All -
I know, I know - NaNo isn't even over yet and here I am talking about something far off in the future! For those that don't know, Script Frenzy - http://www.scriptfrenzy.org - is another month of writing, but this time the focus is writing a screenplay or stage play - complete with stage directions, setting notations - everything. Don't worry - they teach you how!
April (the new Script Frenzy month) will be here before you know it, and as your friendly St. Louis ML for the event, I wanted to encourage everyone to give it a try next year. It was a lot of fun last year - it's a totally different kind of writing and especially for you NaNo vets, it might be a thrill to try something new! I personally found it helped a lot with learning to develop dialogue and understand character body language more. It's a challenge - though a rewarding one - to not be able to "narrate" the way you can in a novel.
I know these forums go dead after November 30th as people try to adjust to normal life again, but I hope to see some of you in April.
If you have any questions before then, please post them here or send me a NaNo mail and I'll help as best I can.
Hey, maybe we can beat Indy in April as well! :)
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Teresa
ML for St. Louis, Missouri, USA
http://www.dangerouslycrafty.com
http://www.auditoryimages.net
51,443 / 50,000
Nov 29, 2007 - 10 24
I'm with somemadhope ~ everybody should try Script Frenzy at least once. Wolfhound and I won this year, and I'm hoping to do it again in 08.) It's a lot of fun and really gets you thinking about your writing in different ways.
Special perks:
1. You can tag team it! Yes, you're allowed to co-write with another Frenzyer. (Er, Frenz?) Wolfhound and I had a great time coming up with situations and twists together and riffing off each other's ideas.
2. It's only 20k instead of 50. That's right, less than half the words you need for NaNo. Only 667 words per day! (If you and a collaborator split the work evenly, you only have to come up with 10k words each - only 334 words per day! Cakewalk!)
3. There are free programs you can download that do the formatting for you. We used Celtx: http://www.celtx.com/ It took about 10 minutes to get the hang of it. (This from a notorious techno-tard.) Sooo easy.
4. You get to go around telling people "I wrote a script!"
50,013 / 50,000
Nov 29, 2007 - 10 31
Actually - they're changing the "word count goal" to *pages* next year. Apparently the word count thing was off-putting to people who write scripts outside of SF. I'm not sure, though, what the page count will be. I'm sure it will be roughly the same word count, though.
51,443 / 50,000
Nov 29, 2007 - 11 08
Yeah, page count for screenplays doesn't vary by much (totally unlike novel length). It'll still come out to about the same length, whether it's counted by words or by pages.
Thanks for the updates on the schedule and procedure changes!
34,308 / 50,000
Nov 29, 2007 - 11 25
Life got the better of me not once but TWICE this year. Script Frenzy was going OK for the first two weeks, then blammo up reared the ugly head of life. Grrr. I blew out of SF at just shy of my big 1/2 way "all plot lines crash together in the mid-movie peak".
The weird formatting means that a given page of a script is about a minute of on-camera time. Interesting huh? The goal is then one of pacing. A TV script would have adverts every 7 minutes so the challenge would be to have a mini cliff-hanger every 7 pages. I think switching from "word count" to "page count" is a much better, much more realistic measurement unit. Much more in-line with the world of real screenplays.
I thoroughly enjoyed my Script Frenzy experience. Sign me up for next year already! :-)
50,013 / 50,000
Nov 29, 2007 - 13 04
Will do Paul - and just think how *fantastic* it will be when you win both Script Frenzy and NaNo next year. You can totally do it!
Once we get closer - March or so - I'll find out who all is signed up and get a kick-off and whatnot planned. It'll be a tighter-run ship next year, I assure you - we must band together to be onwards toward victory! Whee!
:o)
19,758 / 50,000
Nov 29, 2007 - 17 25
Sounds like fun! I've written a couple of short stage plays, and I would love to learn how to write a screenplay. I'll have to check it out.
...when I have more time ;-)