Friday, June 20, 2008

Writers' Boot Camp: Part Two

A while ago, I did a self-imposed Writers' Boot Camp: I went through the book The Three A.M. Epiphany in order, one exercise a day, skipping only the ones that didn't fit easily into a single day's work and taking breaks only under extenuating circumstances. Now, I'm pondering a different idea.

Since participating in the 48 Hr Film Project, I've become intrigued by script writing. The random prompt generator the Oblaks set up for practice pitches is still there. I thought I might make use of it to write a whole bunch of short scripts. A rough guideline is one minute per page, so if I stay within the 48 Hr guidelines, which I see no reason why not (brevity practice is always good for me), it would be aiming for 4-7 page scripts. I'll go easy on myself and say to max out at ten.

I'm not going to come out of this with a product I can sell. My hopes are two-fold:

A) Come up with some material that can be converted into short work / flash fiction, and/or that can be used within a story - a play within the work, for instance.

B) More importantly, improve as a writer by stretching and trying a completely new medium.

My only quandry here is how to set it up advantageously. In the past, my boot-camp was designed to leave me enough time per day to work on my continuous projects. I'm not sure that I can write 4+ pages of script and not have it take up the whole day. However, if I say per 3 days, then I lose the element of having an obvious goal for each day. I think I'm going to try a couple over the next few days and see how it goes; then I'll decide how to proceed. But I'm thinking a two-week "camp" is my final goal, and/or ten scripts minimum.

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