The Wall

Ladies and gentlemen, I seem to have hit a wall. It's something every writer deals with, I'm sure; that time where you just don't have the ideas or the gumption to actually sit down and write. Writer's block, some people call it. Only I don't really have writer's block -- I can still write at ease for my job, I still write almost every day in Birthright (the online Buffyverse RP I'm in) and I still manage my sports blogs with some regularity.

So it's not that.

It might have something to do with having four screenplays on the docket. With all of them swimming around in my head, I'm having a little trouble keeping them all straight. And when I do have the creative juices to sit down and write something, I hit a wall ... mostly because I can't decide which of the four I want to write.

Which means I need to cut back. X4 can probably be the first to go, since that's not my property to begin with and that would've probably been the hardest one to write. Funny Books I don't want to give up on just yet because it's not only my personal Kevin Smith homage, it's also a personal story for me. Bounty and Notna -- well, they were my firsts, and I really want to see those projects through to conclusion.

This is the drawback of being a writer -- and more specifically, a writer with so many interests. It's almost like writer's version of A.D.D.; got my hand in so many cookie jars I can never finish the fucking cookies.

Screenplay Updates

Bounty: Kind of in stand-still at the moment. Been working on re-writing the first draft I did (which was for a class a year or so back), and I'm still in the planning stages. I've found the planning stage takes the longest, so once I plod through that I should be golden.

Notna: Also at a standstill, but mostly because I'm having trouble converting the original source material to the screenplay format. I think part of this is because I have so many other creative ventures at the moment that I've lost my muse for Notna. Perhaps a visit down Memory Lane would do me some good with regard to this property.

Funny Books: Hit a bit of a snag. I've got some of the Rising Action down, and I know what Plot Point I is ... I just need to build that bridge between where I'm at in the Rising Action and Plot Point I. I have the bullet points, I just have to fill in the blanks, which is sometimes the hardest part.

Literal Movie: Honestly not sure if this one's gonna finish. The friends who originally started writing this aren't friends anymore, and I'm not sure if that means the death of this project or not. If it is, that's a shame, because this had a lot of potential if put in the right hands.

X4 - Apocalypse Now: Trying really hard to not have everyone spend the whole film talking. I guess that's my Kevin Smith influence; tons and tons of dialogue. I need some over-the-top action in this, but my main focus right now is staying true to the Apocalypse and Sinister characters and storylines.

I am now a comic book adaptor ... I guess

Does the madness ever end? I am now writing FIVE screenplays ... the four I've mentioned in this blog before, and I'm now working on a screenplay for a fourth X-Men movie. Not that I have any hope of someone picking it up and it actually being turned into the fourth X-Men movie, but it's something I've been toying with for a little while anyway.

Been a huge X-Men fan since I was in middle school, and I thought it was high time Apocalypse and Sinister got their time on the silver screen. And yes, I realize he's actually Mr. Sinister, but for the purpose of the movie, I'm dropping the "Mr." because in a lot of people's eyes, the "Mr." part might seem really corny. So he's just Sinister.

Apocalypse as a villain is an obvious choice, and Sinister gives me a legitimate reason (and way) to bring back Cyclops and Jean. By bringing those two back and letting Sinister into the fray, I hope to have an X-Men film that won't focus seemingly only on Wolverine. He'll be in the movie, because X-fans the world over would kill me with their optic blasts and adamantium claws if he wasn't, but he won't be the focus this time.

Apocalypse will use Sinister in his scheme to take Magneto's message to the next step: not only human subservience and/or genocide, but a new world order in the truest sense ... since Apocalypse has been around since before ancient Egypt, he's had a while to enact grand schemes. Part of that would be the Legacy Virus, designed to wipe the world of mutants (and not in a nice, seemingly willing way the "cure" from X3 was). Sinister, on top of monkeying around with Cyke and Jean, will be Apocalypse's pawn in the whole thing.

Oh, yeah ... and what will become of the X-Men without Xavier? Or will they be without him ... ?

I've Noticed Something

In a lot of ways, I'm having an easier time planning and writing Funny Books (also known as Please Don't Sue Me, Kevin Smith!) than I am with either Bounty or Notna. I'm not sure what that is, aside from the obvious differences in each screenplay. With Bounty and Notna, I realize I'm dealing with fantastic, out-of-this-world material, stuff likely to be heavy of mysticism and special effects and all that. So not only do I have to worry about all sorts of convoluted continuity, I have to explain the unexplainable and make sure my fight sequences and all that are insanely over-the-top (for a prime example, see the fights in Spiderman 3). Over-the-top's not necessarily a strength of mine, so that's difficult.

But Funny Books ... I'm just whipping through that outline, plotting out all my characters and establishing pretty easily all the relavent plot points and all that shit. If this keeps up, I might have the first draft of the script ready and done within the next month or two.

Two More

Okay, now there are two more screenplays I'm working on:

Literal Movie (working title): This is actually a movie my friends Kenny and Beth are writing; I'm just converting what they write into screenplay format and help make sure there's an actual story here and not just an hour of random jokes and shit. It's really hard to describe; kind of like Seinfeld meets Family Guy.

Funny Books (working title): I love Kevin Smith's work, and I've always been a Chasing Amy fan. This movie is somewhat in that vein, what with the comic book artists and the love and shit, but there's a lot of other stuff to love here too. A tale of love, death and loss, kind of a Chasing Amy meets Jersey Girl.

Starting the Process

So I began working on the outline for my Bounty screenplay; got the first three scenes all lined out and stuff. I suppose I could go ahead and actually write those scenes, but I'm not writing page one of this thing until the outline and all that sort of stuff is complete.

But before I go any further, I need to re-establish Plot Point I, Plot Point II and all that other important stuff. I figure if I have those biggies already figured out, I can let everything else fall into place no problem.

I should begin the outline for Notna shortly. Seeing as how these are two stories I've had in my head for a little over 10 years now, I should have no problem working on them both simultaneously.

And hey, Hollywood seems to be all over the supernatural/comic book film, so my pieces should fit right in.

Annoying

You know what I find really annoying? Back when I took that screenwriting class, the professor told us time and time again to avoid words that end in "ly" and "is/are" words when writing our screenplays. For three straight weeks he told us to avoid those words.

But now I read a bunch of screenplays online (many can be found at http://www.script-o-rama.com) and what do I see? Tons of "is/are" words and words that end in "ly." I guess these are written by more established screenplay writers who can do almost anything they want, but it's a tad annoying when I'm told to not do something and then I see a bunch of other people doing it.

Oh, and as an aside, give the Buffy the Vampire Slayer screenplay a read. Much better than how the movie actually turned out.