Now, it’s time to WRITE the damn thing, HA!

Been a nice week of progress for me. Pretty much a week of Log Line and Synopsis writing.

Finished the Brainstorm, Main Characters, Logline, and Synopsis for Amachi’s first book and a short film script. I discovered a lot about my two main antagonists, for Amachi, that I didn’t know/realize before. They’ve become a lot more interesting as people, outside of their “bad intentions”.

The synopsis for Amachi’s first book helped me to refocus and engineer the main plot points, and quite a few things have changed since the first time I laid out the story. Same goes for the short film script. I was able to cross off a lot of scene ideas I had floating around  in my head to keep the story/script as short as possible.

Next, for both projects, i’m on Plot Characters and Act Summaries.

Third project I’m working on with a friend, a horror graphic novel, is about at the same development phase as my other projects. Brainstorm, Main characters: Done, and just about finished with the Logline and Synopsis for that.

Three projects, three formats, three of my favorite genre’s, Drama, Fantasy, and Horror. I have no complaints.

You learned this in grade school, back when you remembered to have a little fun. And maybe because it was fun you may have forgotten that it can come in extremely handy in a pinch. Call it brainstorming, or spiderwebbing, or a more abstract form of outlining, but it’s all the same. Visual.

Mind-mapping allows your mind to think outside the proverbial box. It provides a clear view of story snarls. It sets your mind free to soar to undiscovered horizons and distant shores previously hidden and unknown to both you and your Muse. It gives you the opportunity to discover ideas and concepts that maybe you hadn’t considered before. It will grant you the chance to craft your novel masterpiece and tell a story that will allow others the wonder and joy of blissful escape…

And all because you the writer were unafraid to explore the furthest reaches of your creative mind.

Write on, and may your Muse be with you.

“Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,900 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 5 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Everything went well and was a great first time experience for me. It was fun, a lot of laughing. It was definitely odd hearing/seeing what’s mainly been in my head, for the last couple months, interpreted by others and acted out before me. I kept wanting to cringe, it was just that weird to me, like someone reading my private journal out loud, lol!

I recorded the session with my iPhone and Phocus attachments so I could study it outside of the moment and I’ve learned a few things from it.

Main thing was that the dialog is pretty tight, no need for any changes other than taking out the dialog/pauses/stops/beats I hear in my head and put on page, and just let the actors pause and stop where/when/if they feel it’s needed in the moment. I’ve heard that you shouldn’t put pauses in script dialog and now I have a better understanding as to why.

For the next reading, there are a few things I want to try out camera wise just for fun.

Another first time script-thing I did in the past week was the script breakdown, which is I think, the THE MOST BORING TASK I’VE DONE connected to screenwriting thus far. Tedious and boring, but necessary.

Next things on my list is Lining the Script and Storyboards, which I can’t wait to do. I’ll let you’ll know how it goes.

In my mind, the story is so epic and complex that I feel mentally overwhelmed every time I try to work on it. Right now, it looks like a trilogy, but deep down I know that it can easily expand to five books.

This time around, I’m determined to stick with to the end. Well, at least the end of the first book. Most times, I’m a BIG PICTURE kind of person, so my wife suggested that I just focus on getting the first book out and not so much the WHOLE THING.I followed her advice all last week, and I must say, it does feel a whole lot better, mentally. It feels…lighter.

Over the years, I’ve developed many aspects of the story, the characters, and the world. I’ve even used AEON TIMELINE to lay out what I know of the world’s history and the first few events that take place in the first book. That definitely help me put things in perspective.

A lot of key elements to the story transpired thousands of years before the reader is brought on board. Being able to see it all laid out, how it all connects on time line was another weight off my shoulders.

With all the existing development I’ve written in notebooks and stored in document files, I’ve decided to re-develop everything,at least revisit it all, so that I can become one with the story again.

I’ve started with the main characters of the first book, the Protagonist Amachi, a young female warrior of an enslaved race, and the Antagonist, Grizole, a slave wrangler bent on capturing her.

Redeveloping those two have really been a joy this past week. I’ve Learned new things about them, new twists to their characters, goals, motivations, and psyches. especially for Grizole, there’s been some great additions to his character and one major twist that he won’t be too happy about when it comes to light, lol.

Amachi is complete and I’m about 75% done with Grizole. After which, I’ll rework the log line and synopsis.

I’ll share more in a couple weeks.

What I like most is being asked is where I get my ideas. What’s even better than that is explaining how something inspired me and  how I developed it into something else. I don’t think there’s a specific way to develop a concept because ultimately it all depends on ones own imagination and determination to make the concept “appear” completely original so that no one is able to pinpoint where you got the idea. The best way to do that is to focus on the details.

Lets say that you are inspired by a particular character. There’s just something about this character that strikes you. Strip the character of everything it is until you are only left with the basic elements that caught your eye. Once that is done, you must now rebuild this character, rebuild them with your own personal touches, put a twist on their personality, change their history, or gender. This is the moment of truth, depending on how drastic the changes are that you’ve made to separate it from your source of inspiration, your end product will appear to be an “original” work or a “clone” of something else.

Lets face it,  nearly everything we’ve been introduced and will be introduced to throughout our lives from characters, books, songs, clothing, technology, and etc are just variations of something else already in existence. The power all of these variations have on us lay within the details of the variation. Some variations are just “differences” while others are “enhancements” on a predecessor.  How one makes a concept their own or “original” is when the differences or enhancements overshadow the similarities that connects it to the source.