, and his gentle wit are as strong as ever. He's still got stories to tell, and I've left the show with the impression that he will be dictating his next novel to his steadfast personal assistant.

The second of two episodes will be aired on the 11th, and follows Terry to the USA looking for more experimental treatments. I know I'll be watching. It's an extremely intimate and brave documentary: I feel grateful he has made it.

Rusko - Woo Boost

2009-02-04T03:21:00.003Z

I don't plan on posting music here very often, only when something really hooks me. Recently, that's dubstep.

If you're not familiar with dubstep: it's dark and grimey dance music, heavy on the atmosphere, even heavier on the bass.

A few weeks ago I heard Woo Boost on Annie Mac's Mash Up and the beat has barely left my brain since.

Here's the tune on YouTube. Enjoy!

Change a letter game

2009-02-04T02:15:00.007Z

I went from here, to Scriptwriting in the UK to Danny's bloglines to Blake Snyder.

He's holding a quick contest. Take a film name, change one letter (and one letter only) and write a logline for the new movie.

It's the sort of game that appeals to my scrabble-loving sensibilities and I churned out a few ideas. They also work as a reverse version of the game, where you have to figure out the original film from my altered version. I didn't say the reverse version was difficult, did I?

Cattle Royale, Tear Window, Star Wart, Apocalypse No!, Citizen Lane, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mine, Modern Mimes, Tin City, Torch of Evil, High Soon, Jews, Snitch, Crass, Scarfact, The Thong, Biz Fish, Brood Diamond, Cinderella Pan, Read Men's Shoes, Funding Neverland, Hot Buzz, Mystic Rover, No Man's Band, Pain Man, Shaun of the Deed, Starbust, This Is Spinal Rap, Talk the Line, The Glues Brothers, Office Spice, Close Encounters of the Third King, Dead Ports Society, A Fist Called Wanda, The Lone Good Friday, Match Print, Roy, Superbat, Lord of Tar, The Bucket Lisp, Sad Max, Knocker Up, Glow, Enema at the Gates, Grosse Point Blink, Ice Ace, The Italian Jog, Laser Cake, She Mist, Transfarmers, The School of Cock, Slepper, Three Rings, Hand Candy, Jarheat, Phone Broth, Crack, Flashed Away, From Musk Till Dawn, Sliver Twist, Quadrophelia, American Pig, The Girl Newt Door, The Food Shepherd, The Holyday, Panic Doom, 50 First Danes, Hillboy, 16 Clocks, 8 Mice, Hippy Feet, The History Bots, Slather, Smokin' Apes, Up On Smoke, The Whole Nine Cards, Bag Boys, Won Air, Hamburger Hell, Silent Kill, The Way of the Gum, The Big Stare, EuroCrip, Wordfish, World Grade Center, Human Mature, Revolved, The 51st Slate, Mass Congeniality, Ocran's Eleven, Romeo Must Dig, Mouthland Tales, Hassel, The Tide Machine, Deep Clue Sea, She One, Porque, Six Days Seven Fights, Bulletproof Mink, Lust Married, Dude Where's My War?

I'll scan over the options tomorrow and write a few loglines for my favourites, but the ones catching my eye at the moment are...
Cinderella Pan (Cinderalla Man)
Sliver Twist (Oliver Twist)
Smokin' Apes (Smokin' Aces)
Dude, Where's My War? (Dude, Where's My Car?)
Hassel (Hostel)

www.ted.com

2009-02-01T03:57:00.002Z

Anyone interested in a goldmine of talks about forward thinking ideas across the broadest spectrum of subjects should love ted.com

Check out this presentation about D.N.A folding as an example, some original science of breathtaking potential.

They have world leaders in their fields talking about technology, arts, entertainment, global issues, and more. There's plenty of it and nary an unworthy watch among them. It may just be you favourite new site.

Shooting People

2009-01-30T01:14:00.004Z

Yesterday I joined shooting people. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while, so I did it. Here's me as a shooter.

My first plan for shooting people is to try and drum up some interest for my most recent short script idea, Krapp-Shaag.

KRAPP-SHAAG (8 mins)
A NHS announcement about a recently discovered sexually transmitted disease: Krapp-Shaag. Named after the Austrians who discovered its effects, Krapp-Shaag is a bacterium that lives in the testes and produces a neurotoxin which erodes the brains link between sex and imagination, making long-term sufferers utterly unimaginative in bed. They become crap shags.

If I can get a director interested it's very low budget so should be very shootable.

Sci-fi short story competition

2009-01-30T00:46:00.004Z

Last night I stumbled over this little competition.

"Dream for me. Tell me the note that ripples through spacetime in the wake of an ftl cruiser. Convey to me the songs that alien cephalopods whistle in their jovian soup. Give me the music of the spheres as you hear it. When the echoes fade, we'll all be richer for it."

They're after a sci-fi short story, 1-5K words, themed around music in sci-fi. I had an idea before I'd finished reading the rules. A far future musician studying a revolutionary near future musician (from his past) for inspiration. The near future revolutionary musician mastered the technology to directly translate movement into sound, and turned object manipulation into music. I reckon that'll take me a morning to write and a different afternoon to re-write. It's gotta be worth a go. I'll enjoy it and I might win a hundred quid.

Script History - part 5

2009-01-30T00:27:00.002Z

In my final year of the course I had just one script to write, a feature film.

MY SISTER AND THE BASTARD PRINCE (120 mins)
Frank and Nancy are twins. After graduating they go travelling, and film a documentary of their adventure. Following a chance opportunity to meet an urban legend, crime-lord/Messiah ‘The Bastard Prince’, they’re accepted into his gang. Frank retains his journalistic objectivity, but Nancy is seduced by his power, charisma, and pseudo-religious message. As the sacrifices Nancy makes for the Prince grow, Frank’s horrified to find that he can’t stop watching.

Since graduating from Bournemouth with a 2.1 BA, I’ve been developing several new scripts. My first was a return to the short film.

KRAPP-SHAAG (8 mins)
A NHS announcement about a recently discovered sexually transmitted disease: Krapp-Shaag. Named after the Austrians who discovered its effects, Krapp-Shaag is a bacterium that lives in the testes and produces a neurotoxin which erodes the brains link between sex and imagination, making long-term sufferers utterly unimaginative in bed. They become crap shags.

I’m currently developing a new feature film concept.

SHIPPED WRECKS (working title, approx 100 mins)
Steam-punk fantasy dystopia. The magical mutation and merging of humans with animal or machine parts is common punishment for criminals. The cruel magical judges twist the human form into nightmare shapes, only limited by their macabre imagination. One such batch of remoulded wretches, called wrecks, is being shipped to a colony as slaves. The slaves get loose, the ship gets sunk, and a mixed lot of wrecks and sailors wash up on an island inhabited by fierce natives of a monstrous species.

And also another short script in the same mockumentary style as Krapp-Shaag.

25 LETTERS
About one man's crusade to have the letter Q removed from the alphabet. A mildly autistic man is fixated on the numbers 5 and 25. He finds the alphabet, extremely unpleasant because of the 26th letter. He's identified the letter Q as expendable, it's reliant on U for survival already and words using Q could replace it with K or Kw with no change in pronunciation. He takes his campaign to the streets and the British Library.

I have several more short film concepts under development and have also begun re-writing KVG as a novel.

Script History - part 4

2009-01-30T00:26:00.002Z

Entering the second year of the course I lead a group effort to design a TV series and write one episode each.

ANNWN (60 mins series, 12 episodes)
A multinational company buys an abandoned mine outside the Welsh village of Annwn and begins constructing a top-secret research station deep underground. The security force guarding the facility soon realise the official story doesn’t add up and as strange characters probe their defences the real secret leaks out. A meteorite strike as apocalyptic as the dinosaur killer is expected soon, and the facility is an ark that will shelter a select few until the skies clear. As whispers and sabotage spread, deals are being done over exactly who will be inside by the end.

I chose to write the final climatic episode.

ANNWN – EPISODE TWELVE (60 mins)
The prophet, Eden, stands on an extended fire-engine platform addressing thousands who’ve come searching for salvation. He tells them to make their peace and as the first small rock smashes down he is obliterated. The end is neigh and chaos erupts; soldiers loot, rape and murder. Hundreds are killed as the vengeful Verochka destroys the main entrance lift. Michael, the drink-addled surveillance chief rescues two young women who keep him company as the tidal wave sweeps in. Deep underground Spider leaves a hardcore group of locals through the natural caving system to break into the Ark’s unprotected rear. As their planet dies the mismatched groups of survivors size each other up.

For my other project that year I developed an ambitious visual concept, merging CGI, animation, rotoscoping and traditional footage.

VKG (60 mins)
Vivian is a psychic teenage girl. She can see and manipulate energy on all seven plains of reality. She works as a psychiatrist’s assistant, helping heal broken minds. She takes a high-profile case of her own, Edward, a Lord’s son who’s reduced to a growling animal. Finding Ed’s personality still alive inside his dreams, Vivian finds his story inexplicably linked with her own. When the final confrontation with Ed’s father doesn’t go quite as planned Vivian finds herself contemplating a Devil’s bargain.

As part of a mixed media school team competition (in with I was helpfully partnered with two web designers!) we won with our response to real BBC brief for interactive drama.

RABBIT HOLE (30 mins, 12 episodes)
A fake hidden camera / psychological manipulation show in the style of Darren Brown. Six teenagers are lead to believe their families have been kidnapped by an insane killer. They must follow a trail of breadcrumb clues and complete tasks designed to help them 'believe in their potential' if they're ever to see them alive again. Little known to them, their families are safe in a hotel and whichever of them performs best will win their family a large cash prize. The show goes wrong when the teenagers get the help of 'the public' through the internet and find out what's really going on. On first airing the show would be carefully synched with an online drama through YouTube that would help generate the belief that it was occurring live.

Over the summer between my second and third years I worked as a script editor and writer for an independent script developer. I cannot divulge much information as the project is still actively seeking production, except to say it was a feature film focused on dancing vampires.

Script History - part 2

2009-01-30T00:25:00.004Z

Upon leaving school I followed my head rather than my heart and started a degree in Artificial Intelligence (hardcore computer studies). I carried on scriptwriting at a Lighthouse night course in Brighton.

ROOT VEG MANOEUVRE (20 mins)
Megafest is an annual rock music festival. The Junkyard Krew are a bunch of teenage boys who never miss Megafest. When a gangster rapper is announced in the prime headline slot, the boys plan and execute a protest stunt. They fire a frozen carrot at the rapper from a homemade pneumatic cannon. When their stunt kills the rapper the Krew tears itself apart in panic.

Although at different Universities Andy and I continued to collaborate.

TWISTED DREAMS (120 mins)
The epic tale of two separated boyhood friends who reunite as young men to form a rock band which conquers the world. Becoming spokesmen for conflicting causes their political beliefs destroy the band and drop them into a criminal world of kidnap and manipulation.

I realised that computer programming might make me rich, but scriptwriting consistently made me happy. I applied to Bournemouth University’s scriptwriting for TV and cinema course and was asked to write an example script.

RIPPLES (12 mins)
A young man who is unaware he suffers from an obscure memory condition is enjoying a walk on Brighton pier with his girlfriend. He’s confronted by his wife who’s spent months tracking him down and the revelation about his condition unleashes years of suppressed memories. Consumed by guilt and afraid of the painful treatment he dives from the pier, leaving just ripples in his wake.

Script History - part 3

2009-01-30T00:25:00.003Z

I was accepted onto the course and spent the next three years practicing my scriptwriting. Our first script was one we felt we could actually shoot ourselves, so I based mine on a martial artist and stuntman friend.

RUBICON DOORWAY (8 mins)
No dialogue and super-hero stylised. A costumed young man leaves a Halloween party in the morning. A band of thieves are robbing his house. A call from his neighbour about the thieves initiates a madcap sprint for home. His house is booby-trapped and the thieves are frantic. He arrives before they can escape and attacks with a violent glee.

My next script was an attempt at broadening my range with some romantic comedy.

LOVE BUG (20 mins)
Love is an intangible parasitic bug that jumps from couple to couple. A portmanteau story that shows three such transferences; the final one orchestrated by a desperate young woman who has cracked the love bug’s pattern.

The final film of my first year at Bournemouth was composed of four stylistically contrasting segments.

SHADOW SONG (40 mins)
A sixth-former at a boarding school is being blackmailed by a desperately lonely young student who’s stolen a teacher’s puppy and is hiding with it in the school basements. When they try to take his puppy away, the youngster becomes psychopathic, and when they take him to the authorities he concocts a story of sexual abuse.

Script History - part 1

2009-01-30T00:20:00.000Z

I’ve always liked words. The way so much meaning can be packed into a few squiggles is, to me, magical. As a youngster I wrote poetry and several times attempted novels. My passion for writing didn’t truly ignite until I discovered scriptwriting.

For most forms writing is a lonely task, the only people who matter are the writer and the reader. For a scriptwriter it’s a collaborative task. The script is embraced by a director, embodied by actors and enjoyed by an audience all together. At its best, scriptwriting is creative teamwork and that is where I thrive.

I started out writing scripts for theatre studies at school.

INFECTIOUS SUBURBAN DREAM (20 mins)
A bank clerk driven to despair by the inane predictability of his life recruits two accomplices and attempts to rob his employers. Dream sequence breakaways, stylised abstractions, audience confrontations and original poetry were combined into an immersive experience that was hugely popular. I also directed.

My second script was co-written with a friend, Andy, in response to an MTV competition.

LOW (4 mins)
A music video script for the Foo Fighters song of the same name intended for composition from still photographs. A homeless man walks the streets of London, begging for change. Everywhere he looks people are ‘wasting money’, drinking pints of copper coins and eating ten pound note sandwiches. He only needs a little, but all he receives is scorn and violence.

I returned to the stage for my final time.

ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST by DARIO FO (30 mins)
All other student groups performed a thirty minute excerpt of their chosen play. I preferred to cut our hour and half original down to a thirty minute abridged script that retained the plot, style and key scenes of the original. I also directed and acted the lead role.

I continued to co-write with Andy for fun.

CHINNY (30 mins series)
Sci-fi sit-com. An intergalactic taxi-cab stops by our near future dystopian Earth looking for a fare. It leaves our world carrying Chinny, a lunar obsessed screwball, his closest family and friends, and the unemployed ex-God of fishing.

VKG (The Novel) - chapter one

2009-01-30T00:18:00.004Z

I wasn't really planning to write a novel, I was looking at re-writing my VKG script and was considering switching the narrator to Edward. I started writing some stream of consciousness as Edward, trying to hear his voice more clearly and it came out as this chapter. I enjoyed writing it more than expected, enough to consider continuing with. I have doubts about the style, language and grammar (this is the untouched first draft) and an objective glance would be appreciated.
-----

Chapter One

I do not remember how or when I died. I’ve often wondered if I crashed or drowned, if I was murdered or took my own life, if it was painless and quick or a slow ordeal of agony. I have a hunch; (although even that is too strong a word) I have the faintest tremor of certainty, that whatever killed me had been carried from birth. A weakness in the wall of my heart. A fatal flaw in the wiring of my brain. A single savage allergy just waiting for its long-lost trigger to unleash a rampant ecstasy of swelling, suffocation and stillness. I hold-out little hope of ever solving this most intimate of mysteries. I have no means of obtaining fresh evidence from an objective source and my own memories of the weeks leading up to my demise are shattered and burnt, they will provide no illuminating insights. Besides, in all truth it matters not. Even if all the facts were gathered, the story of my end laid out in undeniable fashion, I would still not be satisfied. The flow of life runs through a one-way door, life to lifeless, there is no return.
I do not remember drawing my last breath or closing my eyes for the final time but I do remember my first realisation that I was dead. I say my first because after each such incident the realisation would slowly fade, be forgotten, and leave me blissfully unaware once more. It took many such moments, somewhere between one and two dozen, before knowledge of my death became constant, a nagging companion I could not escape. That first realisation was by far the most shocking, the most brutal. I feel nauseas even recounting it for you. Each following realisation tapped back into the emotions of the first, reinforcing and building upon the foundation it laid. It is on that rock in this roiling sea of the deceased that I have constructed, laboriously, this artefact of awareness I preach from on top of today.

I was in a coffee shop. The air was thick and pungent. The only sounds that reached me were the slurps of customers drinking cappuccinos and the soft papery flick of book and newspaper pages turning. Later, the frothy gargle of the coffee machine and road noises of traffic and pedestrians muted outside. I made out this delicate whirring noise, a continuous scratch of metal on wood. Someone was spinning a coin on their table. The noise continued for twenty seconds, thirty; it was a good spin and I was impressed. The revolutions widened and the coin fell rattling onto its side.
“Can I help you, sir?” she said. Her voice was Indian or perhaps Pakistani, a strong, rich accent that seemed poorer for the angular English utterances forced through it. I fell in love with her voice before I opened my eyes. It sent shivers down my spine and raised goosebumps across my neck and shoulders. My fingers tingled, my toes twitched and I bit my tongue to stop my jaw from dropping. In the tones of her greeting, the seriousness, boredom, impatience, curiosity, amusement, exasperation and playful suggestion I felt her melody of emotion caress my soul.
I opened my eyes. My feet had drifted unbidden to the counter. I was in a Starbucks. To be specific I was in the Starbucks at the entrance to Hammersmith tube station, London. I’d had coffee with a ballet choreographer there twice, over two years ago. I recognised it instantly. While part of me went ahead with the business of ordering coffee; scanning the menu, ordering the usual, digging change from the pouch in my wallet in my pocket, most of me was screaming about the girl. It was her! Her! The girl from my dreams. The dreams I’d awake from in tears because the woman I’d cherished with all my soul had vaporised before my opening eyes. It was her, she was here, she was real and I loved her. Her nametag badge said “Zee”. When she returned my change a spark passed between our fingers on contact, a real spark of static electricity that shocked us both with its audible crackling zip and unexpected sting. We flinched, Zee and I, spilling coins either side of the counter and both bent to chase them, mumbling apologies. The second time she touched my hand, nervous of another fleeting pain, I closed my fingers around hers just a little. She looked at me and I was lost in the velvet depths of her brown eyes. I looked at her and she smiled shyly. Understanding blossomed, nurtured by our unending eye-contact. I broke away exhilarated and took my coffee to a table in the corner.
I was dressed, I suddenly realised, in my black gi, my martial-arts uniform. I normally only wore it for nunchaku-do classes, why was I wearing it in London? I slipped my backpack off my shoulders; it contained no nunchaku. I reasoned that I could not have been to a seminar session in Hammersmith. My bag contained my writing kit, several notebooks and dozens of loose pens and highlighters. I’d used this Starbucks before to meet and interview a local, perhaps that’s what had bought me here again. The question of my outfit nagged at me. I’ve suffered from inexplicable holes in my memory for as long as I can remember (or not) so I wasn’t overly worried to find myself in London without reason. I checked my phone; it was the forty-fourth of March, two in the afternoon. I hadn’t made or received any calls all day so there were no clues to be found there. Out of long practiced nervous habit I touched my fingertips in turn to my thumb, counting them, one, two, three, four and five. Oh. Oh dear. I looked down at my hand, my human paw, with its four spindly fingers and one amazing opposable thumb. I looked away again, distressed, watching a fat man in the opposite corner inhale a chocolate éclair without chewing and repeated my nervous habit. Thumb to fingertips, one after another, one, two, three, four and five. Five fingers and a thumb: not good.
The coffee shop was becoming distinctly claustrophobic; the slurps that surrounded me became sickening. I was overwhelmed by the unearthly roar of the coffee machine and hauled out my phone again. The forty-fourth of March? How had that nonsensical detail escaped me? The explanation was obvious, I was dreaming again.
With a pop of depressurisation like an airplane coming in to land the claustrophobia evaporated. I looked around with new eyes, feeling sad and lonely. None of these people were real. If I had a pin they could pop like balloons. How had I ever believed this tissue-thin façade? I felt ashamed.
There are basic tricks to establishing lucid control of a dream, I learnt them long ago. This liquid isn’t coffee, its whiskey: I knocked the cup back and let it’s warmth seep into my bones. This is my dream to control as I see fit: I crushed the cup into my hands and pressed the china dust between my palms, transforming it into a scarlet butterfly which flapped lazily through the glass window and away. I clicked my fingers for dramatic effect and Zee came running to sit at my side. Like a bad exhibition opening when the free booze runs dry, all the customers quietly folded up their newspapers and vacated the premises. Zee’s colleague, a thick-set bald man with a permanent ravine deep frown shut-off the coffee machine and slouched away. The pedestrians stopped passing, the cars all drove away and darkness fell on our dreamland corner of London. Throughout all this my eyes never left Zee, I was aware of this other activity in the same way an orchestra conductor is aware of the audience’s collectively held breath behind his back. She was pleading with me in silence through her bottomless, oh, so articulate eyes.
“I know,” she seemed to say, “that you’re angry with me. You think I’ve duped you once more. I’ve seen you, you know? I’ve seen the tears you shed on your pillow; seen you curse whichever name you met me under last. I do not mean to make you angry; our time together is no joke to me. This is my only route to you and I must grasp it whenever I can.”
I looked away, resentful of her silent supplication.
“Do you have anything to say?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, (that voice, my god!) “what is that motion you make with your fingers? How does it help you to see this place truly?”
I repeated the gesture, slowly in the air between us. Thumb to finger four time over.
“I count my fingers with my thumb. It only works when I am not looking, when I let my hand hang at my side or under the table on my lap. My dreams, these dreams, are primarily audio, visual and emotional. Taste and smell here are, for me, rudimentary; only occasionally recreated in detail. When I see my hand I have four fingers but touch, touch is the most frequently confused sense here and as such the easiest to find discrepancies in. This motion, thumb to fingers, fingers to thumb, it’s a litmus test for dreaminess. I know deep down, we all know, from our childhoods that the sky is blue, the grass is green, and we have five fingers on our hands. In my dreams all five of my fingers can find my thumb. In finding my invisible finger I find my focus and take control of my dream.”
I felt suave, debonair, the experienced dream-hopper sharing his tricks of the trade. She pulled her lip to the side, unsatisfied.
“But why make the movement if you do not already suspect where you are?” she said.
“Ah, my lady, that is indeed the real secret to my success. I take the test frequently, even when I’m certain that I walk in the waking world. In the moments when other men smooth back their hair, or the lowbrow toy with their balls I rarely miss an opportunity to test my waking state. As such it is never long into a dream before the illusion is dispelled.” I had slipping into a sing-song cadence.
“What then?” she said. “What do you do with your dreams?”
I moulded the tabletop like it were made out of clay and drew forth a candle which I sparked with a snap of my fingers and a goofy grin on my face.
“Normally, let my imagination run riot, track you down wherever you’re hiding and begin anew my efforts to win your affections.” I followed that with a bouquet of roses from behind my back.
“Oh, Edward!” She laughed; music to my ears. “You’re such a romantic, I love them!”
“You always do,” my breezy reply, “my bride of a thousand names.”
I was settling into our usual rhythm, becoming complacent. I’d been here a hundred times before but this time my dream-love threw me a curve-ball.
“Have you ever told anyone about me? When you’re awake, I mean.” She asked.
“No!” I was outraged. “No, never think that of me. Our time together is precious and private, there’s no-one I’d share you with. Besides, I can’t remember the last time I awoke.”
That last line hung in the air. Her smile dropped. Her eyes glazed over.
She sounded a single, “Oh?”
She looked like a woman who, having long suspected her husband’s affair, is about to be faced with the evidence. I tried to make light of this unexpected twist, tried a bad joke that sprang into my head.
I said, “I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever wake-up again!” I even laughed.
“No,” she said softly, “perhaps you won’t. Perhaps you’re dead.”
Her eyes, those luscious windows into serenity, were filling with blood. It pooled in their corners and I couldn’t breath, couldn’t remember how I’d ever drawn breath before. Then she cried blood. Two perfect strips of redness that defied gravity and hooked back under her jaw then slid down her neck and disappeared inside her Starbucks uniform’s collar. Without further ado she dropped her jaw, dislocating it with a sickening crack and began vomiting maggots in a frothy pink scum onto the tabletop between us. They sloshed onto my lap, a wave of wriggling decay that didn’t stop coming, splattering around my feet. Zee’s flesh melted from her bones, her organs and muscles consumed by the maggots that gushed from between her teeth. She shrunk down to a skeleton wrapped in crinkled skin like an ancient mummy. Her terrible jaw snicked closed. Casually she tore the skin from her visage; it put up less resistance than spider web would. I sat facing a grinning, gleaming skeleton.
I tore my eyes away at last, the transformation complete. There was a terrible pain in my chest. The skeleton swept most the maggots from our table, those that remained swelling to pop like meaty pea pods, each containing a chess piece. Grooves denoting a board were scored into our table with skeletal fingers and the pieces carefully arranged. The only piece missing was my king. Still I sat silent and scared; the pressure in my chest was unbearable. With a guttural bark I puked up my heart, slick with mucus and still beating. Like a time-lapse video of an orange rotting in super fast-forward it dried out and cracked apart. I fished out my king, set him in place and locked my gaze with Death.
“Would you like me to explain the rules?” he said; his voice a noble whisper in my ear.
“No,” I said, feeling utterly numb. I robotically ran chess openings in my mind. “I know the rules and I know the consequences. I know where I am. Let’s play.”

Why now? What's changed?

2009-01-29T13:07:00.006Z

I spent three years earning a 2.1 BA degree in Scriptwriting for TV and Cinema from Bournemouth University. It's one of the top media schools in the country and a skillset accredited course.

"Skillset is the industry body which supports skills and training for people and businesses to ensure the UK creative media industries maintain their world class blah blah blah."

So I've got a thorough grounding in the scripty arts.

Between handing in my dissertation and receiving my final marks something happened which severely knocked my enthusiasm not just for work, but life in general. I got dumped. It's such a short sentence but can be utterly devastating if done clinically enough and I've taken a slow road to recovery. I spent roughly three months digging myself a hole and then another three months climbing out of it. Only recently have I felt the same verve and self belief that used to be characteristic.

New Years Eve passed fairly recently and with it the usual flood of resolutions. Mine was simple, to 'have a good year', and that sparse motto has genuinely helped me to believe in my ambitions.

Even more recently my degree show passed, the final kiss-off from the university and my last chance of landing a gift-wrapped opportunity. That didn't happen. The realisation that I really am on my own now was the final kick up the backside I needed.

As props for my newly rediscovered determination I've made sacrifices too. I've deleted my distractions. The computer games that I'd tell myself I'd play for 'just five minutes' have all been uninstalled. I've resigned from my position as administrator of the online freechaku community, a role I adored but spent far too much time on. I'm generally doing my best to 'sort my life out'.

I've started writing again too. Really writing, not just dribs and drabs. It's exciting me again. I feel alive again.

So who am I?

2009-01-29T12:45:00.004Z

Let's go with the short answer.

My name is Chris Campbell, but I also answer to Kriztov.
I'm 24 (born in 84).
I write stories because I can't stop thinking stories.
Nobody pays me to do this.

So I'm an unemployed wannabe writer. Appealing, no?

Blogging is dead? Long live the blog!

2009-01-29T12:05:00.005Z

Three months ago Wired announced that blogging is dead and that Facebook and Twitter are the future. Bullshit. Blogging's just left the nursery and discovered competition for the first time; it's a long, long way from dead.

I bring that up to say, in my roundabout way, that I am not starting this blog because it's "the thing to do nowadays" as it once was. I'm starting this blog because I believe in blogging, and I believe that I have something to say worth contributing.