Smart Boy

He's smart, that one. Cute, too, except when he doesn't shave over a couple of days and looks like a shaggy dog.

In Thesis class yesterday Len said, "Hey, I was thinking about your story, and what do you think of this plot element?" And he proceeded to give me something really cool.

I love Len. And he can do this story-thing for days on end, he is so good. He, too, is a smart boy.

Len is always saying the funniest things in class.

On setups and locations of scenes and how to use them:

How much opera do you show before you cut to the Nazis making the deal in the balcony?

That is a movie I want to see.

On why you shouldn't use fate as a factor in your story:

What are you going to do, have a fistfight with Jesus?

On difficult subject matter:

A dysfunctional family that gets closer does not sound healthy to me.

On why a screenplay is not a work of art like a novel is:

They publish blueprints. But they don't call them oil paintings.

On the use of jeopardy in a story:

If people see a baby crawling along a ledge, they don't keep walking by.

or:

In 3 days they're going to eat our kids at the 20th wedding anniversary, we gotta rescue them.

I've learned tons from Len in the past 6 weeks. I still have panic attacks of the sort, "My God, what do I do when I don't have Len around to bounce my ideas off of?" But I guess this is part of the training process, eh? And I will have my compatriots, who will have been Len-ized as well over this year.

I'm still in the organization/outlining stage of putting my screenplay together. I sometimes refer to this as the "mental masturbation" stage because it's hard to feel as though you're actually doing anything. However, if you get it right in the outlining stage, the writing stage becomes almost trivial -- you shouldn't be in danger of running across an ice floe that suddenly turns into an iceberg: "My God! What was my protagonist thinking?"

Of course, one problem with outlines is that once you start going your characters really do start taking on a life of their own, and about 40 pages in you have to toss the outline and start rethinking everything. Which is not to say that the first time you did the outline you wasted your time. Far from it. There are some people who say they don't write with an outline, but I think this is because

1. they have a truly special innate gift of understanding story movement;
2. they've already written a number of screenplays or other long form narratives that have taught them the fundamentals of what they need;
3. they're lying;
4. they write bad screenplays (this is always the first one to consider)

One thing you realize when you read someone's outline is how their point-of-view (yes, there are points of view in screenplays -- who's the main character, for instance?) shifts. One member of my thesis class shifted the main character midway through his screenplay. Hey! You can't do that! (Well, you can, I guess, but...suffice to say, I wouldn't.)

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

I'll probably never do anything again. I'll weigh this much forever. (I didn't go out yesterday, but I never go out on Thursdays before TV class, and I didn't go out today.)

Nail count: my right middle fingernail is still hosed, I'm trying to leave my right thumbnail alone, and I toasted my left thumbnail earlier this week.