I had the feeling that it would be easier to achieve the minimum of 100 pages for Script Frenzy than the 50.000 words for last year’s NaNoWriMo and till now that seems to be the case, even being my first time writing a script and not having written much on the second week.
It was a bit tough deciding what to do, the novelty of it and the many possibilities making me euphoric (a videogame? A comic? Oh, how about radio plays?) but I ended up choosing to script a story that I had on my mind for a while in graphic novel format.
Usually, before I draw the final comic or graphic novel pages I make thumbnails of them first with the dialogue for each panel and notes scribbled on the margins, so adding scripting before all that was a new approach to me.
I started piecing the outline together and developing the characters around a month before the event started. I was pretty excited to try something new and developing a (sort of) new story, especially after the fun I had last year with NaNo. Having a lot of free time then helped the want of doing something, of being productive and work on personal projects.
In the first couple of days, still struggling with the new writing format, I was a bit too focused on how the layout of the page would look in the end which made me slow (I was indecisive and second-guessing it a lot) but slowly I started to try to just keep the number of panels per page in check and not be so perfectionist about where exactly they would go. I realized it was more important for me to spare most of the effort for the flow of the story right now. Layout problems can be solved later (or so I hope), even if some tweaking is needed. Still, I have to constantly remind myself to write first and edit later.
Each panel description was either a pain or an enjoyment. I have a pretty strong visual for some of the panels so describing them exactly the way I want them makes my mind at ease. However when I don’t have a specific image my vague and/or short descriptions leave me feeling that my script is lacking. Then again, not all panels will be all action packed right? I don’t think it’s a bad thing, even if the feeling doesn’t quite leave me be.
On the first week the story I’ve been keeping only on my mind just ran with abandon, filling pages and pages of interactions and angles and expression, but then assignments sucked my time and energy and I felt inertia starting to creep. The second week was spent trying to keep up, finding a couple of minutes to write a page, seeing the goal of 100 pages by the 22nd to get a 100 euro donation to OLL start to circle the drain. I was afraid my descent from run to crawl would end on a full stop. And that’s why this weekend I’m metaphorically glued to my office chair unless the house is on fire.
Tomás is a Visual Arts student aiming for Concept Art. He draws, writes, plays games and turns junk into other stuff among other things. You can see some of his works at tomsp.tumblr.com.
Feliza Casano 