Monday, 08 December 2003

I started in on revisions to the zeppelin story. They're going pretty well. I made some notes of the various things I wanted to do, ordering them from the simple changes (like making the description of the pretty girl specific, rather than just saying that she's pretty) to the more complex.

I've added almost 200 words and there's still a lot to do. I need a whole 'nother scene at the climax, for one thing; that's probably 200 words by itself. The rest of it can be done in little bits--a sentence or two here and there--but a lot of it will involve additions. It's now at 6500 and I can see it growing to close to 7000. That's really too long though, so there'll be a second pass where I'll need to trim it back to around its current length. I suspect there'll be cuts I can make, once I focus on the story purpose each section plays in the story as it turns out. That's why I'm saving the cuts for the end.

I hope to wrap up revisions by the weekend. That'll give me a chance to let it sit for a while before I need to do a final polish and submit it.

After that I'm thinking I'll turn to the screenplay for the contest. The rules have been posted, so I know the screenplay needs to be 100-125 pages and that the deadline is April 1st.

I think I've decided what story to do. I've got a story (the non-lethal story) that didn't quite work as a short story--it needed various things, one of which was to be a novella. I think it'll be about the right length for ing movie.

It's kind of a spy story set in a near-future US. What it needs is to more closely follow the conventions of the spy story, with the hero having no way to know who to trust and the other characters all have more complex agendas than he realizes. My short-story version tried to cut through all that and give him a quick solution. It didn't work.

That story has a lot of the setting and characters already figured out, and has lots of opportunity for good visuals that'd work well in a movie.

Race results are posted. I finished 221 overall (13th in my age group) with a time of 31:39.0 (so at a pace of 10:13 per mile). The winner finished in 16:46.4 at a 5:25 pace. So, if I'd run twice as fast, I'd have crushed him! (That's an improvement for me. In the race at Allerton, running twice as fast would have put me in the top ten, but I still wouldn't have won. I'm already closing the gap.)