boy, there's been a lot of punctuation this week.
If the choice came down to Bay Bridge or Dusty Baker -- well, get used to the ferry.
One year ago: How to write snappy dialogue.
Two years ago: I enjoin Darin and Fernando to engage in criminal activity, and we see Ever After.
Three years ago: I spend time in Larchmont Park.
Four years ago: I decide to learn CGI. (Flash-forward: I don't.)
Sophia speaks!
Actually, Sophia types. Not very well, mind you, but she's absolutely fascinated by this activity that Mommy and Daddy engage in with some regularity (I'm talking about typing, of course) and when she's sitting in my lap or Darin's, she wants in on the fun. So I open up a new file and let her at it.
Here's what she did today:
555xdxxxxxxxxxxxccxx.vÅxxxxx]
--//o.ÐÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖ
³.ooomjnm imnA UUNNNNNMMMI
ZBBBBBBBBXDDDDU
(Hmmm. That didn't come out right. HTML changes the characters. Well, if you want to know what Sophia's message really is, you have to look at the code for this page.)
I especially dig that there are option characters in there. How she did that, I have no idea.
So, in the course of answering some of this damn e-mail I'm trying to catch up on, I checked out the journal of one person who wrote me -- Rebeca of Bec's Happybox. She turns out to have a little girl as well. I can't get enough of journals with babies at the moment. Sigh.
The biological imperative to believe you have the World's Cutest Anyhow, her April 2 entry cracked me up:
I goggled the latest issue of People, leaving the boys to fend for themselves. It's official: Cindy Crawford's baby is less cute than mine.
I know exactly what she means.
The biological imperative to believe you have the World's Cutest Baby® is unbelievably strong. Even when you know your perceptions are being warped by biology, you are still convinced of this as an absolute truth.
Of course, it helps when you actually are the parent of the World's Cutest Baby®.
I wrote about five pages on the novel today. I'm flying blind on this project. I know who gets offed, I know who does the offing, and I know why. I don't know all the plot points. I am simply assuming I'm going to get there.
I started to study screenwriting for one reason: I wanted to learn how to plot. I didn't know it at the time, but what I really wanted to know was, What is a story? I'd taken tons of creative writing classes, read tons of books, and had plenty of people read my stuff, and I couldn't figure it out. I would write pages and pages of enjoyable fun stuff that was well-written and had snappy dialogue and fun goings-on. But it didn't go anywhere and I didn't have the skills to figure out why.
You can't do that in screenwriting. Story is everything in screenwriting. No, really. Story isn't primary in filmmaking (God knows most recent movies could use a damn story), but it's most important in a script. You can't just meander around in screenwriting -- you've got to get somewhere. Unless you doing an indie project, in which case you've either got to be very clever or very low-budget.
USC teaches three-act structure. I don't know what UCLA teaches, but we had the impression it was more avant-garde. And San Francisco State's film program is evidently totally experimental. I wanted something straightforward. I went to USC.
And I did learn three-act structure. But in the process of doing so I think I swung too much away from the meandering and formless and too much into overanalysis. Analysis of a finished project is valuable -- you have to know what you have, you have to know how to pinpoint problems. But I got into a habit of being too analytical before I would even start writing. Had to know the plot points. Had to know the outline.
I got a little mechanical. I think it showed in some of my writing.
So I'm trying this experiment of not knowing precisely where I'm going. Knowing I have to get to certain points and not knowing how I'm going to get there.
I'm really enjoying writing prose again. Getting into the narrator's voice. Sometimes I worry about the narrator sounding too much like she's making an nka entry, but I figure I'll work on that in the polish.
And I promised Saundra I would write about why I like writing movies -- it went beyond just trying to find story -- but I am too tired now. So that will be tomorrow's entry.
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Copyright 2000 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@nobody-knows-anything.com