Screenwriting: Giving it a polish

A few weeks ago I finished writing my 4th feature film. It was an animated film, and it’s a genre of film that I haven’t written an animated film before and boy was it tough! You’d think that as it is aimed at a younger audience, the material would be easier to write, but I found it to be the complete opposite. And as a result the write took way longer than I thought it would. But I preserved, and the reason being is that I know I have a unique idea. When I told it to others, it got their interest and they asked more questions. With the level of interest, it was a challenge to see whether I could put my unique ideas into well-formed compelling characters and plot.

When it came to writing I put too much pressure on the opening ten minutes. The first ten minutes of any film is there to hook the audience, get them to start connecting with plot and character. With an animated film, I think there is added pressure to make sure you’ve got a younger audiences attention straight away, otherwise you’ve lost them.

I also put a lot of pressure on trying to make the screenplay funny, and at some point in the process I made a decision to focus on getting the story on the page, and adding the humour in later.

So what now? I met several people at the London Screenwriters Festival who wanted to read the screenplay once it was complete. Now it’s time to test the waters and see if there still want to. I’ve already got one yes, and I’m hoping for a few more yes’s to get balanced feedback.

One of the areas which I am weak in is scene descriptions. I immediately think that the reader knows exactly what is happening on the page, but without much description to go on. .

Reading the screenplay there were a couple of plot hole areas that I need to solve. Simple ones like characters knowing other characters names before they’d even met or been introduced. A few more lines of dialogue would solve this.

The screenplay came in at 86 pages, and the usual for an animated film is 90 pages, so the good news is I have a few pages to play around with and hopefully inject some more humour. I’ve already got a few good ideas for extra scenes.

One of my new years resolutions is to do something with screenwriting everyday; whether it be writing or reading about screenwriting itself, or listening to related podcasts. Some days I fall behind but I catch up. I’ve read a great deal of really useful articles from Screencraft on their blog section about different elements of screenwriting, so I’ll use some of their techniques they suggest in the polish.

So now to spring clean my screenplay!

Thoughtful presents: Detective Bob and Bev

Buying Christmas presents can be a tricky thing as you’d always like people to use your presents and not just give them to a charity shop on the first instance. For my parents Christmas present I thought I’d create a joint present that they would both use.

They both like watching drama series, and regularly recommend ones to watch, and so I thought of something that could assist with their TV watching.

Now the picture only shows the remains of the present as I didn’t get round to taking a picture of the rest of the contents of the gift. I simply bought them 5 of their favourite snacks and drinks that they like when watching TV. Sweet chilli crisps, ginger beer and chocolate covered raisins were a few things I got them.

Because many of the shows they watch are crime related I also got them notebooks addressed as case books so they could write down who they think had done it on the series they are watching.

It just goes to show that presents don’t need to break the bank in order to be liked. The snacks were eaten pretty quickly and the notebooks don’t take up too much room either.

Thoughtful presents: Binging boxsets

My friend Hayley also known as Rock turned 30 back in August. I didn’t get her anything straight away as I couldn’t figure out the perfect gift. But an off comment she said in a message a few weeks ago gave me an idea.

She gets through TV shows at a rapid rate. Rock got through 12 series of Greys Anatomy in an extremely fast time, I did wonder if she got any sleep! With this in mind when she said she’d run out of boxsets to watch and was thinking of rewatching Greys Anatomy again for the 3rd time, I knew I could do something.

Getting a Netflix subscription for a year could be costly, and sometimes too much choice is even tougher than not having enough choice. And for me it just didn't seem a personally thoughtful gift. So I thought to get her the first series of a several different TV shows of different genres. A taster of them, and if it turns out she likes any of the shows then she can go on and watch the rest of the series on her own accord.

I got the boxsets from the ever trusty Cex, and it cost me roughly £10. I remember a time when a boxset cost me £30 each!

Challenge within a challenge: To be tidy and have less; once and for all

Every year since around the age of 10 I have given myself the new years resolution of wanting to be tidy. And every year I fail. I always find something better to do than tidy up. I also have a problem in that I have a lot of stuff. I’m not a hoarder, but I just seem to have a lot of things. I’m not a shopaholic, yet I always have bags of things to be sorted.

I guess the main time I accumulated a big amount of material posessions was when I was at uni, and I have thrown out a large amount of these items since. But life goes on and you need new things as you acquire new skills or new tastes.

I’ve seen those challenges around of chucking out one thing per day and increasing it during a 30 day stint. What I want to do is have throwing out things as part of my daily routine. As bold as it sounds I want to throw out 2-5 things everyday. It may seem bold, but I’ve started doing an audit of exactly how many posessions I own. I haven’t finished that task as it’s a working progress, but with close to 150 DVDs and 45 items of gym wear, I know I can start getting rid of stuff easily.

It won’t be straight into the bin. The things I throw out will be either given to charity or recycled.

Following my journalism degree, I’ve always had a large amount of magazines and paper in general. Years ago I used to collect In Style magazine as I thought it made me sophisticated. And I thought piling up my collection, like Carrie Bradshaw did in Sex and the City with her Vogue magazines would be stylish. What it looked like was a mess and that I was a hoarder. And I decided to weigh my collection which was around 4-5 years old, and it weighed half my body weight!

Today I watched a great documentary on Netflix called Minimalism: A Documentary about Important Things and it was really interesting. And while I may not reach true minimalism, it’s made me realise that most of the stuff I have, I don’t need. I thought this for a while, but now is the time to truly attack the mass of possessions that I own.

I’ll keep a log of what I throw out. Throwing out rubbish such as packaging waste for recycling won’t count as it’s general waste. I think that the first few weeks it will be easy, a bit like with weight loss, the pounds go down a little faster in the beginning. It’s the weeks and months that follow that it slows down. But I hope if I build this little task into my daily routine, my mind-set may shift and hopefully I will own a lot less by the end of the year.

So let 2018 begin, with more tidying and hopefully less possessions!

Thoughtful presents: A pack of cards

I’ve used a pack of cards twice this year as a present for friends going through tough times. Earlier in the year my flatmate was going through a bad breakup and to distract her I gave her a pack of cards with bits of trivia written on each card. This was a short term fix to keep her busy and it did keep her from thinking about her ex, even if it was just for a little while.

The other day I asked my old flatmate how her studies were going, as she is studying to be a solicitor, and she said it wasn’t great. She felt like she had bitten off more than she could chew and that she was really struggling.

I obviously couldn’t do the course for her, but I thought what could I do to motivate her and to give her a bit of a boost. And then I thought of a pack of cards. I decided to write a motivational quote about career, tough times and determination on each card. As she has a lot of course work, watching a film about tough times would take too much time. A quote would be quick to read and hopefully give that boost she’d need to conquer the work she was doing.

I was at a pub the other night and a couple asked what I was doing, as I was busy writing the quotes. I explained and they asked if they could read a few, and picked them out like they were fortune cookies!

At the moment I’m not sure how it was received as I only posted it the day before yesterday, but fingers crossed it gets her back on track and helps her feel a little less stressed.

Thoughtful presents: Recovery care package

I’ve known my friend Alice a very long time and know how important her family are to her. A few weeks ago her sister went in for an operation and I decided to make a care package for her and Alice’s parents for when she got out.

Quite often we think about keeping people entertained while they are in hospital, but we forget that if there is recovery as well, that part maybe tedious at time.

The care package is full of little games and things to keep her sister and parents entertained. I didn’t realise at the time that Alice’s mum was also going into hospital shortly afterwards for a hip operation, so the care package had double the use!

Thoughtful presents: You learn something new everyday

So technically this isn’t a thoughtful present, but it is a thoughtful gesture that I have done a few times that I thought I would share.

This year I know a few people that have gone through tough times and naturally I want to be there for them in the best possible way. However the tough times they are going or went through I haven’t been through myself. Quite often this can happen and you worry about whether you’ll say the right thing or not. It reminds me of something my mum said about how when my older sister passed away, one of the worst things after her passing was seeing people she knew in the street, and that they crossed the road upon seeing my mum because they didn’t know what to say to her. Although it wasn’t a conscious decision at the time my mum told me that, I knew that I didn’t want to be one of the people that crossed the street. I wanted to be prepared.

And the best way I know to be prepared or informed about a subject area I don’t know is to read about it. Reading with a purpose. The last time I read with a purpose was the library summer reading schemes I did as a child. I looked through the certificates I got for those, and I read a lot in those summers! That was the last time I probably read to a deadline regularly.

Life doesn’t come with deadlines and it’s unexpected when people you know go through tough times. The first time I read with a purpose to help was for my ex a couple of years ago. He had wanted to get back to his old self after going through a very traumatic time. I had heard about CBT and thought it matched his mindset perfectly. So I rushed to Waterstones, bought CBT for Dummies and read it in 2 weeks and suggested he'd read it and give it a go. Reading a textbook back to back is not fun, but I thought if it would help him get back to his old self then it would be useful to read the book. But as I learnt at the age of 3, you can’t force people to like you, and in a similar guise, you can’t force people to read a book. As far as I know the book is still gathering dust on his bookshelf.

After this I changed my tact. I wouldn’t give people books that I had read, rather I’d simply impart the knowledge I learnt from the book. Particularly with mental health, as I have said in a previous post, one size doesn’t fit all. So what I do know is a similar method that one of my lecturers did at uni. I throw several ideas out, and hope one sticks.

I’ve done this a few times recently. The first with the Option B book by Sheryl Sandberg. A close friend of mine is going through unbelievable grief and I wanted to help straight away. The last person that passed away in my life was my 101 year old Grandma, so we knew her time was at an end with her passing. But grief of a younger person is completely different. The Option B book is amazing and I read it in a weekend. I folded the corner of so many pages as there were so many ideas that I thought would be great in supporting my friend. And a few that I have tried so far have worked, and they’ve helped me think of other ideas too.

Reinvent Me is another great book which I bought after going to a workshop on the book and read in a few days. I’ve got a friend who’s going through a troublesome time with her career and I think the visualising part of the book will assist in seeing things in a different way, and will ultimately give her a bit of a boost.

Lastly I read Fearne Cotton’s Happy book after a friend of mine recently got diagnosed with depression. I had read another book on depression years ago, so I had already read into the subject before. Although the Happy book isn’t completely about depression, it does give tips on ways of coping. So I’m going to write to my friend today with some ideas that might be useful tools for her.

You might think I put pressure on myself to read these books in a fast turnaround time, but when someone in your life is going through a tough time; you want the tough times to start getting better yesterday, and that’s why I read the books and absorb them as fast as I can. Life is busy so maybe reading a book for someone might not be feasible, but maybe sending a song or a quote or an article you read might help them through that tough time, and be a quicker way to show you are there for someone.