My muse must be aquatic

[feliciakw]

I always seem to do some of my best brainstorming when I'm either doing dishes or taking a shower. Or when I'm slap-happy from lack of sleep, as izhilzha can attest.

Well, this morning as I was getting ready for church, it got a spark of creativity on how to begin my screenplay. Several years ago, I took a creative writing course, and the final project of the semester was to write a short story. I was struggling with the exercises that were supposed to help get us started, then after talking to a cyber-buddy, the story--completely different from the exercises I'd been doing--came to me pretty much in one sitting. Once I started, I just kept going. Things fell into place, and I got the first draft done in one afternoon. The class found it very intriguing and somewhat disturbing, and I got some really good comments and suggestions for it.

Since then, I've worked on it off and on, trying to flesh out the areas where my classmates said they'd like "more"--backstory or research information or specific events in the story or what have you. In the process, the story has sort of gotten bogged down in a lot of things I don't think it really needs. And I've always had in the back of my mind that I wanted to turn this into a screenplay for a short film . . . or maybe something in between a short film and a feature.

I was talking to Geo the other day about the problems I've been having with it, and he suggested that I go back to my original version. This was an excellent suggestion, as a lot of the stuff that's made its way into the story wouldn't play particularly well on screen anyway.

One of the biggest problems I've had when thinking about how to turn this into a screenplay is that I didn't know how to start. So I didn't really have the motivation to do anything toward that end. But this morning, I think I've figured it out! I know how I want to start, and it will include background information that I had no idea how I was going to include in the screenplay.

So, yippee skippee. Maybe now that I've got something to start with, it will just come, like it did when I originally wrote the thing.

Comments

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad to hear this, because that story is really cool. As well as it works in a short prose form, I think that doing it as a film would be awesome, because of the media-involved overtones to the story itself...it's a rather meta little story, and making it film would just add to that.

Sorry, my Eng. Lit. geek side emerges at random.

I must email you. I <3 Dr. Joel right now. (He just danced with Maggie to reassure her after a certain satellite disaster and right now I would love to dance with Dr. Joel...).

[feliciakw.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad to hear this, because that story is really cool. As well as it works in a short prose form, I think that doing it as a film would be awesome,

In the back of my mind, I've always seen it as a movie. I'm not particularly visually creative, but right now I'm just trying to get the dialogue and settings in place. Then I can go back and maybe add a few key creative shots. A lot of the visual creativity in movies, though, comes from the director and how he or she decides to set up a shot and light it and such. So we'll see. :-)

I've got the first scene done, so that's cool. Maybe if I can do a scene a day, I can have a draft done by the time the theater season starts. (I've also thought of trying to adapt it for stage, but I think it would work better as a movie.)

I <3 Dr. Joel right now. (He just danced with Maggie to reassure her after a certain satellite disaster and right now I would love to dance with Dr. Joel...).

Dr. Joel is most <3-able. :-) Even when he's being disagreeable, you still can't help but induglently pat him on the head. And, yeah, when he's thinking about others, he really is very sweet.