Procrastination

Just found this YouTube video about over at and it’s fucking brilliant. So brilliant I have to help spread it around.

Thanks, Nick.

Unk

August 27, 2008 | Filed Under Videos

19 Comments 

Great Character Profiles

These YouTube videos discuss creating a character profile for your characters…

Fast and loose but good information and worth listening to.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Really good stuff and should get you moving pretty fast…

Unk

August 26, 2008 | Filed Under Characters

12 Comments 

I am a Whatever

steve dragon sleevesTime to stir up a little shit.

All of a sudden everybody and their brother wants to write screenplays… LOL. Remember the post about those “questions” I get? Well, now they’re coming even faster than ever.

But I ain’t answering them.

Why?

Because most are a complete waste of everybody’s time except for those I have actually answered. So, if you got an answer from me recently — good for you. You had a question WORTH answering.

Instead, let me talk about two recent posts I’ve read from the following fellow screenwriter sites:

and more specifically this post:

and this post:

Now of course I can’t speak for David Anaxagoras and I don’t intend to try… But I found the post extremely interesting because I read David’s site all the time and even though I’ve read other things about him, this particular post hit me right upside the head.

Why?

Because even though it’s in reference to a , I found it extremely truthful. I have no idea how difficult this was for David to reveal but that’s PRECISELY the point. Being able to reveal these things about yourself is an outstanding first step to creating amazing characters in your story and screenplay — not that David needs improvement in that area… Of course I’m talking in generalities.

Now let me skip to Mystery Man’s post…

Let me just say that I haven’t seen but I don’t really give a shit about that… What I got from this post is that a lot of us aren’t digging deep enough. And no, I’m not talking about tossing out some word just to piss people off. That’s another thing I don’t give a shit about.

What I AM talking about is a fast and loose combination of these two posts… I don’t want to make this a meme… Rather, I want to URGE YOU to simply go through the exercise yourself. If you’d LIKE to post it for all to see — OUTSTANDING. If you simply want to write it for yourself — OUTSTANDING.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about digging DEEP with your characters. Sure, I’ve been talking about structure but you can’t OR shouldn’t let screenwriting structure bog you down and keep you from writing your screenplay. Nor should you let anything else get in your way.

Except your characters.

Chances are that you’ve already got some kind of concept that you’re at least considering turning into a screenplay.

Good. No, GREAT.

So what about your characters? Are you REALLY TRULY exposing your characters to us like you really need to be? If so — SeeYa.

If not, why not start off by writing about YOURSELF? That’s right. Dig deep. Write down all those big dark secrets and skeletons you’ve got hiding in your closet. Don’t just glaze over it — get SPECIFIC.

These are either FEARS that you continuously fail to face — just like your Protagonist(s) — or fears of others finding these things out about you. Either way, these are the same kinds of deep dark fears that your characters also hide and live with.

Like almost any problem that exists with us, we don’t know that it exists until we can admit to ourselves that it does in fact exist. It’s this admission of the following that’s gonna help knock down those character walls and :

I could go on but this list works fine for starters… By starters, I mean you start your paper by writing it out:

I AM A WHATEVER.

Go ahead… Admit it.

If you want to admit it to US so we can read it and give you an additional sense of , so be it. If you’ve got your own site, go ahead and jam it up there so we can read it. Leave a comment here with a link if you feel so inclined or if you don’t have a site that you’d like to bring into the fold but you still desire that additional sense of catharsis, tell it to us in the comments.

Once you write that down and truly admit it to yourself, feel free to tell yourself and or us — WHY you are that person. How did you get to be that way? Was it because of your parents? Your grandparents? Your siblings?

See where we’re going here?

The point of the exercise is to fuckin’ let LOOSE. Get it all out. Purge that shit right onto the page. It’s okay if you don’t want to share it with us or anyone. That’s not the point. The point is to get this shit out of your system to you can free yourself up to write and say things in your screenplay like “RETARD.”

Get it?

Fuck being politically correct unless you truly desire to be politically correct. I gotta tell ya — I’m sick of the shit myself and in this business, it seems to float right to the surface and it’s rather difficult to scrape off without offending someone.

But we’re talking about stories. We’re talking about screenplays. We’re talking about movies.

We’ve somehow got to shed all the muck and mire holding us back. How many times have you thought of something too sexy, pornographic, politically offensive, etc. to write in your screenplay only to hold back because you didn’t think it was gonna “fly?”

Fuck that.

You could easily fuckin’ toss everything I’ve written on this site right out the window as long as you glean ONE THING.

Character.

It’s your characters that make your story come alive. Don’t let ANY of the other shit hold you up from writing it down. And, if you’re having problems with characters and getting them right — getting them to do the things we want — NO NEED — to see them do and say — then start with yourself.

Allow yourself the to write it the way you really want and need to write it. Your characters will be better for it. Your story will be better for it. Your screenplay will be better for it.

By peeling back those exact same layers all these new visitors keep sending me emails about — on YOURSELF — you’re bringing yourself another step closer to peeling back those layers on your characters.

But it can be difficult to peel those layers back on your characters if you can’t do it on yourself hence, the exercise.

There is no right or wrong way to do this except to start it out with:

I AM A WHATEVER.

Then go back to your childhood — as far back as you can remember and write that shit down. Who did you hate? Who did you want to murder? Who did you want to fuck? Who did you want to rob? Whose house did you want to burn down? Who were you in love with? Who do you still think about?

Sure, we might have wanted all that shit but if you’re like most of us, you didn’t realize many of these wants, needs, and desires. Why? Because of yourself. Not because of me. Not because of your Mommy and Daddy. Not because of your brother or sister, aunt or uncle, friends or associates.

You made decisions that thwarted your very own wants, needs, and desires just like your characters thwart their own wants, needs, and desires.

Admit it.

I’ll start…

I AM AN

Being an anarchist in a world of rules is no easy feat. I circumvent the rules whenever I can. The difference between myself and others who don’t like the rules is that I am willing to reap what I sow. If that means spending some time in jail — I don’t give a shit. I’ll do it standing on my head and if they’re stupid enough to put me in jail, I’ll end up running the place.

Which is why I was the always the GO-TO guy in the Navy. Go-to guys in the Navy are those people that really know their job. Management knows they know their job better than anyone else and use this fact to keep them from getting promoted in favor of reaping the benefits of this person’s knowledge and hence, many in management get promoted and leave the go-to guy back for everyone else to keep taking advantage of.

I bend the rules as far as I can and I don’t give a shit what rule that is. If I break it without getting caught — so much the better.

I enjoy freedom of speech so when I engage in a conversation at my local coffee shop, I exercise that freedom and in return, I get the usual frowns from the politically correct coffee drinkers breathing my air.

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend being an anarchist to anyone… It doesn’t seem to work very well in this day and age and takes a lot of committment on my part and of course the willingness to back it up. At times, I have found that it’s usually way fucking easier to simply go with the flow but the only problem is that I can’t fucking sleep at night when I go with the flow if I don’t agree with the flow.

I most likely earned the badge of being an anarchist from good old Mom and Pop. Don’t get me wrong. I love ‘em because they are my Mom and Dad but in reality, they should never have had any children. They were both in prison and my brother and I lived with Grandma and Grandpa until they got out. Dad got out first. He just showed up at Grandma and Grandpa’s one day, looked at my brother and I — 5 and 4 respectively — and said, “Let’s go.”

I’d seen him before… In prison. My Grandma would take me on a Greyhound bus and we’d make the milk run to the prison up in the north end of the state. We’d hang out with him for a half-hour before making the milk run back home. He was a scary motherfucker but wow — he was handsome. He had the kind of good looks that movie stars had. He grew up rich and spoiled yet when he got out and took my brother and I with him, he ceased to be rich. He continued to be spoiled because his mother — my OTHER Grandmother — kept enabling him with things like businesses and money. Unfortunately, he was the kind of businessman that stuck all the money made that day into his pocket.

After a couple of businesses down the drain, Mommy got out of prison… Two ex-cons bringing up two little boys. LOL. Let’s just say that we learned how to break the rules early.

Everything in my life has been such a fucking chore. That’s not whining mind you… Just an observation.

Growing up, I migrated toward friends that had LEAVE IT TO BEAVER families… LOL. I loved being part of their little circle. It felt good albeit for a short time. Unfortunately, Dad could see that I was liking it way too much and would forbid me from being part of that circle any longer. Which means I read a lot of books. My Dad is also an avid reader so we do have that in common.

As an adult, I’ve either realized there are no real life LEAVE IT TO BEAVER families or that everyone is just fucked up but fucked up in a way that they’re okay with. Yeah, I’m judgmental about it. Why the hell not? I don’t tell them how fucked up their little circle is… I just observe. I watch. I see how everyone manipulates each other and I laugh to myself because it seems that nobody else can tell.

It’s my secret.

I’m always wondering how I can scam the system. I can’t help it. Scamming the system is fun. Unfortunately, it takes just as much work as not scamming the system but it’s definitely more fun even if you get caught. In fact, the idea of getting caught is a lot of the fun. It’s risky but I thrive on risk. Without risk, I might as well stick an ice pick in my brain.

I have a temper.

My Dad used to tell me to never hit a woman. Unfortunately, that was one of those things your father says to you that falls into the DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO category… LOL. But you know what? My Mom pushed all the right buttons. She wanted him to beat the shit out of her. Don’t worry… She managed to get in her licks when the old man came home drunk as a skunk. Many a time I came home to see one of them killing the other and pulling the one doing the killing — off.

Have I ever hit a woman? Nope. Have I thought of hitting a woman?

Hell yeah.

They’re divorced now but I can tell my Mom misses my Dad. She talks about him way too much and what’s absolutely fucking funny are her own tales of our very own LEAVE IT TO BEAVER family.

Mom, YOU FUCKING KILL ME.

On the other hand, Dad is one of those sociopaths next door. He’s worse than me. He doesn’t give a shit about anybody.

I do. I really like people. It’s hard for me to like individuals but I do like people overall. I like to watch them. I especially like to watch them interact with others while the entire time I’m mentally stalking the shit out of them. I even think about them later… I wonder what it would be like to drop myself into their lives with all my knowledge of them. I’ve actually done that a few times… You know… Watch someone for days, weeks, months… And then manipulate circumstances so that I end up meeting them and then STUN them with my knowledge.

Of them.

Not outright of course. That would be too fucking easy.

No… I use my near-photographic memory to manipulate our meetings. I talk about the things I know they want to talk about. I listen because nobody listens to them. Unfortunately, I get bored easily and reach for the characters in my screenplay(s) because they are much more fascinating to me than these “real” people.

Don’t get me wrong… I’ve met a few real people. I know they exist but how often do we really get to meet one? How often do we have relationships with them? Most people seem to be acting until we get to know them.

That’s when I get bored. Sure. I take all the blame for that.

I’m a loner. I prefer to be alone. Unfortunately, I get too many people wanting to visit me. I get too many people that want my advice. I get too many people that won’t do what they need to do to obtain the knowledge they want from me for free. By free, I mean without any work or research. I’d rather give my knowledge away to strangers than to someone I know because they just won’t do the fucking work.

They rely on me.

And I let them.

Quit lurking.

Unk

August 19, 2008 | Filed Under Characters

114 Comments 

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