Sequelitis, snow, guacamole, and the perils of ==.
I'm up late writing, drinking hot cocoa, listening to Christmas Carols and looking out my window at a snow covered street. Life is, as they say, good, and I thought it was time I checked in.
I'm also warm. God I love the heat (I'm not even paying for) in this place. Back at Candlewood, whenever the temp dipped below 40 degrees it was time to break out the eviscerated Tauntaun and muse darkly on the fact that starting a controlled fire in the living room fueled solely by dollar bills would be both more effective and cheaper than the electric floor units.
Anyway, I'm worrying a narrative suture at the top of page 28 of the play I'm revising and I thought I'd take a break. You are that break. Feels good, doesn't it, people-who-haven't-given-up-and-moved-to-Facebook? More on that suture in a bit, but first the recap.
As you can see, I'm back in Chicago after a rare non-sucky family holiday back in Ohio. I cooked Thanksgiving dinner, taking the strain off mom, and that's all it took for things to chill the fuck down. Nice. We'll see if we can parlay this into Christmas. Yes, somewhat absurdly, I'll be back in Ohio in about two weeks. Mark your calendar! (Who wants to go see AVATAR? Three hours in 3D glasses won't be migraine-inducing at all! Who's with me?!)
While I saw many fine folks on my last jaunt through The Heart of It All, I wasn't able to link up with everybody. Hope springs eternal that Santa Ted will be able to catch up with a few more before we all enter The Year We Make Contact (obscure?).
Over the weekend, a couple friends of mine hosted a informal, stock-talking reading of the second two installments of my "Alone" trilogy, plus dinner, plus a party afterward. As this was the Platonic Ideal of the sort of thing I came to Chicago for, needless to say I was pleased. My friend Bryan, who will direct this stuff at some point if I can get it down to a fighting weight, organized the actors and made Chicken Verde. I made guacamole from a recipe that I got off the Internet. The ingredients were certainly fresh (thanks, up-the-street-mini-Jungle-Jim's-like-place!), and several people really took to it, but I personally like Blade's better.
The reading itself was terrific and very useful, and only occasionally a complete downer. Even though we were only reading #2 and #3, Bryan had included #1, Alone Together, in the packet of scripts he sent the actors, so the folks who weren't familiar with it could get up to speed. Not a bad idea, but it meant that I had to deal with some paradoxically problematic praise.
Bryan had re-read #1 the night before and said he was struck again by how good it was, how economical it was. Daniella-The-Actress said it was beautiful and made her cry.
In short, all sorts of nice things #2 and #3 currently aren't.
All this raises the uncomfortable specter of sequelitis. The Wachowski Brothers spun a successful story into a trilogy and we all know how they ended up.
And I would make a hideous-looking woman. Just saying.
At any rate, the actors were all people I knew (with one exception) and were all very good. Which was very useful. It meant that the good parts sang and the bad parts, well, clearly weren't the actors' fault.
Before the reading, I thought #3 was further along than #2. Bryan thought the opposite. He gets a cookie. But both plays are, at points, as distressingly flabby and labored as the NFL holdout who shows up to training camp three weeks late with a spare tire and an oblivious "What? Me worry?" grin (Alone Together is 38 pages and runs 36 minutes, while #2 and #3 are both 49 pages and run in excess of an hour each--guh).
I'm bringing 2 and 3 both under 40 minutes if is kills me (if for no other reason than, at that length, they become feasible to produce), but number 3's problems go deeper and I'm now looking at a significant re-write. Not quite a page-one job, but significant. The last quarter is solid (and also the very first thing I wrote of the piece--sigh), but everything else is going before the tribal council.
The trick is that the two big script notes in my mind are (A) cut about 20 minutes out, and (B) give the second character in this two-character piece a *character* and *something to do.* So subtract--a lot. And add--a lot. Which seems contradictory. You know, without completely rewriting the damn thing. Except maybe that last quarter, which I really like and think works. Maybe.
[insert clip of Krusty The Clown emitting a soul-weary, "Oi..." here]
Needless to say, I'm working on #2, which largely just needs pruning shears, although I'm very pleased with some significant changes I've made to the play's third quarter build to the climax, reworking it drastically and improving things immeasurably. I'm pretty much done with this pass, except for that one narrative suture on page 28 that looks something like this...
==
That "==" is my "I'll figure it out later" placeholder for the transition between two, disparate beats that are essential, can't go anywhere else, but have nothing to do with one another. And to maintain pacing and length, I have about one line to work the segue.
I think this is a better draft. Certainly leaner and tighter. About 41 pages, which is a big improvement from 50+. All that stands in my way of closing it out is "==".
As many of the folks left 'round here are writers, I'm sure all of you have your own personal equivalents of good ol' "==" to haunt your dreams.
I think I'll take another look at it, so maybe it won't haunt mine tonight.
I'm also warm. God I love the heat (I'm not even paying for) in this place. Back at Candlewood, whenever the temp dipped below 40 degrees it was time to break out the eviscerated Tauntaun and muse darkly on the fact that starting a controlled fire in the living room fueled solely by dollar bills would be both more effective and cheaper than the electric floor units.
Anyway, I'm worrying a narrative suture at the top of page 28 of the play I'm revising and I thought I'd take a break. You are that break. Feels good, doesn't it, people-who-haven't-given-up-and-moved-to-Facebook? More on that suture in a bit, but first the recap.
As you can see, I'm back in Chicago after a rare non-sucky family holiday back in Ohio. I cooked Thanksgiving dinner, taking the strain off mom, and that's all it took for things to chill the fuck down. Nice. We'll see if we can parlay this into Christmas. Yes, somewhat absurdly, I'll be back in Ohio in about two weeks. Mark your calendar! (Who wants to go see AVATAR? Three hours in 3D glasses won't be migraine-inducing at all! Who's with me?!)
While I saw many fine folks on my last jaunt through The Heart of It All, I wasn't able to link up with everybody. Hope springs eternal that Santa Ted will be able to catch up with a few more before we all enter The Year We Make Contact (obscure?).
Over the weekend, a couple friends of mine hosted a informal, stock-talking reading of the second two installments of my "Alone" trilogy, plus dinner, plus a party afterward. As this was the Platonic Ideal of the sort of thing I came to Chicago for, needless to say I was pleased. My friend Bryan, who will direct this stuff at some point if I can get it down to a fighting weight, organized the actors and made Chicken Verde. I made guacamole from a recipe that I got off the Internet. The ingredients were certainly fresh (thanks, up-the-street-mini-Jungle-Jim's-like-place!), and several people really took to it, but I personally like Blade's better.
The reading itself was terrific and very useful, and only occasionally a complete downer. Even though we were only reading #2 and #3, Bryan had included #1, Alone Together, in the packet of scripts he sent the actors, so the folks who weren't familiar with it could get up to speed. Not a bad idea, but it meant that I had to deal with some paradoxically problematic praise.
Bryan had re-read #1 the night before and said he was struck again by how good it was, how economical it was. Daniella-The-Actress said it was beautiful and made her cry.
In short, all sorts of nice things #2 and #3 currently aren't.
All this raises the uncomfortable specter of sequelitis. The Wachowski Brothers spun a successful story into a trilogy and we all know how they ended up.
And I would make a hideous-looking woman. Just saying.
At any rate, the actors were all people I knew (with one exception) and were all very good. Which was very useful. It meant that the good parts sang and the bad parts, well, clearly weren't the actors' fault.
Before the reading, I thought #3 was further along than #2. Bryan thought the opposite. He gets a cookie. But both plays are, at points, as distressingly flabby and labored as the NFL holdout who shows up to training camp three weeks late with a spare tire and an oblivious "What? Me worry?" grin (Alone Together is 38 pages and runs 36 minutes, while #2 and #3 are both 49 pages and run in excess of an hour each--guh).
I'm bringing 2 and 3 both under 40 minutes if is kills me (if for no other reason than, at that length, they become feasible to produce), but number 3's problems go deeper and I'm now looking at a significant re-write. Not quite a page-one job, but significant. The last quarter is solid (and also the very first thing I wrote of the piece--sigh), but everything else is going before the tribal council.
The trick is that the two big script notes in my mind are (A) cut about 20 minutes out, and (B) give the second character in this two-character piece a *character* and *something to do.* So subtract--a lot. And add--a lot. Which seems contradictory. You know, without completely rewriting the damn thing. Except maybe that last quarter, which I really like and think works. Maybe.
[insert clip of Krusty The Clown emitting a soul-weary, "Oi..." here]
Needless to say, I'm working on #2, which largely just needs pruning shears, although I'm very pleased with some significant changes I've made to the play's third quarter build to the climax, reworking it drastically and improving things immeasurably. I'm pretty much done with this pass, except for that one narrative suture on page 28 that looks something like this...
==
That "==" is my "I'll figure it out later" placeholder for the transition between two, disparate beats that are essential, can't go anywhere else, but have nothing to do with one another. And to maintain pacing and length, I have about one line to work the segue.
I think this is a better draft. Certainly leaner and tighter. About 41 pages, which is a big improvement from 50+. All that stands in my way of closing it out is "==".
As many of the folks left 'round here are writers, I'm sure all of you have your own personal equivalents of good ol' "==" to haunt your dreams.
I think I'll take another look at it, so maybe it won't haunt mine tonight.