The One Night Stand of Screenwriting

Hi Kids!
As this was one of my earliest posts as CSSC Writer Laureate -  I figure about 5 people read it, so here it is again with a promise of fresh material later this week!

First off I want to know how it happens to be Wednesday again? Time is truly a fascinating thing, isn’t it? Especially since in some real science way it doesn’t exist. Those of you not inclined to think esoteric thoughts about space time, or question whether or not stars have souls, are likely skipping ahead right now wondering how far I’m going to wander down this time tangent. You tuned in after all to get the answer to that big icky question left outstanding last week – How do you know your idea is a movie? Of course the short answer, and the cheap pop psych answer is, that if you truly see it and believe in it as a movie, then of course it is!

But that’s not the way it works in my head aka the Cocoverse, so leaving that with you as an answer is likely the coward’s way out. Not that I’m against that completely, sometimes the coward’s way is best, but it’s only Blog the 4th so I want to put off any overt displays of creative cowardice on my part for at least a few more weeks.
I’ll try and give you a bit more to work with. Then back to my time ruminations (that’s your word for the week).
First off, when the character chatter gets going in my head and I have to decide whether the story idea is best expressed as a novel, short story, song, poem, play, short film, feature, TV series, webisode, game, etc. It’s kinda like a Broadway audition. Except that instead of yelling “Singers who can Dance stage left and Dancers who can Sing stage right!” I yell “Doers who can Talk in the green room and Talkers who can Do wait out in the house.” Hmmm, that last is going to be pretty cryptic to those of you who know nothing about theatre. If that is you, your homework for the week is to see a play, doesn’t matter what it is, or even if it’s any good. If you want to want to write for the screen you have to know not only what that is, but what it is not.

All that to say that if my characters are exploring ideas and the expression of those ideas through language, I start to frame the story as a play. On stage the play of language takes the place of a sweeping landscape shot or a close up of a cherry blossom falling. So the chatty Cathy’s who want to wallow in hyperbole get the stage.
If the conflict plays out in a place, or places, I start thinking film or TV. If the place is big enough and complex and important enough to the play of the story that it becomes a character in and of itself then I’m thinking feature. Whenever big sky or weather or rocky shoreline or acres of cracked concrete are key to making the story work, it’s a feature. But also to be a feature it has to meet a couple other criteria. Is the plot all of a piece? There needs to be a certain unity of story to make me believe in it, in that I have to at least sense the shape of the beginning, middle and end. As well, it had better be wildly interesting to me if I’m going to invest myself for months and months in the story landscape. For me too, a feature has to have a complexity of plot and action that exceeds the budget of a TV show. Features have scope, even low budget ones.

TV for me is more about complexity of character. Characters that tangle and untangle and re-tangle themselves around each other. As well, TV ideas for me don’t have crisp endings, being so character driven, a good ending of one TV episode is just a good beginning for the next. Feature endings need to come down more, to a place of greater quiet and rest. Maybe because the up part has to be of such scope and intensity that the great exhale at the ending needs to be longer and deeper. And in terms of investment? For a writer a TV series is a marriage while a feature is a fling, so if you don’t want to be married, careful about heading down the TV development road.

Do I really think about all this stuff before I start writing? Yah, sorta. Sometimes I’ll sketch out a few scenes and just ask myself what it feels like. If I produce an inciting incident and a lot of internal dialogue, I start thinking short story, if a new world or a series of events jumps in, I’ll start thinking novel.

Short films come to me quickly, within a space of hours I have a beginning, middle and end sorted out. Writing one is like planning a big party. I know the time commitment won’t be that great but it still needs to be one hell of a good time, so I try to make sure that I give it a tight container to fit in. I like my shorts to have a unity of time, place and/or action. I find setting limits or story parameters keeps it from spinning out of control. Whether it is limiting character number or location or theme, I limit something about the structure in order to stay focused. In the Cocoverse the short film is the one night stand of screenwriting, so I try and have fun and not take it too seriously.

Honestly though, here we are at the end and in truth, back at the beginning because I’m going to leave you with the thought that your story idea is a play, song, painting, graphic novel, short script, feature film, TV series – indeed all of the above. Your idea is all of these things and none of them until you choose. I think the only way you can choose is to actually have some knowledge about the different storytelling techniques that come into play with each format. That means read. Read short scripts, plays, novels, features, teleplays, novels and cereal boxes, and oh, yah, blogs. If you are a screenwriter writer you read every day. Sorry, but it is a non-negotiable. Watching short films on the web, your favorite TV show or a movie marathon, is negotiable. Reading is not. Best of all is to get a hold of the screenplay and a DVD of the film, read, watch, repeat, read, watch, repeat.

Time for me to go do all that right now. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, always has a slot in my space-time continuum.
-Carolynne

Someday I'll Stop Writing These Dreadful Songs

The Canadian Tenors Moose Wearing My Writing Hat

But evidently that day isn't today.

Sorry my friends it seems to be an itch that I have to scratch. I will grow out of it. Really I will. It's just some weird delayed adolescence thing where I must write out my feelings. Even if I was feeling them twenty years ago. Please hang in here with me, we will get through this and I will start writing like an adult again sometime soon.

Someday by Carolynne Ciceri

Because I knew your favourite kind of chocolate
Because I knew the right thing to say
Because I knew when to hold you tight
Because I knew when to walk away

You love me more than you know
You love me more than you can say
This lifetime, or maybe the next, we’ll be together, someday

Everyone is happy to give an opinion
Everyone is happy to have their say
Everyone can be wrong you know
Everyone doesn’t get to choose our way

You love me more than you know
You love me more than you can say
This lifetime, or maybe the next, we’ll be together, someday

For now it is our secret
For now on different roads we walk
For now all we can do together
Is steal a few moments of sweet talk

And what if it’s all untrue
What if it’s all in my head
That doesn’t make it any less real
It just makes it my beautiful dream instead



Jeepers. Okay. That whole different roads, sweet talk thing - yikes. Maybe a jealous fellow writer put a curse on me? Could happen. Fine. I will keep working on it. Because that's what we writers do. We re-write.

And Then We Ate Cake

Best Staff Meeting ever today.

7 of us gave 3 minute presentations on what we (and our unit) do. I put up a picture of the Star Trek bridge crew and got to label Lt. Uhura with my name. It worked out that there was a Trek character analogous to each team member and their job.  So much fun.

We were only permitted one slide á la 3MinuteThesis competition format, but I missed the memo saying we were permitted to use notes on paper so instead I rehearsed my spiel with jazz hands interpretive dance moves to help jog my memory. It worked except that for the big finale I ran out of thumbs. I guess you had to be there.

And the Student Academic Services team pointed out that each clerk on their team has 2000 students. Can you imagine if even 1% of them decided to email a question on the same day? Yikes!

Then the PDFO (Postdoctoral Fellows Office) presenter was especially cute a) because he ran out of time and gave JFK’s most words in a minute record a run for the money and b) he grew a Movember ‘stash and struggled the whole time to keep from playing with it – but he managed to arrest the hand moving toward the ‘stash. Bravo!

Doc Exams was a hoot in a dark and lovely way as they bordered their slide with images of Prozac pills and read out an astonishing record of transactions accomplished during one month - 75 Doctoral Examinations in the month of July! Can you imagine? 75 stressed out PhD students plus supervisors plus external examiners? Jeepers. Well done Ladies!

One of the coolest things was that some of the units let the newbies give the presentations so The Girl With Two Hats and the longest job title in the office won the Best Use of Puns award as she illuminated all present about her quest to eradicate Curriculamaphobia from across our 250 degree programs. While the Thesis duo pointed out that they were undoubtedly the smartest of us all as they read, and reread, about 1000 Master’s and Doctoral Theses a year. Ouch.

Then my favourite of all  - an Awards Veteran who didn’t need a slide but only a wicked sense of humour to share with us the trials and triumphs of a short-handed team who fought through a labyrinthine mountain range of process and paper to emerge on the far side of their silly season with their sense of humour intact, an appreciation for each other and millions and millions of dollars awarded to thousands of graduate students who depend upon it to pursue their dreams of making the world a better place for all of us.

Yes, one an all of us ordinary heroes for sure, but still it was nice to be reminded of how smart and creative and funny and caring this strange and motely group of folk who spend the labour of their days trying to make the world a better place for UBC graduate students because UBC graduate students make the world a better place for all of us.

And

Then one of us declaimed Scottish poetry while the Dean played the bagpipes

And then we ate cake

Now that was an awesome day at the office.

A Rather Distressing Compulsion

I think I have a virus. Or a brain fever. How about a virus that is causing a brain fever? I can’t stop writing songs. It is becoming a rather distressing compulsion. Like that great musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where everyone sang their feelings because they were compelled by a demon of song. Urkk. I can’t stop with the song ideas. Maybe they are actually poems but I don’t think so cause I just spent the last hour working out the chord progression for Dragon Young Dragon, a blues lament in E major. Jeepers.

I’d share many more feelings on the subject but I want to go work on another song idea – this one inspired by the line “Every day is an ordinary day, until suddenly it isn’t.”  So I guess is going to be song about love at first sight since after the lament of Dragon Young Dragon I am determined to write something peppy. Yes you heard me, peppy.

Dystopian Malaise - a Bookclub Rap

Dystopian Malaise
by Carolynne “CoCo” Ciceri and Aynsley “Zombie Mom” Friesen

Aynsley "Zombie Mom" Friesen

You ask if I can talk and I answer okay
But I really have no interest in what you have to say
I put smile number 5 up onto my face
And I let my brain start wandering all over the place

I’m suffering from Dystopian Malaise today
How can I tell? ‘Cause I hear myself say
Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool. Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.

There’s so much post-apocalyptic drama in the lives of my friends
It’s a tragic soapy opera that has no end
I’m so sick to death of hearing all about it
So crazy bored that I could just spit-it-it

I’m suffering from Dystopian Malaise today
How can I tell? ‘Cause I hear myself say
Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool. Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.

I nod, I smile but if you could  look in my head
I’d really be watching Robert DeNiro movies instead
I’m thinking of puppies and bunnies and cool mountain streams
Sorry but your sad sack reality just gives me bad dreams

I’m suffering from Dystopian Malaise today
How can I tell? ‘Cause I hear myself say
Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool. Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.

When you talk at me I say
Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool. Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.
When you talk I say
Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool. Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.
I say
Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool. Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.Uh huh? Oh yeah? Cool.

A Mutated Chromosome 17

Okay 3:09 a.m. I am really not happy to see you again. Seeing your pale green LED face – a bit blurry from my lack of eyeglasses and a bit wobbly due to the large green plastic water glass strategically positioned to mute your radiant…ah, radiance -- makes me realize that in the past 15 years or so, you and I have spent some part of this Lost Hour together. Sometimes only a few moments, sometimes the whole damn thing and then some, but at least 2 out of 3 nights we exchange our nocturnal greetings. I for the most part groan, sigh and from time to time launch a curse word in your direction. You return to me your intense faintly malevolent green stare. 

While I recognize that our early morning conversation is hardwired into my genes – insert some scientific jibber jabber here about melatonin cycles and genetically linked paucity of the enzyme required to break it down, or else too much of the enzyme I can never remember which it is. No matter, I have accepted you as part of what my Dad used to call “your specialness” in which context “special” takes the same meaning as the word as “funny” does to the word “peculiar”.  That does not mean, however, that I welcome you or have to be polite to you whenever you decide to show up.

Tragically for me, a wage-slave of the most ordinary 9-5 kind, you often come tip-toeing along with my Muse in tow.  He seems to frackin’ love you. A night person he definitely is and I’ve got no problem with that except for when the alarm sounds at 6:45 a.m.

This morning’s thoughts decided to take a few laps of the brain chasing down the idea of winning the Giller Prize. For those of you not in the know of Canada’s literary stuff, the Giller Prize is a big deal north of the 49^th parallel. It is a yearly $50,000 prize given to Canada’s best English novel or collection of short stories and comes with lots of press and a huge bump in book sales. I’d seen a news clip a few days ago about the award and this year’s winner (Esi Edugyan Half-Blood Blues) and her comments were humble and heart felt. I started thinking about what winning a big splashy prize like that would mean to a writer, not in terms of their career so much but a few layers deeper then that. I started wondering what it would mean to the writing.

So my Muse sat down on the end of the bed and started playing one of his favourite games with me – “What if that were you?”.

And so we began. It started with me imagining what I would say if I won such a thing. What would I talk about in an acceptance speech.  Would I spend a lot of time thanking all the people who ever helped me and then all of those who got in my way? Because truthfully they’d have had just as big a hand in any literary success as those who tried to help. Or would I say something real. Something about writing. Then a transformation of some kind took place. Even though I was still writing my Giller acceptance speech in my head, all of a sudden I was talking about why I write. Why I have to write. It surely isn’t to win prizes I thought, for I don’t think it is possible to actually do the work at all with that goal fixed in one’s head.

It may seem odd to many but it was the first time in my life I spent a big chunk of time thinking deeply about why I write.  Diving underneath all the surface reasons like, “I’m good at it.” Or “So I can fully express myself” or “I get to be the hero of every story” or even the big reason that though it appears on the surface is a True Iceberg of Thought – “Because I get to play God.” – so that surface thought is also one that goes all the way down to the bottom.

In the process of trying to explain why I write to my Muse I came to understand that I write because I have to write.  For better or worse, prizes or no, twenty years of writing has created a Writer, which is as you may or may not know is only kind of a half- human, half mythical sort of construct. A creature that splits her time pretty equally between the Here-and-Now(HAN) and the Land-of-What-If and –Maybe (LOWIM) and no matter how fantastic HAN might be at any point in time, she is always pining for the forests and valleys and oceans and planets of three moons that lie in her truest home LOWIM.

So there it is. I write because it is now as much a part of my genome as the weirdness on chromosome 17 that inverts my melatonin cycle. It’s a curious sort of group of thoughts that make me as sad as joyful. But analysis of that emotional response will have to wait for another day’s Lost Hour. For tonight my Muse has snuggled down in the blankets next to me and closed his eyes, so now I will too.

Welcome to Cocomania

Things that I am thinking.

Wondering why my blog fan base is as big in Russia and Brazil as it is in the USA? Georgia and Latvia too seem to have developed a recurrent interest in the Cocoverse. Guess I’ll have to plan stops there on my book tour.

Today I shamelessly flattered a male co-worker into changing the colour printer cartridge for me so that I wouldn’t risk my guitar finger nails.

In the last twenty-four hours I’ve written two new songs and outlined a new story property charting out it’s dramatic progression from short film script to web series to one act play, full length play and feature script. It’s called Brandon Fury and I seem to think it is immensely funny in that I snort with laughter every time I think about it for more then 30 seconds. But I’ve worked it over a few time and I think it is genuinely funny and not just the serotonin talking.

So I guess it’s a comedy.

If not for the day job I’d have written at least two more songs and finished three other scripts in this time period. Got a big stack done at the office too. So either somebody needs to throttle back on the caffeine or the Bipolar type 2 pendulum is finally swinging back in the happy direction.  If so - no worries my lovelies - in my personal expression of the disorder the manic phase is notable only by a clean apartment, excessive chattiness and a new draft of my proposal to achieve total world literary domination. Yah, but also don’t believe anything I promise for the next little while K? The blizzard of personal and professional improvements that I have planned for the next six weeks are all well intentioned but a girl has to remember that a few baby steps and a few pages written everyday will get a girl over the rainbow more surely then a mad dash ending in a sprained ankle and tears.

Spending some time with Mom too working on “Dummy Hand” our theatrical magnum opus about a septuagenarian bridge club. Okay thats’ a word one is not called upon to spell very often. So many stories to write so little time.

Twitchie the House Elf did finally cough up the guitar capo so in addition don’t be surprised if you pass by my door and hear the sound of my voice singing “Hallelujah”. That would be the Canadian Tenors arrangement of the Leonard Cohen tune of course, but transposed by capo magic to a better spot in my vocal range.

I love weekends.

BTW I thought you all might like to meet one of the most often referred to magic talismans in the Cocoverse - the Rock of Truth. Which, just as an aside, is still jammed in the printer. I guess I'd better go find the tweezers.