Me. The Zombie Queen.

Or I could be. I'm a finalist in Dead Roots, the zombie comic book anthology I blogged about before. Go look at their contributors' page. My story is in the running to be published in a book that contains all my favorite sci-fi writers! How cool is that? Seriously? It's the closest to 'cool' I've ever been in my life.

James Moran, the reason I refuse to swim someplace I can't see the bottom because what if there's bear traps? Jason Arnopp, whose book got me over my deep abiding fear of reporters. I could just go on and on and on but there's a catch. A HUGE SCREAMING CATCH.

The winner is determined by votes. Facebook 'Likes' to be precise. Right now 1st, 2nd, and 3rd are all within ten votes of each other. I'm bouncing between '1st = published' and '2nd = sucks to be you'. There is no consolation prize. It's win or nothing.

I need all the help I can get, so if you're on Facebook go ahead and 'like' my story, and please share it with all your friends! You can even friend me if you want, though I warn you I only use facebook to yak about movies, tv shows, comics, and roller derby. 

It's come down to a social networking battle and like the zombocalypse, I'm determined to survive.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=366852903394758&set=a.366852350061480.87029.122886321124752&type=1&theater

50 Kisses: Results

I did really well. I didn't win, but both my entries made the long list which makes me one of about 16 (I believe) out of 1800 + that managed to get that far with both entries. It's only the second contest I've ever entered so I'm bouncing with excitement I did so well so early on.

You can read both my scripts below. Or if you happen to be a film maker, I'd be delighted if you made either one of them into a film short.

Dirty Riffs & Neon Lights: 14 year old Robin will do almost anything to impress a girl.

Beyond The Sea: For some couples, Valentine's day is just another day.

Now I'm off to change my profile page to '50 Kisses long list winner - 2012' because I'm so totally counting this as a credit. It's a thing and I did it and other people said so, so it counts. So there.

Until next time :)

EDIT: 8/15 My scripts are LIVE on the 50 Kisses website and they're eligible to be on the DVD under special features if you'd like to check it out. Dirty Riffs and Beyond the Sea. 

A+B+C=Profit

I got my script coverage back from Scriptapalooza last week. It was more positive than I expected which was a pleasant surprise, and I learned something I didn't know I didn't know so it was worth the money to get a report back. The main comments referred to a concept I thought I understood, but clearly didn't. Other people have told me the same thing and I obediently shook my head, 'Yuppers, I get it,' whilst missing the point entirely.

But I thought I understood so that has to count for... exactly nothing, actually.

Their main (and nearly only, yay me:) criticism about my entry revolved around the various story lines. My A story was exciting and interesting. My B story was interesting but didn't have much to do with the A story beyond appearing and taking up pages. The C story was interesting but petered away into nothing like a fart in the wind. A winning script, that does not make.

I've read and been told to tie the three separate story lines together. I thought I did, but just being set in the same universe with the same characters in the same script isn't enough. Just being present isn't enough. The separate story lines have to feed back into each other like a braid.

I pondered this and pondered this and pondered this, still not quite grasping the concept. While I was pondering, I discovered to my eternal delight that BBC4 isn't region locked. At first glance, this has nothing to do with anything except to be an additional way to mess around on the web, but at second glance, this completely revolutionized everything.

Cabin Pressure --> Johannesburg --> Play

If you've never listened to Cabin Pressure, stop what you're doing, download it and come back. I'll wait. It's brilliant, hysterically funny, and I think I'm in love. It's my new favorite show.

So I'm thinking deep thoughts about my script report and the various failures of the story lines to relate back to each other while I listened. I laughed my way through the episode then instantly started it over because my mind was making some interesting connections amid all the giggles. I paid much more attention to how the episode unfolded the second/third/fourth time listening.

Did I mention it's brilliant?

In the A story: Caroline is annoyed at Martin and Douglas and makes them cut two thousand pounds off their budget for the trip. If they succeed they can split the money. If they fail and come in a single penny over, they have to pay her a grand apiece. She thinks it's a fantastic idea. They're not so sure, but with a thousand pounds on the line, they're willing to go along with her. Also she doesn't actually give them any choice.

To save on fuel, Douglas shakes the plane down and tosses anything he deems unnecessary weight, including the coffee pot. Later during the B story Douglas tells Arthur to fill a wine bottle with water and set it on the edge of the engine to heat up so they can make coffee later. Incidentally, that sets up the C story. It all just builds on itself.

In the B story: A warning light comes on, leading to an emergency landing to get it fixed. Martin and Arthur go on an away mission to retrieve a mechanic and suffers assorted hijinks, including getting their borrowed baggage truck stuck under a bridge while Douglas is still focused on the A story of trying to come in under budget. When presented with the bill for their emergency stop, he has to do something to knock twenty bucks off so the airfield manager floats the idea of Douglas washing his car.

It's the same car the airfield manager refused to let them borrow at the beginning of the B story which led to Martin and Arthur dinking around Spain in a baggage truck. Determined not to pay Caroline a thousand pounds, Douglas whines about it, agrees, and parks the car behind the plane to wash it with some minor heckling from Caroline. He needs the money, okay?

Martin and Arthur return with a mechanic, he fixes their problem by thumping the instrument panel, revealing that the plane wasn't actually broken at all, just the little yellow warning light.

They're going to take off before the airfield closes at five, they're under budget, they won't owe Caroline any money. Martin does a quick jog around the plane for his preflight inspection and they get ready to leave. For once everything goes right. Or does it?

The tower calls them in a panic. They've fired a missile. Directly into the car Douglas washed to reduce the bill (A story). It's still parked behind the plane they thought was broken (B story). The missile is the wine bottle in the engine Arthur forgot about (C story).

Presumably they don't finish the trip under budget.

There you have it. A story, B story, and C story. They cross and crisscross each other.

Go listen to the episode if you haven't already. You can pick out the places the different story lines intersect. I feel like I've had a writer breakthrough. When people say tie the different story lines together they honestly mean tie them together. They're not being cryptic. It's not enough to be happening at the same time or be in the same script, they have to weave in and out like a braid.

I'm going back and doing another page 1 rewrite of horror script so it's ready to go the very instant 'Girls on Film' reopens. Right now horror script is another example of A, B, and C not coming anywhere near each other, let alone interlacing. Now I can fix that.

Thank god for Cabin Pressure.

FADE IN:

 FADE IN: 

I feel like I haven't blogged in forever. A whole six weeks counts as forever on the internet. 

About eight decades ago (in internet years) I entered 50 kisses and blogged about it. From Adrian Mead's fantastic book, 'Making it as a screenwriter' I learned that I needed to get my act together before the contest happened. It makes sense, if you think about it, which I absolutely didn't until he pointed it out using small and easily understood words, but it takes time to write and polish a story. Slinging it in right before the deadline leads to sloppy mistakes which I am prone to commit.

I also decided to enter early before the readers were bored and burned out on reading the same type of thing over and over. That way (hopefully) my entry goes in the 'consider' pile before the standards for the 'consider' pile get too terribly high. I know, devious right? I'm a regular Bond villain, cackling my evil plans to the entire interwebz.

Two or three weeks before the deadline they posted a very helpful blog post about how the contest was going and what they saw repeated over and over among their entries. You'd think with a theme as vague as 'Valentines Day' and the only requirement is it must to contain a kiss, it would difficult to find too terribly many similarities beyond those two points. Three words, really.

Hahaha, wrong. I managed to tick off almost every box on the list. Oomph, right in the ego!

My creative and original work of love, romance, and passion was in fact trite, overdone, and boring.

Grumble grumble grumble. I spent the obligatory amount of time moaning about it on twitter (two humorous tweets, for those keeping score at home. I may have been was am pathetic) and moved on, convinced I didn't have the faintest fart of a chance for a writing credit and that ipad. I've never even touched an ipad. I certainly won't be fondling the one they're giving away. Maybe next year.

The ability to move on is important for a writer. Kinda like being used to being fired all the time. I've spent years perfecting that talent, I'm already used to being fired all the time from my day job so this is second nature to me. It's the all important getting professional credits and eventually getting paid to write something that I'm still working on.

Y'know, that really didn't come out right. I'm honestly a decent farrier. I think so anyway. But it is true, there's only two kinds of farriers in the world. Those that have been fired and those that are gonna be fired...  

Anyway, back to my point...

A week before the deadline, they tweeted that they'd decided to accept a SECOND script. TWO. It's Christmas come early! I get a free do-over! I went right back to the 'we've seen it' list and decided to go in the direct opposite direction. But probably so did everyone else so I went opposite from the opposite and just to thoroughly confuse myself, reversed it again! Then I bent it at a ninety and took the corner on two wheels just to be absolutely sure I wasn't followed... 

It might suck but there's not another one like it. I hope. But there probably actually is. Without my script's fatal flaw, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Oh yes, this story has a fatal flaw. It's almost a greek tragedy. 

My new story told a riveting tale of manliness, friendship, and devotion, barely contained in a mere two pages. My kryptonite is typos and I know this so I proofread that sucker 591 times, then got a friend to go over it also. No typos. Not one single one escaped us. We were proofread goddesses. Bow before our magnificence and wallow in our glory, you puny mortals!

*ahem*

In fear of inconvenient server crashes, random internet failure, or miscalculated time zone differences, I submitted it a full two days early. It was perfect. You know what happens whenever I think I did something right? You guessed it. I sent it off, got the confirmation email back immediately (which is a fantastic feature) and then started the Closing of the Tabs. I broke my own solemn vow and looked at it again before I closed the file.

I didn't start with FADE IN:

Screenwriter 101. ALWAYS START WITH FADE IN:

Did I remember this? No, and my friend writes novels so she certainly wouldn't catch the fact that I skipped straight to the first scene heading. INT - THE CANTINA OF BROKEN DREAMS - DAY

*facepalm*

*headdesk*

*facepalm*

Will their crack team of readers be so used to seeing and skipping over FADE IN: that they don't notice it's missing? Will they be so captivated by the story they don't care? Do they read this blog? I'm confident the answer to last one that is hysterical laughter and a resounding no.

But only time will tell.

Things are just ticking along.

Just a quick update. 

I got my horror script and 50 First Kisses entry back from my lovely editor lady, Michelle Goode, with only minor bruising to my indomitable writer ego. I did index cards to try and fix my first act blues. It was actually helpful. I saw how repetitive some of the scenes were. Same story advancing dialogue in about five different locations. Gloriously cinematic locations, but the same dialogue just rephrased.

Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.

Then Minion decided to help me.

   

Honestly, she wasn't much help.

I tweaked my 50 First Kisses entry and sent it off into the internet ether, I won't be rejected find out about that until midsummer. I've answered some ads looking for various films shorts and sent off every single one I've got that's halfway decent. Haven't heard anything back yet on any of them. Made a mental note to write more. Shorts seem to be popular for gaining writing/acting/producing/directing credits, if not actual money, which would be the ideal situation.

Found out about a Zombie anthology comic book seeking submissions. I fired off three concepts and while none of them were quite right, the editor was very nice about it. Yay! My first professional rejection, glad that's out of the way. I don't know why I'm excited to be to told my pitches weren't good enough, but I am. I'm a very strange special little snowflake.

I'm going to rework them plus a few more and resubmit. I have until the end of the month to come up with something he likes or he tells me to quit emailing him. Place your bets on which happens first.

Then I reread my original email and immediately spotted a typo. 

/overcome with despair, throws self into a pit of tigers.

Granny knows best

So the rom-com is ticking along nicely. Well, by nicely I really mean fits and starts and disjointed scenes and I have to keep telling myself I can't edit a blank page so I've got to get something down, even if it's sucktastic. It's got a working title of 'Chunks' and no, you don't want to know why. Just trust me, you just don't. I've done a rough, very very rough outline and spent a lot of time thinking about exactly what needs to happen for this to be worth reading.

I know the story I want to tell fairly well, but can I actually tell it? Yes, yes I think I can. If it will cooperate. Now I've run smack into the first of what I'm sure is going to be many unexpected issues. Lemme explain.

I've got two main characters, and one slightly less main character. Slightly less main character has a grandmother that was supposed to roll in, observe the situation, and pronounce doom on everyone for the trouble they've got themselves into that kicks off the whole story. Then she's supposed to flounce away back to the bingo hall to shotgun Ensure and speculate about the new Dallas movie. This is her only scene, right? But she won't leave.

Won't. Leave.

Now granny's over in the corner, cackling with glee at the pitiful hijinks the others are suffering from. No, she won't fix it for them. She could, but she won't. She's too busy laughing and besides, that's too easy. I tried to hurry her away so they could get on with dealing with the problem themselves. Exit Granny, stage left. She wasn't having it. She declared doom on me too and threatened to belt me with her cane. This was more entertaining than any amount of bingo and gossip and she wasn't going to be escorted to the door. Nope.

Horrified, I backed away from the keyboard.

How does that even work? I'm making this up. Is there a part of my mind represented by the granny that blows a great big raspberry at the rest of my mental bandwidth? What does that mean about me as a person? I can't even make the invisible, imaginary people I make up out of absolute nothing do what I want.

Apparently I'm a pushover. No wonder my dog never listens. I'm going to make some more coffee and then me and granny are having it out. She's giving me the evil eye right now. Shit. But she's not staying. No.

Bring it on, granny. 

It's finished! Now start again!

The horror feature has now finished the gauntlet of friends and family. Based on their feedback, it has been tweaked and sharpened to a fine edge. In a gruesome, blood dripping kind of way. It is horror, after all. People say 'the cutting edge' when they mean modern technology. They forget the real cutting edge is a sharp, shiny blade. Perfect for... well... I don't want to give too much away. 

I also did an entry for 50 first kisses. Two pages max and there has to be a kiss. Bring it on. It's free and they let foreigners enter so it's my kinda contest. I read the winning scripts for the last one page contest the London Screenwriting Festival did. It absolutely blew my mind just how much story could be told in one page if the writer was deft enough. You can read them both here.

My favorite one is 'Everything you need' by David Turner. Go read it and weep with envy. I did.

One page people. The writer did ALL THAT in one page. It's just so perfect. 

I wanted to print both winning scripts out and shove them under the nose of everyone I knew and bellow, "Read this! Isn't it brilliant!?! Look how awesome that is!" I wanted to, I didn't actually do it. They would have fitted me with an I-Love-Me jacket if I had.  I am capable of censoring myself, but it's so hard sometimes. I just want to share my love of amazing stories with everyone whether they want me to or not. 

Now I'm circling another few ideas. I've been jotting them down on the computer as they occur to me so I've got a few stacked up.  What to write next is my big dilemma. I've got an idea for a tv pilot. If I started working on it now it should be just about ready to enter in the ABC Fellowship next spring.

There's another idea for a feature floating around in my brain, a rom-com this time. About... well... lemme write it first and then I'll tell you all about it. It's funny though, you'll be in stitches and never think of voodoo, rum and maxi pads the same way.

The drama thing is still banished. I don't want to talk about it.

A couple of important things have to happen before I can actually start writing something else. This next step is vital to the creative process.

Ready for it? It's a secret, I shouldn't say but I like you so I'll tell.

Here it is... I have to clean my whole house, clean out the car, sweep, wash the dog and possibly the cats if they don't hide fast enough or if I can pry them out from under the couch. That's right, I've got to get some serious procrastinating in before the writing juices can truly flow. Only once there is no more laundry to fold and the house reeks of lemon and pine can I start something new.

I may even piddle around with something from le day job for a while.

Eventually... there is no more stalling... there is just me and a blank page that I will proceed to vomit words all over it, hopefully in a somewhat coherent fashion. Or at least coherent after serious editing. Serious, SERIOUS editing. 

Outlines make life so much easier, but before I can contemplate actually outlining  and <gasp> writing any of my new bajillion dollar ideas, I've got to take a page out of Jason Arnopp's book and alphabetize my dvd collection.

By genre.