Contingency Update 2012 August 26

I want to complete the video conversion for Contingency soon. This week I did some preparation to try again.

I had worried that I had damaged the film the last time I tried to do the transfer. This week I did an inspection of the films I found some damage. Fortunately, it was only minor damage; about 24 to 30 frames. I could cut that out and still have a film I can project.

I will use an optical printer to do the transfer. I messed it up the last time, which is why I have to redo it. The process is quiet slow and finicky. I have to advance the film frame by frame and then photograph each frame with a digital camera. Some of the shots were from earlier projects and were already available on video. When I checked the print, I identified those shots. That will cut the number of frames I have to transfer in half.

The main problem in my first attempt was that I did a poor job with the focus. When I set it up, the focus looked fine to me. When I got home and looked at the image files, they were all out of focus. I want to run some experiments with the equipment before I try the transfer again. I learned quite a bit from my first attempt. I expect that I’d learn more from a test.

I do wonder if it would have been better to get the film transferred professionally.

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Conan the Accountant

Some time not too long after I moved to Calgary, I had an idea for a book I called Conan the Accountant. That must have been in 1980 or 1981. My memory had faded about what I did, because I didn’t think I had done anything but think about it. I found eleven typewritten pages from the story, so I did more than think about it.

The idea of the story was that a Conan type character is transferred from the sword and sorcery era he lives in, to the modern world. I think I must have intended it to be a parody.

The first thing I realized was that I hadn’t used the name Conan. I called the hero Howard (or Howie) the Barbarian. Also, he gets a job in an advertizing company.

The stuff I found was from two parts of the story. The first part was after he reached the modern world. In it he is hunting for a job, and learning that he can’t use the same skills he’d use to hunt a lion. I have one line where he mentioned that he’d already left two interviewers lying in pools of their own blood when they didn’t offer him a job. The second part is set before he moves to the modern world. In it he meets a wizard and a new companion to help him in his quest.

It looks as if I typed the story without any notes or real outline. There were hardly any corrections, which surprises me. Lots of typos though. Some of the writing would be embarrassing to me, but it does sound a lot like the kind of story I was trying to emulate.

I started to convert the story to computer files with optical character recognition. I have three pages to go. I don’t think I can make any use of it, but I wanted it available.

When I was in high school, I started to write a Doc Savage story. Like my Conan story, I gave up on it after a short while. I would like to find it again. My basement is piled high with boxes full of my old paper, so it won’t be easy to find it. That is, if I even kept it.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Sharkbiter Interview Series Posted on YouTube

I posted all of the episodes of the Sharkbiter Interview series on YouTube. You can find them all in this playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL976E68B76C10BFC8

The links to the individual videos are:

The Sharkbiter Interview Part 1: Introduction http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La96Qy8e63c

The Sharkbiter Interview Part 2: How He Made His First Money http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvh6n968a6s

The Sharkbiter Interview Part 3: His First Tragedy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip3bxfTrO20

The Sharkbiter Interview Part 4: His Second Tragedy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMHW2Vl4nmQ

The Sharkbiter Interview Part 5: His First 150 Million Dollars http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM6yEzfL0IM

The Sharkbiter Interview Part 6: His First Big Business Success http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCYpHv5p41Q

The Sharkbiter Interview Part 7: His Departure From Bunko, Ponzi and Cheatem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO9lhHj1krQ

The Sharkbiter Interview Part  8: The Precise Detail Institute of Micromanagement http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ6hfhgoOns

The Sharkbiter Interview Part  9: His Public Service http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u18X074KX0o

The Sharkbiter Interview Part 10: The Final Days of PERV http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez5jxI9VSvs

The Sharkbiter Interview Part 11: His Political Career http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aczw9bT6hwE

The Sharkbiter Interview Part 12: His Political Reforms http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKkVx5YOCDw

The Sharkbiter Interview Part 13: His Advice http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9OUlTFR4IM

The Sharkbiter Interview Part 14: The Secret of His Success http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKSmjo2T5ug

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Sharkbiter Update 2012 August 12

I finished a new version of The Sharkbiter Interview. I split the video, which runs 9:16, into 14 parts.

My goal with the new version is to cut it into parts that run about one to one and a half minutes long. I read that videos longer than that are less popular. The audience retention statistics on YouTube showed that the audience for Make 'em Squirm: The Sharkbiter Way had dropped to under fifty percent by one minute into the video. http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/make-em-squirm-the-sharkbiter-way/

My first attempt was in early July. I ended up with seven parts, which ran between 1:24 and 2:22. The average was 1:45. I thought that worked OK, but the videos were still longer than I wanted.

I watched the videos several time before I decided where to cut them. Some I left as they were, while others I cut into two parts and, in one case, into three parts. The 14 parts ranged in length between 0:45 and 1:33. The average was 1:11.

I found Part 1 difficult to do and I had to redo it several times before I had it the way I wanted it. Part 5 came in too short, so I had to add some dialogue to bring it closer to the average. I did new introductions and closes for all of the videos. Beyond that I found I needed to add or change a few words so each part could stand on it’s own.

Over all I’m happy with them, but there were a few that I think don’t work as well as separate episodes. I will think more about those and I may recombine some of the parts.

When I first wrote the script, I thought of it as a single video and I think that made it harder to split up the way I did. If I had that idea from the start, I could have avoided that problem. I suppose I could do a more drastic rewrite now, but I think it is better to finish this off and move on to other projects.

I plan to start posting them next week.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Science Fiction Story Update 2012 August 5

I hadn’t planned to work on my science fiction story until later, but the ideas just poured out of my head this week. The story has a (tentative) title now: Heat Wave. I’m taking a slightly different approach to how I write this time. We’ll see how that goes.

Through out the week, I wrote my ideas, along with some dialog and description to use in the story in to my notebook. Later in the week, I started to work on the story itself. I decided that I should write the story in first person.

Most of my stories have been in third person because movie scripts are in third person. It wasn’t until this week that I realized that all scripts are in third person. I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard anyone point that out. Even when you use a voice over to have a character describe how they feel and what they think, the script itself is still in third person.

About a month ago, I did an outline, but my concept of the story changed since then. I did a new outline. I gave the characters names and then I started to write parts of the story.

Normally I work from a general outline and write each scene in proper order. This time I decided I wouldn’t write them in any particular order. The main reason is that I have some very clear ideas about some scenes, including the final scene. For the other scenes I had only a vague idea what I wanted to do. As I finish scenes I expect to think about the other scenes, and that way build up into a complete story. So far, that approach seems to work.

I transferred what I’d written in my notebook with a voice recognition program. I think that sped up the process. I think the words flow easier when I speak them aloud. The voice recognition isn’t 100 per cent accurate, but I think I caught most of the problems. I got about 1,400 words of the first draft done so far.

I used Celtx for my story. It has some useful features. The “index cards” make it easier to move blocks of text around. Celtx was originally for movie scripts, but it does have a novel option. I used it on Bright Freedom and it was a big help there.

As I’ve thought about the story, I’ve started to realize that there are some parallels between the story and some of my personal experiences. I’ve altered the story a bit to take advantage of that. Recently I’ve read several books about H.P. Lovecraft. Despite his stories being weird fantasies, they point out where he has incorporated his personal experiences into his stories. Most authors do that to some extent, but it helped me see that I could use my experiences in this story.

The books I read were.

H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World Against Life by Michel Houellebecq,

Lovecraft: A Biography by Lyon Sprague De Campe, and

Lovecraft: A look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos by Lin Carter

I don’t plan to push ahead on this story. When I get ideas, I will follow them up. I had some more over the last few days, so I’ll likely do some more work on it this week.

Pierre Berton suggests that you read a good story before you write. I wasn’t sure what would be appropriate for my story. Yesterday I decided that I would read Earthlight by Arthur C. Clarke. I read the book back in high school, so my memory of it is a bit fuzzy, but I think it would be a good influence on my writing. In particular, the narrator is similar to how I see mine.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

First Draft of Bright Freedom Done

I finished the conversion of my script Bright Freedom into a story this week. It came in at a little over 17,500 words, which is supposed to be the boundary between a novelette and a novella. It runs 47 pages.

I gave it a quick scan and it was clear that I have a lot more work to do on it. I plan to leave it for a while, and then start a rewrite. I expect I’ll need to do quite a few rewrites.

I think I do have a problem with some of my writing, where I have essentially the same thing happens over and over. I managed to cut out some of that in this story as I rewrote it, but I still need to do some more.

Another mistake I made with this story is that the subplots are too big and left the main story line somewhat thin. I did some analysis of the story and the main story makes up about 70 per cent of the total words, while one subplot is 25 percent and the other about 5 per cent. That isn’t as bad as I thought. The main plot is actually two stories that are so intertwined that I really can’t separate them. I think that is why I felt like my subplots took up too much space. I plan to build up the main plot line more and cut some stuff out of the subplots.

In several scenes, I have the characters talk to each other on the phone. In some cases, I think this makes sense. In others, I think I should change the scene into a face to face meeting.

I noticed that scenes that I thought about quite a bit read much better. The scenes where I didn’t, come across as pretty limp. When I rewrite I think I should just do one scene at a time, and reread it at least a day before to get my mind focussed on it.

Another issue is that I’ve put in descriptions of what the character does while they talk or pause. I did that to break up the dialog, and avoid “he said” and “she said” descriptions. All too often, I have their gestures repeat. I think a lot of that has to come out. I also want to come up with a wider range of gestures, expressions, and actions. I want them to reveal what the characters are thinking, and what they are feeling.

Pierre Berton said that you should read something good before you start to write. I’ve been reading about H. P. Lovecraft, which is a very different kind of material from what I’m trying to do. I need to read a story more like what I’m writing. I can’t really think of any. It’s a little hard to describe what the story is, so it is hard to ask people for suggestions.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Bright Freedom Update 2012 July 22

I started to work on my revised Sharkbiter video, but then I decided to concentrate on Bright Freedom instead. The project started as a film script a couple years ago, so I am converting the script into a novella. I got another 5,600 words done. One more session and I am done the first draft. I hope.

It will need a lot more work before I have something I feel I can publish. I do need to do some more background research. It should be easier to identify what I need to find out if I have a draft of the story.

I just read The Joy of Writing by Pierre Berton. Although it is mostly about writing non-fiction, it got me to think differently about this story.

Berton’s rule number 16 is to always describe the people. My characters are fictional, but, in the past, I have sought out images that I can use to visualize them. I picked someone to be Bright Freedom. I won’t say who I picked, but she just jumped into my mind as soon as I started to ponder who I could use. I haven’t given as much thought to the other characters as I wrote, so it is harder to visualize them.

I think I have too many characters and maybe too many subplots. I eliminated one character so far. She only had one scene and was mentioned a couple of times in other scenes, so it wasn’t hard to cut her out. I did lose a scene I liked though.

I have several characters that only play a small part, so I think it may make sense to merge them into other characters. I think I’ll need to build up some of the characters so they contribute more to the story.

I have five plot lines now and thought I might add another. In a previous, failed, script I ran into a problem where I added so many side stories, that people who read the outline thought one of the subplots was the main plot. As an exercise, I thought that I might try to split off all of the subplots into separate stories. That should help me focus on the core story. I plan to reintegrate the subplots later.

The core of the story is composed of two of the plot lines and can’t be separated because they are so intertwined with each other. One of the subplots is almost nonexistent now, but I think I can integrate it into the main story line. The other subplots are really to show the internal conflict that Bright faces because what she does and says in those stories contrasts with what she does and says in the main story.

After I have this first draft done, I will leave it for a while. I already have ideas for additional scenes. There are structural changes I’d like to make. I can see that I’ll need at least one more draft to take care of those additions. Then I want to do a draft where I flesh out the story with descriptive detail. I’ll likely need to do another draft to clean up the wording.

I want to get some input from people when I reach that point. In particular, since the main character is a woman, I want to see how women feel about what I’ve done. If you're a woman and would like to help, please let me know.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog