Tag: writing

How’Zit Goin?

The Screenplay

With only one month left to complete my 2021 goal, I’m on track. I’ve “finished” the screenplay. After much effort, it’s finally below 120 pages, currently at about 116 pages.

You’ll notice the word “finished” is in quotation marks. Is a creative work really ever finished? Generally, no, because the creator will tweak the work until the very last minute. (Eric Kripke said he continuously rewrote a key scene for the pilot of Supernatural until they filmed it. And he still wasn’t happy with it.) But my reason for not being done is less esoteric.

I’m trying an alternate beginning, based on feedback from my screenplay course instructor. It’s still exposition-heavy, but I see no way out of that because the sci-fi world has to be set up quickly. The alternate would just get into the action a bit more quickly. The downside is that some lovely prose that Dark Space author Lisa Henry wrote would be lost.

But my biggest struggle is the ending: it’s pretty weak. I didn’t mind the book’s ending (although a few reviewers on Goodreads did), but it won’t do for a movie. For one thing, it violates the first commandment of Robert McKee‘s 10 Commandments of Screenwriting: Thou shalt not take the crisis or climax out of the protagonist’s hands (or, no “deus ex machina” endings). So now I have to come up with an ending where Brady is the master of his own destiny, or rather, gets himself out of the jam the other main character put him in.

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One Hour a Day

The other day I was poking around the website, and what did I find? That I’ve written only one post per month for the past few months. Wow, that’s pretty awful.

Which leads me to contemplate my writing goals. It certainly wasn’t my intention to post just once per month. Granted, I didn’t have a specific frequency in mind (maybe once per week?), but I’m a far cry from whatever that goal might have been be.

It’s not like I don’t have things to say. I have plenty to say. Currently, it’s mostly political stuff. I’m not a great follower of politics in general, but the past few months have made me care very much about this country. In the wake of January 6th, I’ve pondered questions such as “What defines a patriot?” Then there’s my curiosity about whether we’ll see an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases among Texans and spring-break participants in the coming weeks. And let’s not forget all the ways Congress sucks.

Books by K.J. Charles: The Magpie Lord, Think of England, Slippery Creatures
A few of K.J. Charles’ books: 1) her first & most popular, 2) my personal favorite, and 3) my next read.

The problem is, whenever I try to write down my thoughts, the words fail me. Posts I’ve so eloquently organized in my mind just disappear. I envy people like Jim Beaver and K.J. Charles, who seem to be able to easily discuss even controversial topics in meaningful, intelligent ways.

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Throwback Thursday

#tbt:  Apparently it’s quite The Thing on Twitter.  I’ve been thinking about reblogging some of my posts from The (Old) Stream of Conscience, and “Throw Back Thursday” seems as good a day as any, yes?

When deciding what post to reblog, I took a look at my 34 categories.  How to choose?  Why, my old favorite, of course, Random.org.  (I also used it to pick the style for this blog.)  It spewed out 14, which turned out to be the ubiquitous “Life & Musings,” i.e., pretty much any damn thing.  Since the blog covered 5½ years, there were 9 pages of posts to peruse; yet, the one I chose was on the first page.

It was written on December 8, 2012, in response to WordPress.com’s Daily Post challenge, which asked “What is your earliest memory?  Describe it in detail, and tell us why you think that experience was the one to stick with you.”  Mine was easy-peasy.  (I’ve edited only slightly.)

My Earliest Trauma Memory

And how appropriate for the season!

A two-and-a-half year-old me entertains Christmas visitors.
Entertaining visitors; permanent crisis averted

Harken back to a slower, quieter time: the mid-20th century, an age without digital cameras, when it took a few months to fill up a roll of film and get it developed.

Christmas day:  One 2½-year-old went to bed the night before, thinking of Santa Claus on his rounds, and worried she wouldn’t be able to sleep for all the excitement.

But I did fall asleep, which made the night pass more quickly.

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Sunday Seven: Grammar Lessons

The English language provides endless opportunities to misuse grammar.I like to think I’m a pretty good writer, but I have my idiosyncrasies.  I begin too many sentences with conjunctions,  I overuse parentheses and commas, and I probably misuse semicolons, em-dashes and ellipses.  I blame my piss-poor capitalization on my years in the U.S. Navy.

If you look at any of the myriad of grammar sites around the web, there are a hell of a lot of rules.  In the first grammar post I started (but never finished), I used the term “bad grammar.”  Was that the correct term?  I researched and discovered there are thousands of pages of discussion and disagreement, with an equal number of self-proclaimed grammar experts.  (I’m not talking about English teachers.  I mean folks like me.)

Some grammar rules are very complex.  Even as a fairly educated person with a reasonable grasp of the English language, I have difficulty understanding them—let alone using them.  Since the rules are so many and varied, let’s start at the macro level.  Here are:

Seven Grammar Sites Worthy of Further Investigation
(with snarky commentary)

[Caveat:  Some of these websites may not be completely accurate.  In the past, I’ve found grammar articles with poor—or bad—grammar.]
[Caveat #2:  There are punctuation and capitalization rules for lists, many (all?) of which I may not have followed.]

  1. Grammar rules everyone should follow.  Why doesn’t every word in the title begin with a capital letter?  Is this a new rule?  Like Pluto no longer being a planet?
  2. 7 grammar rules you really should pay attention to.  Ditto above. Not to mention starting with “7” vs. “Seven.”  (It is ok to end with a preposition.)
  3. Grammarbook.com.  Hey!  There’s even a caveat stating grammar rules vary!  😀
  4. Grammarly Handbook. Even though “grammarly” isn’t a real word.  But Grammarly is a great website.
  5. 2o Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Makes. Hmm, should the word “that” be capitalized?  Or even used?
  6. Grammar at the Purdue Online Writing Guide (OWL).  Go Big Ten!  (Even though it now consists of 12 teams.  My father would be turning in his grave if he hadn’t been cremated.)
  7. Top Ten Grammar Myths.  At least here “ten” means 10.  😉

Have at it, grammarphiles!  Depending on the direction this blog goes, we may delve further into the nuances of the English language.  I might learn something along the way, which always makes for a good day.

My Weblog Guru

Today’s Blog Exercise from Lorelle on WordPress is to write about someone who changed your life.  Lorelle herself shared some tidbits about her grandfather.

Lorelle on WordPress offers blogging tips, advice, and exercises.
Lorelle today

I thought I’d write about my grandfather.  I wrote an essay about him six years ago when I was taking a writing class called “Writing from the Heart.”  Or I could write a bit more about my father, copying a post from my previous blog.  But that would just be cutting and  pasting previous work, neither of which would flex my blogging muscles very much.

I’ve been following Lorelle on WordPress off and on for many, many years—so far back, she was still living in Israel and was using Rubric, one of the first standard WordPress.com themes (or was it Regulus?); back when WordPress.com didn’t have the option to customize themes and had only a million or so blogs—perhaps even fewer.

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