Saturday, 10 January 2004

There. I've finished the last major rewrite of the zeppelin story. I added about 1700 new words (but took out almost as many, so it only grew by a couple of pages).

It's not done. I haven't even read the new text, so I need to do a pass over that and clean up clumsy bits. Then I need to read the whole thing and see if I can't delete, oh, maybe a thousand words. It would be substantially improved by just being shorter. Then I need to go through and find all the descriptive bits and punch them up a bit--make them more vivid. And I need to find all the bits that ought to have vivid description but don't have any, and add a bit of description.

I also need to go over my notes from the critique session and see if there are any important improvements that didn't get into this rewrite.

But, really, a lot of that is pretty mechanical. I think I'm over the last creative hurdle. I expect to do all that tomorrow and, with a bit of luck, have a ms to submit on Monday.

Yay for me.

Then it will be time (past time really) to do serious work on a screenplay.

A couple weeks ago, various people were posting the link to the trailer for "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," because, you know, it has a zeppelin. The thing is, it looked great! Not only does it have a zeppelin, it also has giant robots, ornithopters, Gwyneth Paltrow as a young reporter and Angelina Jolie as an eye-patch-wearing military operative of some kind.

As soon as I saw it, I saw all the flaws in my zeppelin story. I also realized that, before I wrote my screenplay, I should write a trailer for it. Only after I have (script for) a totally cool trailer will I try to write an actual screenplay. Any screenplay I can't write a smashing trailer for, won't be the right screenplay.

This evening Jackie and I watched the commentary for the Buffy episode "Fool for Love." One of my favorite episodes and really good commentary. I find it helps me as a writer to hear other writers talk about how they structure a story, what purpose each scene serves, etc.

Jackie and I got to the Fitness Center this morning, our first visit in a week. I ran on the treadmill for a bit over a mile, but there wasn't time to run further. I'm half-heartedly planning to go again tomorrow and run. (I won't lift, so there'll be plenty of time.)