A.R. Van Halleorg

Productivity

I realize that my productivity on my own blog has decreased immensely, however, I have a good reason for that! I’ve been busy writing. I know; it’s terrible, but I have to get this story out of my head and onto paper (in a file), before I lose it all. I’m sure you all have encountered a similar situation!

Writing Tools

Once I get it out, I’ll be continuing my tool. Who knew it could be so hard to write those. I always scoffed and ridiculed the fact that some helpful articles were a mere 5-6 paragraphs long. Now I think I understand why. I believe that they encountered the same thing I did. Where is the limit? … I got into writing the article and next thing you know I’m off on 17 different tangents that all explain the concept, but are just TOO into detail. Unless that’s what people want. Personally, that’s what I want. At this rate, however, I’m going to end up having an entire categories devoted to the different emotions to write into characters’ personalities. Oye. I’m dreading the maintenance on that already.

The Rant

Aside from that, I need to take a moment to rant about my local bookstore.

Dear Local Bookstore,

What the hell were you thinking, when you came upon the bombshell of brilliance that is your thought process, and decided to put all the books about the ancient world in a random place that no one can find. And then not only do you move it, but then you don’t let the employees know. I swear, nothing is more irritating than ‘helpful employees’ that stand exactly where I was standing for 10 minutes scanning the books and then scratch their head and say, ‘I guess they must have moved it.’. Clearly, Sherlock.

If you could…oh, I dunno, FIND THEM, that’d be great.

Ever devoted bookbuyer,
Me.

Sherlock

On a tremendously random note– Okay, perhaps not all that random, since I just mentioned Sherlock’s name in the above rant; I was told (threatened) to watch Sherlock (the BBC mini-series) and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was indeed quite an interesting show. It’s full of wit and dark-humour. It’s like a dream come true for every sarcastic individual out there. The actors are brilliant. And as my coworker (the one who threatened me into watching it) has mentioned (about 10000 times a day), it’s ridiculously hilarious that Sherlock gets all ‘Awww *hearts*’ whenever Watson thinks something he did was brilliant. That’s not the hilarious part. It’s the crest-fallen look on his face when Watson turns it into an insult after. HAH. Maybe I’m just mean.

Anyways. Aside from that, it’s superb and delightful, both intellectually and aesthetically, for the mind to watch.

Have a great day!

I finally got to go see this apartment that my coworker has been going on and on about for … well, months. Apparently, it was in one of the most horrific states of being and needed a lot of labour and love to get into shape. It looks pretty darn good.

However.

I get to this place after walking three minutes from the nearest Metro station and upon entering the first set of doors, my journey began. The small entry has mailboxes and buzzers. It’s probably about the size of a small room and the only other exit is a locked door. I don’t know about you, but this pretty much was an awesome setup a la detective show / horror movie. Yeah, we’ve seen what happens in small rooms with two sets of doors. Dare we mention the Saw movies and what launched him into his mission to save people?…

Anyways, so after sending a text with my trusty cell, I managed to get past the second set of doors. Oh god, it’s one of THOSE entries. Ya know, with 4-5 doors, around a staircase, narrow area. The kind where someone gets murdered in apartment 3 and some child in apartment 1 was visiting his friend in apartment 4 and they both witnessed it on their little balcony out back. Yes, I realize I’m exaggerating, but that’s just the vibe I got.

So I head up the stairs and of course they’re a little creaky, or nearly just. It’s the kind of staircase that you don’t want to run into in a horror movie, because just when you thought you were cleverly getting away from the bad-guy, it decides to creak. You get the idea. So I reach the top of the stairs, and it’s pretty much like downstairs, 4-5 doors, narrow…except this floor now has an area where you can get thrown over a rail and land on the stairs effectively breaking your neck, spine, or various limbs. Higher death potential.

Somehow I felt like Det. Benson or Stabler should be coming up the stairs in a hot pursuit of the Saw guy.

I laughed to myself, because I have such an overactive writing imagination. It’s fun. I love coming up with 1001 ways something could be dramatic and gloomy. I actually giggle about it.

Then I meet, quite possibly, the most horrible thing ever. A light that turns on by itself. Yes, laugh it up. It’s creepy. This isn’t a normal light. It’s a hallway light, inside the apartment…another narrow room…I’m seeing a trend here. And this thing, because of some electrical issue, seems to flicker a lot when it activates. So I’m walking through, the rooms are dark, except this horror film hallway and it’s flickering. I felt like I should be in a warehouse somewhere trying to avoid the guy in the doll mask and listening to the irritating drip drip of a leaky pipe.

There’s just too many details to go into. This apartment was so weird. But at the same time it was really nice and I learned that not only is my coworker an uber nerd, but I think she ate 17 other uber nerds. I’ve never seen so many graphic novels and figurines in one room.

Welcome, to the most useless bit of text you’ll ever have to read on this blog. hehehe.

SHE was Xerox, a might warrior printer, forged in the heat of the furnace!
The power cord. The paper!
The caution label.
Her cartridge, will change the words.

Moral of the story? Don’t stay up for 36 hours after watching a Xena Marathon. You end up writing junk like that at 1:37 AM. (Found this snippet in a file dating back to March 3rd, 2008 1:37AM) Don’t ask.

I’ve been spending hours upon hours of my time working on articles that I’m hoping will be useful for writer’s to take information from and apply them to their characters. I’m not bothering with the general layouts of stories, because I think there are enough self-help books out there on how to be a writer. These tools are geared for rounding characters and situations based on real-life observations. I thought that all those years I spent listening to people and observing them should be shared with others. It would be even neater if others would also give their view on the topics as well. I won’t hold my breath for participation, but I can hope for it.

Having said all that, there was one thing in particular I’ve been working on lately; fear. The understanding of fear. Is it survival instinct? Is it a defense mechanism? Do you think that it’s a lack of understanding? Do you think that reckless necessarily means that one is unaware of the dangers? I have pages and pages in my blog post draft of this topic, I’m trying to hone it down to a few things instead of the mashup of everything I’ve accumulated.

Let me know what you think, if you’d like.

If not, then that’s fine and I still wish you a good day!

What do I do on my vacation?

Not a whole lot, to be honest. Right now I’m battling Big Fish Games to be able to even type this post. This game is bloody heavy to download for some reason.

So far, during the first half of my vacation, I’ve done some writing. Didn’t have the cash to get FinalDraft, so I’m using CeltX and glaring at it a lot. It’s pretty cool either way. I just wish I could get it to stop taking the character/dialog in one spot and making it 1 characters name…it’s really weird. And how do we fake the margins on purpose to save a line!?

I’ve got a little further in my reading materials. The last one I read, Your Screenplay SUCKS!: 100 Ways to Make it Great, mentioned that only a beginner would be reading the books…that’s a little bit lame to say. I’ve been writing scripts for ages, some things have changed, while others haven’t. So, for being politically correct, it’s for beginners and anyone wanting to brush up on their rusty unused scriptwriting skills.

Next up on my pile of books to read: Writing the TV Drama Series and Crafty Screenwriting (thank you Alex Epstein for referencing it 1,000 times in Crafty TV Writing so I had NO CHOICE to buy it. Pfft.)

I’ve learned how to play poker in the last 2 days. Now I’m on Full Tilt Poker and rocking it hardcore! Beginner’s luck, no doubt. Did a tournament earlier today, 501^th position out of 10,000 registered players.

All in all, my vacation has been nice and quiet. I’ll post more later, this was just a random update, cause I’m really bored at the moment. Next up…fixing the lag of these keystrokes.

Have a great day!

I’ve been reading this excellent book, written by Alex Epstein, called Crafty TV Writing : Thinking Inside the Box. It’s a really fantastic book for screen-writing, and I’m sure most of you who do screen-writing probably already know of it, but on the off-chance that you don’t. You need to get it. I’ve never looked at television like I do now. I keep going back on all the shows I’ve watched, searching for the patterns described, the templates, the consistency in successful shows. The way they pull the stories through the acts and come up with that final scene. The way they frustrate the hell out of you, but you can’t help going back. I wonder if we’re gluttons for punishment or just overly curious.

Perhaps both.

One part of the book makes mention of a beatsheet.

“A beat is the smallest unit of storytelling. It is a piece of the story in which something happens.”

So basically, it’s beats of pauses, not like a rhythm or anything.

Rambling…anyways…so I thought I’d give it a go. I have this habit of wanting to obtain perfection on a first attempt, and like I’ve discovered, while reading this book, it’s just not obtainable on the first try unless you’re someone uber and even then most of the time isn’t the FIRST draft, only the official first draft. Rewrites are the way!

So keeping that in mind, I embarked on the mass short-cut scene writing, so that I would have something to work with and fine-tune.

And it’s working. I’ve never had a screenplay flow so easily on to the paper. Knowing that quite a few of these will probably be written out and others will be further pushed into additional scenes, doesn’t feel like such a daunting situation anymore.

Instead I look forward to seeing where the characters are taking me, which characters have decided that they want to be core cast and which want to be regulars, and others…that are just for fluff and character. It’s interesting.

What am I learning from this beatsheet? You quickly see how fast/slow the scenes are in your Episode. I’m also noticing the places where I used to add fluff and why it’s not important to have them in the Episode at all. What I thought was important, ended up being explained away in another scene without even needing to outright explain it to the viewers and that’s something I never had visible before.

It’s like it gives you a fresh perspective on the true timeline and a clear goal. My next challenge, will probably be finding the scenes that separate the acts in an interesting way so that viewers stay hooked through the commercial and don’t change the channel.

This is quite a liberating experience for me right now. I’ve been writing amateurish scripts since I was 11, so 14 years now and only now am I truly trying to work on a technique and come up with something to present to the world. If this works out really well, maybe I’ll attempt a spec script! *crosses fingers in hope*

That would be cool.

Have a good day!

There are times when I become entirely scattered brained and completely incapable of functioning like a normal A.R. human being.

This weekend was one of those times.

I figure, awesome, I need to get up early, because the guy from Videotron Ltd is coming to install my brand spanking new modem to get my Ultimate 30 service! SCORE, I thought. So then, I decided, spontaneously, that I should do the laundry. At 7:30 in the morning.  This doesn’t sound odd, but I avoid doing the laundry whenever possible, and certainly not 1.5 hours before we’re even allowed to use the laundry room.

Anyways, so I throw the clothes in the washer, and let the Videotron guy in. After being harassed by me for an hour with 20 questions as to why there is a little piece on the cable connecting to every possible connection, how strong my signal was outside of the modem and the injustice of their promotional system by reducing our speed in order to convince us to get a higher connection, he finally left. Just me and my BRAND NEW INTERNET. SCORE! I thought, again.

So, I get on my computer and think, this is a great moment to play World of Warcraft. So I log in and I have my Coca-Cola ready at 9:10am and Goldfish crackers ready for consumption. 30 seconds into gameplay…I hit the X in the corner. I’m struggling to comprehend at that point and next thing you know I’m on Big Fish Games playing Ancient Rome, Life Quest, Antique Road Trip USA and various numerous games. For approximately 5 minutes each. So then I figure…let’s try Tetris. I log in to my account on www.tetrisfriends.com and finally I get into a game!

SCORE! For the third time!

Not. After 15 minutes, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I needed to do something else. So I get the laundry out of the washer and put it in the dryer and decide to watch movies instead. So I watch The Wave, an interesting German film about a teacher during project week who teaches his students about autocratic society and uses an experiment to do so. The experiment goes too far and one of the students ends up shooting people by the end of it. True story based in the states. Okay, where was I. So even that, I couldn’t focus on. Next thing you know I’m on the phone to Nova Scotia, Quebec City, Texas, etc. I’m thinking I’m losing my mind at this point!

So I finally decide, after speaking with my mother, that I need a vacuum. Why? Because I grabbed the vacuum while I was talking to her and decided I should do some housework. And re-arrange furniture. And put away the laundry, and do the dishes, litter, feed cats,…my day wasn’t ending. So I left.

I went to the store determined more than ever to accomplish at least one thing on my list to perfection. Obtain brand new vacuum with great power and a nozzle to get to every nook and cranny. This was going to be the simplest thing on my list!

WRONG. While I was standing at the bus stop waiting for the bus to come, I changed my mind. I crossed the street and took the other bus instead, thinking that I’d stop at the mall on the way to the Terminal. I was SO clever. Then I got off at the Terminal and I thought, “Well, I’m already here, I may as well go downtown.” Which eventually led me to the bookstore, which is inevitable. I can’t go to the downtown malls of Montreal without going to the Indigo. That’s just insanity.

So after walking around the bookstore for 3 hours, I finally decided that what I needed, was more books about scriptwriting. Why? Why not programming? It’s much more pertinent and would have a much better return!…I don’t know why, I hope you weren’t expecting a real answer to that.

I get to the counter and sure enough, the chick offers the usual discount card. And after 1.5 years of avoiding renewing my card, I decided that I buy enough books that it merits the 10-40% discounts I could get. So I got it.

I left for a vacuum and came back with 75$ of books instead. Terrible. I cannot be trusted alone. To be fair, all my bills are paid.

So I get home with my brand new books and sit down to read. But then I can’t decide which one. I read the first chapter of each and ended up putting them all down. “Another movie”, I thought! No! Languages! Must learn languages more. Italian, Spanish, German… And so the cycle began…yet again.

Rinse and repeat, and there you have my indecisive, scatter-brained weekend.

Thanks for reading,

Have a great day, evening, night, morning wherever you are!

Okay, so I thought this was probably the most hysterical shorts I’ve ever seen. I’m sure there’s many more out there that are funnier, but personally…this had me in fits. I love British humour and even as I write this, I’m already laughing and getting tears in my eyes.

Thank you to my coworker Pierre for this gem!

This was done for the Young Director Award 2010 was created by TBWA Helsinki and directed by Rogier Hesp

I decided to randomly look at my own blog today and I realize that I haven’t blogged in a week!…I thought that was utterly terrible of me and completely slack, so here I am, writing a post at 12:32 AM.

Learning Italian : I bought a book this evening called 501 Italian Verbs. I thought that having a book of conjugated verbs may help me in establishing a better understanding of the language. It gives really great examples with most of the verbs to be able to know how they’re used, so it’s great! I’m totally loving the experience. I haven’t felt this way about learning something, since I started learning programming.

Script Frenzy : Well, I’m 50 pages into Script Frenzy now. It’s 15 days in and we have another 15 to go. I’m on schedule! I’ll probably hunker down and hack out the next portion of it over the weekend. At least get most of the rest finished. I’m looking forward to getting to be able to go back over it all and make it into a polished piece of art. Fantastic.

Southern Gals : I’ve recently discovered that Twitter is quite a dangerous world. Flying tweets left and right. Everyone vying for attention and sometimes…sometimes you get a random message from someone and you’re thrown for several moments. You wonder if they made a mistake, surely no one responds to a tweet!

But they do!…who knew. So this southern gal, (who shall remain nameless, *cough*GO HERE*cough*) decided that I was deemed worthy of a tweet back! And I’m shamelessly linking you to her website, because I can. *waves banner and gushes in a southern drawl* “I’m her biggest fan, y’all! One day I could even get an autograph on my banner!”

What was I on about? It’s late and my mind is wandering lol. Right, so it was pretty cool to be able to meet someone on Twitter who had very similar interests to me. It’s rare that I get to talk to anyone who thinks anything I think is of interest, let alone it be their idea! So after hours of brain picking and confusing conversations about nothing in particular, I decided she’s cool and is now invited to the inner circle of friends. *crickets chirp in the empty field* …okay, it’s an empty space, but I have to start somewhere!

Okay, I’ll write more tomorrow. I’m too brain dead lol

Have a good day/evening all!

Well, it’s day 8 and things are finally starting to pick up some more. I’ve spent the majority of day in pain and after much Tylenol, I’m doped up enough to not feel much pain at all, so I’m writing this post. I’m sitting at around 37 pages now out of 100. Hopefully I’ll have a few more before the day is done. The last few days haven’t been too eventful, I’ve been trying to catch up on a bit of sleep and work on a website for someone at work, so I’ve been a little busy.

What have I gotten done in the last few days?…

1) I’ve managed to learn how to pace myself much better. One of those most difficult things that I struggle with is learning to pace the storyline instead of trying to force feed the information to the reader in 5 minutes time. It’s actually kind of satisfying to be able to do that. Now even I think it’s more interesting this way.
2) I’ve learned to drop hints/clues in order to prepare the reader a little better for the upcoming scenes.
3) My bad guys and good guys are a little less clean cut. I tend to be a bit of an extremist when it comes to characters. They’re either really horrible people or really sweet-tooth worthy. Now my bad guys show that they have some feelings beyond anger and hatred and my good guys show a side that shows they have moments where they don’t care who they walk over either.

I guess I didn’t do anything major in the storyline, but it’s an interesting learning experience nonetheless.

Have a great day everyone and I hope that your Script Frenzy is going well.