A Full Plate

How much is too much?

That has been something that has plagued me for most of my adult life--just ask my wife. I like to dabble in several things at once which can make other things suffer. I used to bounce from project to project for my screenplays. Recently, I realized I should focus on one screenplay and get it finished.

Bouncing around the blogosphere though I have heard other screenwriters who do the same as far as working a bit on each of their projects. The temptation is there especially when a grand idea for one of the stories pops in my head at the most inopportune time (when isn't it?)

This last stretch here was the longest gap between my blog entries because I have been busy at work, working on an expanded version of a short I just wrote for MoviePoet (which I'll discuss more when the judging period is over in August.) and some stuff at home (relatives, pets etc)

My brain has been working on all these things so this blog suffered for a week or so because of it. And frankly I haven't had much to discuss since I have been so involved with this other projects. If it seems I have drifted too far be aware I will return but may not always been submitting posts here till I get back into that groove again.

I have seen other bloggers who have had life happen to them lately who too have gone from regular posters to becoming more sporatic.

Hope to have more soon--

SS

Two Glorious Words

As I mentioned a few days ago I was trying to participate in the MoviePoet monthly short script contest for May.

A quick aside to Chris Messineo. Thanx for the reply comment and I look forward to the changes coming to Movie Poet in July. Again a great community of writers.

So...5 Pages. Not a problem. Right? Easy as riding a bike.

Hell yeah, riding a bike up Mount Everest. Give me a break though, K. I am used to at least 100 pages to tell a story. So, I listened to my Snow Patrol (damn they are the best) among other stuff and got 4 pages which seemed to going great. But I knew I had only a page to wrap it up and I still had a few ideas left to add. So I took what I had and eliminated a simple character which chopped of a good page, however it caused more issues because some of what I took out still had to shown which ended up coming out as on the nose dialogue and forced exposition.

So, I went back to square one. I edited the character back in and changed it up some. I also took some scenes and split them up so that some info came earlier so it didn't have to shown in more detail later.

The story is a cops and robbers idea with an interesting twist and something that had been thought up probably over 10 years ago but never got to the forefront of ideas I was working on.
The idea formulated over a simple idea of thinking that saving a child when they are young who ends up being something bad later in life. It changed a little and one of my sisters thought it sounded like an idea Stephen King might use.

After feverishly finishing the rewrite I got done with everything I wanted but had one last scene left and less than a 1/5 page left to stay within 5 pages. This was after cleaning the script up 2 more times. It was basically 10 pm on May 31st with 2 hours to add the one scene, then edit the script one more time down to the minimum convert it to a PDF and then upload it to MoviePoet.

That's where the decision came. I could edit down and maybe it would be weaker but it'd get on the site. So, I made the decision to continue with what I had and forgo posting to MoviePoet.

So, I'm gonna make it looks as pretty as it should and then I might slap it on Simply Scripts. Man, I got short script bug now.

A very bittersweet decision cause I was so looking forward to getting it on the site. In 4 days none the less. But, alas, I put what I wanted and ended with about 6 1/4 pages.

But then came the two glorious words I have ever known:

FADE OUT.