nano and 55 days
last night, finally caught up on nanowrimo wordcount. so that's 13k in and still not started anything that looks like plot aside from 2 and a half main characters being recruited/introduced... I seriously have no idea whether I'm writing the dialogue in character for Susan at the mo. Lot less internal dialogue than the last nano, so hopefully will be less repetitious when I go back to it several months down the line. Also weird thing of writing in bits across 3 separate sections. Fear my final nano will end up with all the never-went-back-to placeholder notes I keep adding still intact. And having that really weird bit of figuring out how to paste in notes of dialogue and snippets and where they fit now I've written the actual scene I'd been thinking of vaguely when planning.
Turns out my nano is being fuelled by hardcore, happy hardcore, garage and other such things. also the giant archive of expired copyright 1920s jazz Wil Wheaton found and blasted across the net...
Ooo, interesting link for the writing lot - a guide to character archetypes. have seen one Dr who break down it already, Rose as the Lover, Rory as the Caregiver, Donna the rebel, the Master the Ruler, River the Hero, Martha the Explorer, Jack the Jester, the Doctor the Magician, Amy the Creator, and Mickey the Orphan.
random theatre reviews from the past couple of months, part xiii:
55 Days at Hampstead: being an account of the 55 days at the end of Civil War from the Rump Parliament (or to put it a bit clearer, when the army invaded Parliament) to Charles I's execution. Or as I tweeted: 'off to see a head of state be deposed, tried for treason and executed by legal process.' as the point of the play is, plenty of heads of state have been deposed by force and executed before, but this was the first one where it was done *legally*. aka why our Civil War is something we don't make too much of a fuss about and attempt to shove under the carpet a lot, because it's really, really not glamorous or bombastic in the way, say, the French Revolution was. ours ended not with a mob but a courtroom. Oh, and did we mention the whole thing was very carefully notarised and minuted because of the pains they took to make sure it was legal?
it's fascinating, tense, grey and they take the pains to emphasise that everyone is just so tired and sore after seven years of war. Everyone's squabbling. it's messy. There's personal and political and religious concerns tearing previous allies apart. The idealists torn down and stomping off in a huff due to compromises having to be made now that they've got to live with the new order, and the frantic scramblign because they're aware that they're having to create somethign entirely new out of thin air. It's the grey, tired men like Cromwell (Douglas Henshall), certain that god is on his side as representative of the people, versus Charles Stuart (Mark Gatiss) with his certainty that he was appointed by god to rule, and as he points out in the play (and in the notes of the trial) 'a trial of my peers? where are my peers? I do not see them here.'. Brilliant, setting anytime post war with lots of filing cabinets in grey suits, Charles being the only one in Stuart dress to make the contrast of him being from a previous time and mindset. Play, script and performances also make a very good point about how much cult of personality can affect and drive matters. (e.g., the way everyone looks to Cromwell to base their reaction on his and they talk about the fact that people just naturally follow Cromwell because he's *Cromwell*.) Very good performances all round. Couple of notes in that there is very much a change of pace between first and second act, sicne they have to cram so much into the 1st act, 2nd covering the trial period. Probably enjoyed more if you knew something of the history, as it ratchets up the tension if you know that the moment where Charles is goign to get caught for soliciting invasion by foriegn powers is coming, you just don't know when... oh, and general amusement ad when Mark Gatiss would occasionally lose the soft scots accent and Douglas Henshall would lapse into his natural scots.
Turns out my nano is being fuelled by hardcore, happy hardcore, garage and other such things. also the giant archive of expired copyright 1920s jazz Wil Wheaton found and blasted across the net...
Ooo, interesting link for the writing lot - a guide to character archetypes. have seen one Dr who break down it already, Rose as the Lover, Rory as the Caregiver, Donna the rebel, the Master the Ruler, River the Hero, Martha the Explorer, Jack the Jester, the Doctor the Magician, Amy the Creator, and Mickey the Orphan.
random theatre reviews from the past couple of months, part xiii:
55 Days at Hampstead: being an account of the 55 days at the end of Civil War from the Rump Parliament (or to put it a bit clearer, when the army invaded Parliament) to Charles I's execution. Or as I tweeted: 'off to see a head of state be deposed, tried for treason and executed by legal process.' as the point of the play is, plenty of heads of state have been deposed by force and executed before, but this was the first one where it was done *legally*. aka why our Civil War is something we don't make too much of a fuss about and attempt to shove under the carpet a lot, because it's really, really not glamorous or bombastic in the way, say, the French Revolution was. ours ended not with a mob but a courtroom. Oh, and did we mention the whole thing was very carefully notarised and minuted because of the pains they took to make sure it was legal?
it's fascinating, tense, grey and they take the pains to emphasise that everyone is just so tired and sore after seven years of war. Everyone's squabbling. it's messy. There's personal and political and religious concerns tearing previous allies apart. The idealists torn down and stomping off in a huff due to compromises having to be made now that they've got to live with the new order, and the frantic scramblign because they're aware that they're having to create somethign entirely new out of thin air. It's the grey, tired men like Cromwell (Douglas Henshall), certain that god is on his side as representative of the people, versus Charles Stuart (Mark Gatiss) with his certainty that he was appointed by god to rule, and as he points out in the play (and in the notes of the trial) 'a trial of my peers? where are my peers? I do not see them here.'. Brilliant, setting anytime post war with lots of filing cabinets in grey suits, Charles being the only one in Stuart dress to make the contrast of him being from a previous time and mindset. Play, script and performances also make a very good point about how much cult of personality can affect and drive matters. (e.g., the way everyone looks to Cromwell to base their reaction on his and they talk about the fact that people just naturally follow Cromwell because he's *Cromwell*.) Very good performances all round. Couple of notes in that there is very much a change of pace between first and second act, sicne they have to cram so much into the 1st act, 2nd covering the trial period. Probably enjoyed more if you knew something of the history, as it ratchets up the tension if you know that the moment where Charles is goign to get caught for soliciting invasion by foriegn powers is coming, you just don't know when... oh, and general amusement ad when Mark Gatiss would occasionally lose the soft scots accent and Douglas Henshall would lapse into his natural scots.