Goalscaping a script

Less than a week now before I start writing my screenplay during Script Frenzy, and I feel much more prepared than I was the last time I took part in the month of writing. One of the reasons is that I am doing most of my planning using Goalscape.

With Goalscape, you lay out your tasks, project elements, or whatever, in a circle. Traditionally, the size of each task 'wedge' indicates its importance; however, there is a cute coincidence with a screenwriting Goalscape. A script for a movie is roughly 100 pages long, so a page of my script takes 1% of the way around the Goalscape circle. This shows me right away that, at this stage in my plans, I have far too much in act 2:

A new feature in the latest release of Goalscape lets you filter the chart by tags, due dates, people responsible for the task's accomplishment, or whatever. For the script, I have created a tag for each member of the cast. Katie is a major character, and if I filter the Goalscape to highlight just her scenes, it looks like she gets lost for a while a couple of times.

It is very exciting to see the balance of the script this way, and not have to sort of fumble around while writing and wonder whether I have left Katie offstage for too long.

If you look back in the blog for other Goalscape entries, you will see I used it when learning lines for a production of Titus Andronicus. As I did then, you can register graphically how much of each task is completed, and make sure you can make your deadlines.

I will post a progress report in ten days or so, unless the wheels really fall off the wagon. Really looking forward to April!

Script Frenzy - writing with your hair on fire

Script Frenzy challenges you to write a script (screen play, stage play, radio play...) of 100 pages during the 30 days of April. It is no coincidence that it starts on April Fool's Day: several thousand creative people spend a month playing a joke on themselves.

It's actually a great experience to finish a script, even if it is a somewhat fuzzy and shaky one. A huge number of would-be writers never ever get to the last page of anything, so doing that from time to time is a great confidence builder...like having the next belt color in your preferred martial art.

Not so many days to go before Screnzy 2011 starts. Unless the outside world brings surprises that keep me too busy to write, I hope to create a romantic comedy ("romcom") currently called Seven Ways. Coming soon to a theater-of-the-mind near you...

If I have learned anything from last time, it is to do a lot of preparing. I am writing lots of notes, organizing the order of scenes, trying to figure out how the story lines weave together...trying to understand what, if anything, I have in the way of a conclusion.

Fortunately, my characters are already starting to come to life. They whisper pithy little dialog snippets in my ear when I am supposed to be attending to other things, and then I have to hurry to scribble down the gist of what they said. Four voices have appeared so far: the two main characters, an opponent to one of them, and a member of the 'crew' of the other one. I am going from dreading the prospect of 100 blank pages to fill, to wondering how I will squeeze their interesting stories into a single script..

I started capturing my notes in Mindomo, a good mind mapping program. But the map has gotten a bit out of hand:

(I know it's too small to read. I just want to give you a hint of how this goes, not give away all the surprises in the script. Not yet, anyhow...)

So I have opened up a Goalscape as well. I keep the undigested notes in the mindmap, and will use the Goalscape to organize what happens in each scene in the script. This is the first pass on the Goalscape; I will post it again just before Script Frenzy starts. Once the script is done, I will post part of the script and the Goalscape behind it so we can compare and contrast what I planned and what really happened..

Even at this point in planning, when I don't even know the names of half the key characters, I am starting to feel a lot more confident. These planning tools reduce my chances of getting totally lost and discouraged. Once the framework is in place, I can let the characters loose and, with luck, mainly just record what they say and do to each other.

Can't hardly wait!

All dressed up with nothin' to say

In the FemNoire festival of women's plays, performed in Lowell this past weekend, I had fun directing Debbie Roy's "And So it Goes". Two people mind their own business on a park bench while their alter egos rise up and get pretty wild. It's a short play that I can see going into the festival repertory all across the country.

My two bench-sitting actors (Rob Nason and Maria Bela Soares, below) each had one (ONE) line. But they had the great challenge of playing to the audience with slight sideways glances of the eyes, sighs, and judicious use of props (oh, that banana).

The (sold-out) audiences loved them. Sometimes saying a lot less allows for saying a lot more. Just sayin'.

Perspective

I was at a company meeting today and heard about the amazing things planned for this year, and the truly amazing amounts of money that are on the table. It put the challenges and occasional victories of my work there in perspective. I mean, if the corporate enterprise is like a vast ship muscling through the high seas, my pals and I in documentation are hunched on a lower deck, crocheting the life jackets. Management knows the ship needs the life jackets in case of an emergency, but they really really hope never to have to use them. Sigh.

No such thing as bad publicity

I remind myself that any publicity is better than none whenever I have to write a press release. I sweat over these 500-word compositions as much as I do over a full-length script. Here is one I did for the next show at The Loading Dock Gallery, the best art gallery in Lowell, MA:

http://www.richardhowe.com/2011/03/01/loading-dock-gallery-exhibit-opening-tomorrow/

Richard Howe kindly reproduced it in (almost) its entirety on his site.


The gallery site is www.theloadingdockgallery.com.