Finished

Just a week late but I am a winner!!
50,700 words in 28 days. too many spelling mistakes to count. Am taking a week or two off to clear my head then I'll start the spell checking and then I'll read it start to finish. then, in the new year, the rewrite starts. I've set myself the deadline of being finished completely by June 1st 2009

11000 words and counting

Have been nervous for a while about how my Nano would cope with being off for a few days. I deliberately squeezed in more than the minimum words on Saturday and Sunday last week to allow for the fact that yesterday was my wifes birthday so Tuesday night I had to bake a cake then last night I wanted to spend time with her rather than neglecting her, tapping away all on my lonesome up in the computer room. After a marathon session this evening, I feel inspired again.

On Saturday, when I started the novel, words werent coming very quickly at all but my prose was witty. Since then, I've realised I just didnt have the time to imbibe each scene with the humour and pathos that they deserved. I've really resigned myself now that this story is nothing more than a rough draft. and a very rough one at that. it serves no other purpose than to get the story out of my head and allow me to spot plot holes and bash things into shape.

There's still a few surprises of course. Characters do things you hadn't planned and a few new ideas have materialised out of the ether. I'm hoping to get a good blitz at it this weekend and, after churning out 3500 words with no problem this evening, it would be nice to see another 10k by Sunday night...

Update

Well that took a while but I've changed tact and now am writing it as a novel (for now at least) I'm going to try to do it start to finish in 30 days as part of NaNoWriMo for the duration of November. I'll update here more once things get going.

Book 1: Chapter 1

A lot of the script is still completely up in the air, but there's a few things I'm very definite on. I know that I want the story to be set in Glasgow and I know what songs I want playing at the very start and the very end hypothetically, should the movie ever be made. I've got a rough idea of the overall story arc and have ideas for about half of the individual scenes.

What remains to be seen is whether I manage to imbue the prose with the wit and warmth that I know it needs. I'm guilty of allowing myself to daydream wildly and imagine the huge success that it would be if the film is made and is a hit, but I still need to actually put pen to paper and write something, just to get things moving. (same goes for the blog)

The next step is to write down a list of every scene I have in mind and rearrange it into some semblance of order. From that, I can either start writing scenes in order, one at a time from start to finish, or else start on some of the key scenes hoping that if I get them right, the rest will just fall into place.

Once I have the whole script written, I intend to choose definite locations of scenes and make up a story board using photo backgrounds and hand drawn 'actors' laid on top. Might even do a read through at that point and string the whole movie into a slide show, Who knows?

There's a long way to go and, as always happens, real life is getting in the way too much right now. I want this enough to find the time though.

Next time, I'll give a rough overview of the story and hopefully have the story structure nailed down...