now to begin

So for my first post I think I’ll delve into something that I care a great deal about.  It helps that it’s a bit of shameless plug and some publicity for some friends.

Since roughly 2007/2008 I have been writing screenplays...

Actually, I should rephrase that: since roughly 2007/2008 I have been writing GOOD screenplays.  I’m not saying that they’re ready to be sold and turned into a movie, but when I compare them to the crap I was writing before then, I cringe.  You know that scene from Ace Ventura where he burns his clothes and cries in the shower after he realizes Einhorn was actually a man?  That’s me pretty much when I look back at them now.  They’re not terrible in terms of story, but damn was I incapable of writing non-clunky action and dialog.  I sucked.

But I would get better.

At the time I was frequenting the now defunct TrekWeb and saw a post about writing for a Spider-Man “virtual series”.  There were a few things in this that I liked a lot: Spider-Man?  Favorite superhero!  Writing?  Well, I’m writing this about that time, so… yeah.  A chance to work with others on a story? Ah!  This was the main thing.  This is what really grabbed me.

Now, what is a “Virtual Series” you may be asking.  There’s two ways to explain it. The basic: Fan-Fiction.  The complex: Scripted fiction from existing properties written as though it were an actual television show with attention paid to story arcs and high quality writing.  Yeah, this sounds better doesn’t it?  Technically, both are true and accurate, but one elicits a far less of a violent reaction (i.e. images of 50 Shades of Gray) than the other.

I had dabbled in fan-fiction (fanfiction.net to be precise, and no, I will not tell you what I wrote was), so this seemed like a lot of fun.  I was introduced to a community of screenwriters scriptwriters who were passionate about putting out a high quality and highly entertaining product.  This was Monster Zero Productions, or MZP.  I loved it there.  No one was critical to the point of being rude, everyone was willing to help, and there was so much to be read that you could find hours to fill your time.

I wrote on Spider-Man: Gifts and Curses, developing the overall story with the showrunner Jay for a long time.  We even had 4-5 seasons laid out.  Unfortunately, that never came to full fruition but the series is still available to read.  It was pretty good.  It held close to the mythos of Spider-Man but also took some liberties to make it fresh and new. 

I took a shot at my own original series and I hope to one day reinvent it as either a proper series or novel.  Maybe something else.  I don’t know.  It’s all a matter of finding the time and will to do it.  Add to that that there was very heavy themes that were planned in the story, it’s a project that deserves to be executed right.

Currently I am working on what started essentially as an exercise in expanding existing established stories.  And I don’t mean that as writing a sequel or writing something that was going on at Site B while the dinos ate Newman.  What I wanted to was take what we know has happened in a story and reboot it without rebooting it.  I didn’t want to change the character’s necessarily, or even the story.  I wanted to see what happened if you gave it a chance to really breathe and flex its muscles.  I wanted to trim the fat to make it leaner and tighter.  I sent it to the gym and told it to lose twenty pound of fat but put it right back on in muscle.

I honestly don’t know if it worked.  I believe it did, or with a slight touch up here and there, could still.

What was it?

Star Wars.

I re-did A New Hope as a four episode mini-series.  I cut characters (Biggs is worthless if you cut out the Anchorhead scene), expanded some (Wedge Antilles is a character more deserving of love and story), establish and live in an existing universe with a background that is more than vague references, etc.  I was able to do all that and received some fair (some maybe unfair) criticism and was happy with the product I put out.

Currently I’m working on The Empire Strikes Back.  It’s progressing slower now that some things have changed here at work.  Again, though, I’m happy with the product that I’m producing.  Of note is one scene at the very beginning that I find absolutely hilarious in terms of what is actually going on it at the moment and how it compares to what we know of as Star Wars.

Anyway, my ultimate thought process was this:  There are a lot of good writers out there, good ideas, great reading (a lot over shadowed by terrible drivel) that we can find if we just look for it.  I recommend anyone take a look at the site and what’s available.  You may be surprised.