Every year I attempt the NaNoWriMo. Every year, so far, I have failed to achieve the goal of 50,000 words by the end of the month. November tends to always be a harsh month for me. But even though I fail, I do still love the effort, which is why this year I’ll also be giving a shot at Script Frenzy.
I love movies and TV, and I’ve always got ideas floating around in my head, but until recently the tools I used to write scripts (Word) didn’t support the format very well. I’ve discovered that the more effort you have to put into formatting the less desire you have to actually write. Of course, I could always adopt a “write now, format later” attitude, but that just isn’t my style. I don’t have a problem with rewrites, but if it just looks wrong to start with… anyway… through my brother, through a friend of his, I discovered celtx. I’ve always wanted to own one of those cool screenwriting programs, but never could get beyond paying the money for them, an often non-trivial amount (they start around $150 and go up from there). I did once get Write Brothers Writer’s DreamKit 4, but it turned out to be more complicated to use that I had hoped, or maybe I just sucked at using it. Celtx, on the other hand, is simple. I downloaded it, installed it, and spent just a couple minutes familiarizing myself with the menus. Then I watched one of the five or so minute video walkthrus from their website, and then I pounded out ten pages of script. All perfectly formatted. Awesome.
So, with celtx in my arsenal, on April 1st, I’ll be undertaking the Script Frenzy challenge: 30 days, 100 pages. At first, I was going to tackle one of the many ideas I have scribbled on bits of paper or filed away in documents on my PC, but then I went and saw Watchmen. It got me to thinking about all the comic book based movies I’ve seen and how some I felt nailed the material, even when they strayed from it, and how others totally blew it and left me thinking “I could writer better than that.” To that end, I went to my bookshelf full of graphic novels and picked one out. I’ve got 12 days now to read my source material, get familiar with it and make some preliminary notes, and then, come April, I’ll start drafting my adaptation. By May, we’ll see which category of comic book adaptation writer I fall into.