A.R. Van Halleorg

Just a little FYI for the upcoming month; if you’re into that kinda thing.

As some or even many of you may already know, it’s that time of year again…that halfway mark between Nanowrimo’s, when people from all over the world join in on the fun of Script Frenzy.

This year I’ve opted to participate with a partner and after weeks of hashing out the details, we’re ready to tackle the challenge ahead.

If you want another writing buddy…just because we all love to compare page results…

My Script Frenzy Page

For those of you who don’t know what that is:

You have 30 days (April 1 through to April 30) to complete 100 pages of original scripted material.

- Screenplays
- Stage Plays
- TV Shows
- Short Films
- Graphic Novels

It’s completely free to participate, but if you feel like donating, you can.

You don’t have to be a writer. You don’t have to know anything about writing scripts. There’s a resource section for information.

Script Frenzy website
Script Frenzy – Rules
Script Frenzy – Resources

Have fun and enjoy the challenge everyone.

So, it’s finally the time we’ve been waiting for- Or at least what I’ve been waiting on bated breath for the last week. In just a few short hours (already started for some people), it’s the start of Script Frenzy. I know I’ve already blogged about this and it’s probably boring, but who cares.

I’m totally in the zone for this one. I wasn’t very well prepared for NaNoWriMo, last minute characters showed up and ruined the party for everyone, but this time, it’s in the bag! Script writing is my forte and I’m going to aim to blow it out of the water. My personal goal will be approximately 250 pages. It’s a quicker dialogue pace, or else I’d reduce the pages. I don’t think it needs to be much longer for a 2 hour film…hmm…

What’s really great about this weekend, is that it’s Easter Weekend and while many of you are no doubt doing the family thing, I’ll be at home making the most out of the 4 day weekend and get ahead as much as possible. I’ll be sure to have my supply of Coca-Cola ready.

By the way, if anyone would like to, you can go ahead and add me as a writing buddy. I’ll add you back and we can keep eachother motivated to keep going! Just visit my profile.

I wish you all the very best and break a leg. The next month is going to be pretty insane as most of you know and we can only hope it goes well. May your creativity flow and I hope that the previously talked about writer’s block keeps itself at bay.

Have a great day!

Okay, so we have a full month (the month of April) to write a 100-page script for Script Frenzy. It’s the sister competition to NaNoWriMo and sadly, I think I’m going to fail this one almost as badly as I failed NaNoWriMo. I made the fatal error of introducing a character that I felt would make the entirety of the story much better and far more interesting, but it wasn’t feasible in the timeframe allotted to the competition.

Now though, I’m specifically sitting down a week ahead of time to try to work out the plot and really see if there’s any chance that another character might try to get its own cameo. Yes, we’re allowed to do that with this one. I specifically remember getting an e-mail about it from the NaNoWriMo newsletter that we should go ahead and start planning things out. So I am.

Now I run into a whole new problem! I have too many different ways the entire thing could end. Do I kill someone? Do I have someone sacrifice themselves? Do I let them all live happily ever after? Do I let the bad guy win? Hmm…the potential. It all sounds potentially intriguing and I’m looking forward to starting Script Frenzy, but it’s driving me nuts already!

I’m trying to keep a few short things in mind while I work on this one though:

1- Don’t introduce anyone or anything new that wasn’t in the original plot.
2- Avoid the temptation to aim for perfection on the first draft.
3- If it sounds stupid, write it anyways, I can make it sound better later.
4- Have fun.

And that’s about it. Anyways, I’ll update this one in a week and see where I get at.

Enjoy your day and to those participating in Script Frenzy, try to keep the insanity for April 1st.

Where’s an Epic Fail badge when you need it? No really, I failed at NaNoWriMo this year. It was my first year trying and I’m used to writing in my own timelines. I generally tend to veer off course and end up somewhere in the middle of a quiet field standing on the edge of a desert wondering how I got this far off track.

I made a fatal error approximately halfway through the month of November when I introduced a character that managed to write her way into my story. I know the logical advice would have been to just not write her in, but any writer knows that you don’t get to decide who is in your story. Characters will always find their way in, situations will arise that you hadn’t initially thought would happen. Your story outline for the most part is just a guideline. I tried my best to stick to that guideline, however, this character was so important to the story that I had to go back to the beginning to introduce her and explain why she was important to begin with. However it destroyed the entire 6,000 words I’d written for the beginning and made them entirely moot. I found myself facing 3,000 words instead of the 12,000-13,000 that I had hoped to be at by the end of that day.

Normally I would agree that I should have pressed on, but I’d lost the entire story I had and nothing I could have done could have salvaged it for this year. I didn’t want to end up with a pitiful excuse of a book. It’s nice to say that NaNoWriMo has no rules; just that you have to write until you hit 50,000 words, but I have my standards and I didn’t want to reach the end with a bunch of gibberish. So sadly this story is being redefined and I’ll start over from the beginning in next year’s competition.

On the plus side, there’s another competition this year and it’s called Script Frenzy. Script is actually my preferred way of writing. It requires a lack of description and thrives mainly on the dialogue with bits of description in between. After all, you’re only giving lines to the actors and giving an idea to the director, not telling him/her how to do their job. It’s up to them to make it look great; they just need a good basis.

Anyways! So here’s the challenge.

During the month of April!

100 pages of original scripted material in 30 days.

You may write the following types of scripts:

-       Screenplays

-       Stage plays

-       TV shows

-       Short films

-       Graphic novels

Find out more about Script Frenzy?

Register for Script Frenzy

So I’m writing this on the 5th, but it’s only just past midnight and I haven’t started writing today, so I’m writing on behalf of yesterday. Day 4 was pretty productive. Wrote at least 3,000 words. I’m at 5102 words so far. I’m hoping that Day 5 brings me beyond the minimum that I need for that the next 2 days. I can only hope I’m so lucky.

I have such a tremendous level of admiration for the people who do this every year. It takes a lot of work to be able to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I figured, pfft, this can’t be too hard. Wrong. It’s hard to stay focussed and on topic.

The first thing I told myself when I started writing was that I’d stick to what I wrote as my outline and not stray from it no matter how much I thought it was a much cooler/better/kickass idea to put in. Focus. Discipline. I gotta use my German genes at some point. Efficiency will win in the end.

So there isn’t really much to say at this point. I’m just over that first hurdle of getting through the first pages of introductory garble so that I can get to the better more interesting stuff. Man does my main character have an attitude problem though. I wanna smack her and I made her!…I hope she doesn’t reflect me too much. How awful would that be.

Anyways, have a great evening/day depending on the corner of the globe you find yourself in. Give you another update soon.