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

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.

Fandom in the Cocoverse

Synchronicity. I was going to erase that word and start these musing anew and then realized that I didn’t want to. After all I did experience it about an hour ago while driving in the car and listening to a radio station to which I rarely listen. Cory Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” was playing and I cranked it up and listened with an intensity never before witnessed between myself and that particular pop classic. All to say that my girl Georgia Murray is taking the stage in Toronto in mere moments real-time to cover the song for tonight’s CBC show Cover Me Canada. Now perhaps Mr. Hart’s song still receives daily air play here in Vancouver - who am I to know such things - but somehow doubt it, good tune that it is notwithstanding.

I don’t know about the specific space-time continuum that you inhabit, but here in the Cocoverse music seems to carry with it a greater preponderance of synchronous moments than any other single media or entity. Perhaps because it is so intermeshed with our processes of emotion and memory at a neurological level. Or perhaps that is just part of it’s magic.

I’m a fairly recent addition to Ms. Murray’s bandwagon, having had the extreme pleasure of seeing and hearing her perform live here in Vancouver not more than six weeks ago. She was awesome live and the CBC production team has yet to capture the full range of that awesomeness on their show, in my humble lay person’s opinion.

It is no small challenge to do sound for a live broadcast for not only a disparate group of bands but also having only 90 seconds to get the mix right. I don’t envy them their task but perhaps in future, not doing a 100% live performance with such (relatively) inexperienced bands would significantly elevate the quality of the sound on the show. I’m afraid that the general public is so used to polished perfection that many can’t pick out the moments that are gems from the nerves and miscues. In truth all eight bands really have something great and raw going on and a couple of the bands have superb chops.

I offer as evidence the YouTube videos of Ms. Murray - last week’s official version from the show - which was good - and the acoustic version she and the band laid down only a few hours later in their hotel room which was all kinds of amazing. Without strangers on the sound mixing board and the over-caffeinated lighting technician strobing crazily, in the acoustic version of Alanis Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know” Ms. Murray and crew kicked that song’s ass from Tofino to Cape Spear and back .

As a writer and neophyte guitar player I’m avidly participating in Georgia’s journey to musical stardom for a number of reasons. One is that I get a huge buzz from “discovering” talent on the way up and watching them ride the wave. Sometimes, as we have all borne witness, the talent and genius and celebrity ends up with the artist smashed on the rocks. But sometimes, and in this case I’m willing to bet on it, the fifteen year overnight sensation can enjoy each and every moment in the spotlight and ride out the dry spots sure to come with the same joy in the music that has sustained them thus far.

For me too part of the attraction is that I am an artist that performs best in my own milieu when I find others to inspire me. And I’m not taking about famous dead geniuses or celebrities whom I may admire but have never met.

I seek out the everyday artists in my everyday little life. It is shocking how many you can find if you only look -- the accounting clerk who is genius with the knitting needles; the sister who can take a pot of dirt and a few scraggly plants and compose a living tone poem; the roommate who taught me to brew the perfect cup of coffee; the graphic designer become award winning children’s book author; the colleague entering her first ballroom dance competition; the executive assistant become novelist and yoga teacher; the 10 year old boy who would not stay in the green room during the opera performance become a tenor known round the world; the guitar teacher become film composer; the Dean become choir master; the under 30 actor become film exec -- and today Georgia Murray, reluctant reality TV contestant. Tonight she sings for you and she sings for herself, but in the Cocoverse, most of all, she sings for me

September Flash Blog

Seriously, this is a Flash Blog because who in September has time to write anything longer? For someone who has no children and is not currently registered in any classes back to school has been inexplicably fraught this year. Maybe because I work at a school. Oh and I do have my guitar lessons, that makes me a student of something I suppose. So all I've got for you today is one of the essential questions of the Cocoverse, which from time to time we are all called upon to ponder. How is it that I have two working opposable thumbs - opposable is your word for the week which the spell checker on this blog site doesn't like very much and yet it is spelled correctly. Any way, back to the question of the day - How is it that I have two opposable thumbs and a good blodge of higher education on my resume and yet can't figure out how to operate the new fangled lid on the take-out coffee cup? Serves me right for not remembering my travel mug I guess.
Here's hoping you all have a more successful morning than I in terms of imbibing your wake-the-hell-up beverage of choice.