Owner: The Screenwriters League URL:http://www.ScreenwritersLeague.com Join Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 10:27:57 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: The Screenwriters League is a collective of NYC-based writers sharing their experiences as they build their careers from the ground up, and hoping to impart any knowledge they gain along the way. Site statistics:Click here
Need A Lifeline 2008-05-06 18:20:00 Today was... today I capsized. Throw me a lifeline.Like most screenwriters, or people aspiring to be screenwriters, I have a day job, which I can tolerate most of the time. As far as day jobs go, it's really not that bad. But today, I felt like I was drowning. Today was one of those days where I realize just how much time I spend in a place that I don't want to be. For the most part, I manage to allow myself to care about work only when I'm actually in the office. And I care to the point where I know what I have to do and I do it, but I can just as easily take a breath, step out of the office, and be in my own place again. But today, after various office crap happened, I was hit in the face by the notion that I need something more. Soon.I don't mind working, but I want to work for me, to m Read more:Lifeline
The Writing Week part 18 2008-05-05 13:54:00 This week was mostly about re-writes, and gearing up for the next project I’m jumping into (what that is, I still don’t know for sure). Like a giddy schoolboy bringing home a new Batman comic book (pretty much what I am), I sat down with my pages and read through them last Wednesday, which I took off from work, in part so I could have time to read the pages in one sitting.Gotta say, I was surprised. The “problem” scenes really weren’t. They read alright to me, and actually wound up being less of a concern than something else. Coming in at 90 pages with a fair bit of quick dialogue, this script is a breeze to read. (Actually, for some reason, I had a target length of 88 pages, which is exactly where I ended the first draft—random, huh?) My biggest concern wound up being the paci
Thinking Vs. Typing 2008-05-04 13:12:00 I deal every day with a particularly unhealthy but alternately helpful affliction. A curse, possibly, passed to me through genetics, or perhaps stemming from some strain of OCD. In short, if I go a day without putting some time into my writing I'm struck with such an extreme feeling of guilt that I just can't enjoy anything else I may be doing.On one hand, this makes it hard for me to take the occasional day off, but on the other it helps keep me productive as a writer. It's a necessary evil, I guess. I wish I could take a day every now and then just to relax without falling into a miniature and short-lived bout of self-loathing, but I'm afraid if I wasn't like this I would become much more lax in regards to my writing.The last week has been a very productive one for me. From Friday the 25 Read more:Typing
With Reservations 2008-05-01 13:02:00 My first internship with a major player in the film industry was at the now defunct New Line Cinema. I spent a great two semesters there, learning a lot (and watching a ton of films during the Tribeca Film Festival). Recently, I opened an issue of Creative Screenwriting and saw, under the Sundance coverage, that one of the very first scripts I wrote coverage on, FROZEN RIVER, premiered at the festival this year. I had passed on the script, “with reservations.” I liked it, but just didn’t see the potential for huge earnings and did not recognize it as different enough from other independents to stand out on the marquee, shelf, or online queues.Seeing the (brief) mention and praise that the film got started me thinking. This was something I had hesitatingly passed on, yet it got made. Read more:Reservations
Fare thee well, LoKor 2008-04-30 14:51:00 As you can tell from both what we've said and the aesthetic and content-based changes we've made to the site recently, The League is undergoing a period of great change. Most of that change is good, for the best. However, some of it was also unwanted and sad, albeit predictable. LoKor, after being there in the beginning and helping to create The League, has left the group. While I won't go into much detail on why here, as I'm sure if he wants to, he will do so, I will say that he has gone on to pursue something else, career-wise, which he is much more invested in at the moment. Though those of us still in the League do not want to give up trying to write professionally, we understand that one's heart must be in it 100% to do that. LoKor's just wasn't anymore, and we, as his friends and fel
What the Hell?!? 2008-04-29 22:22:00 A little back story: not only do I write screenplays, but I also dabble in stage plays every now and then. My leaning is, on the whole, toward the screen. But every now and then I have an idea for the theater, and write that. A while ago, I submitted to a play development festival, which would have brought me cross country to spend a week in a cabin working on a play I wrote. My kind of thing.Today, I found out I didn't get in. That's not a huge disappointment. We in the League all know that rejection and thick skins are essential to this business. What got me, though, was the reason for the rejection. Essentially, I received a mass email indicating that the company, which shall remain nameless, received more submissions than expected (OK, that happen). However, the staff was unable to rea
The Writing Week part 17 2008-04-28 12:01:00 So, I “finished” the first draft of Screenplay X today. (Don’t worry, my children, soon enough I’ll reveal the title and a brief synopsis to you.) I say “finished,” because I know that there are a handful of scenes—really, the progression in the relationship between two characters—that I need to fix before I even think of the draft as being done. Perhaps the scenes aren’t as bad as I think they are, but my gut is telling me that they don’t build enough. Rather than being rungs on a ladder that keep going up and up, they’re sort of a Stairmaster right now; they hit the high note early on and then don’t go past that again. I need to let them build more. Something struck me as I walked to work today: I can’t write something that is not as fun as the project before it
Pollen: A Vision Lover's Enemy 2008-04-27 21:35:00 When you're hot, you're hot, and lately I've been on fire. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I'm just in the kind of groove where there's always a great scene waiting to be written. Beyond the scenes there's another script, itching to be realized. Since moving offices a few months ago (I do my work at work...after work), I have been enjoying the healthiest writing lifestyle of my life. I often wondered as to what might derail me. Would I wake up one day and find that all of the fingers on each hand had been fused into two annoyingly large fingers? Would the world come to an end? Would it be the ninjas? (Cake Man knows) No, none of the above. Instead, I'm brought to my knees by pollen, nature's sperm.Oh how I hate allergy season, nature's coordinated ejaculation onto mankind. There's n Read more:Enemy
Blair Witch revisited 2008-04-25 13:03:00 On Wednesday our Cake-loving member received Cloverfield from Netflix, which we came home and watched after a League business meeting/pizza outing. It was a lot better than I'd thought it would be going in, as I hadn't heard anyone say a nice thing about it besides fellow Leaguer Onyx. In the end, there were too many points where the characters grated on me or their actions didn't follow any sort of logic to keep me from really loving it, but I can't say I wasn't entertained for 80 minutes.The movie really made me think of a BlairWitch
Project with a much bigger budget. I'll come clean: I'm a big Blair Witch Project fan, and still feel the movie doesn't receive the credit it deserves. Even taking the low-budget blockbuster and insane grassroots marketing phenomena away, it succeeds as a c
Welcome, Me. 2008-04-25 11:56:00 Hello blogger world, it's me AxelA.I'm the newest member of the League of Screenwriters + 1 TV writer, and so I just wanted to say, "What are you eating for lunch today?" (I had matzah, fucking passover)My current status is at work, wavering between eating that piece of cake or chewing a piece of gum. My advice to anyone who is about to graduate -- get a job where you have the freedom to write at it.I spend 8 our of my 9 hours a day entertaining myself with my own words. Does that make me selfish? Probably. But otherwise I could collect dust, and my coworkers' allergies would act up when they walked by me.All right League members, Happy Friday! And remember to stay smart, or else you're likely to get hit by a taxi cab.Signing off,AxelA Read more:Welcome
Brain Cell Rubbing 2008-04-24 12:22:00 I like seeing my friends ponder, so occasionally I throw questions that require some deep thoughts at them. Such as near graduation, I asked several close friends if they can choose for one to be true, which would it be: to be guaranteed a job right then and there, or for Batman to be real. The follow up question to that is, if your girlfriend/boyfriend cheated on you with Batman, could you, with a clear conscious, be mad at them? (You can replace Batman with Superman.)The most recent question is who would you rather be: Neil Gaiman or Hugh Laurie.The race is pretty close, but so far Neil Gaiman is winning. My favorite reason for this “because Hugh Laurie has to live in LA”. Read more:Brain
, Rubbing
"When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things." Finish the quote 2008-04-21 20:34:00 I must begin by saying that Forbidden Kingdom’s success depresses me. Especially because when I first heard of the movie, there was a part of me that wanted to go see it.A friend is moving to Prince Edward Island Canada, where there are two lobsters and two oysters seasons a year. I agreed to booksit while she leaves the good ol’ New York City to go on a year of cold, writing, home-wrecking spree. Among the books she's leaving behind, she specifically pointed one out to me, saying I would enjoy it. The book’s name is Midnight Blue. It’s thick, especially for a paperback. However, neither the New Yorker nor my next next library book arrived yet, and if I don’t have something to read on the bus in the morning, I go stir crazy. So, you know, whatever, let’s see what this book is a Read more:Finish
, things
, think
, walking down
The Writing Week part 16 2008-04-21 15:37:00 This week's been a big one for the League. But, since most of what’s noteworthy happened well outside the confines of my pages, not much of it will be related now.I guess it’s worth mentioning that I got to page sixty, which is 2/3 of what I’m targeting. I’ve thought of this current script, the mysterious Screenplay X as a 90 pager from day one. I still really like the idea, but I don’t think it’s one that needs to hit that less and less common two hour mark. So, I’m two thirds of the way done, and I still haven’t outlined at all, save for maybe a few notes here and there, which I type directly onto the page and then delete as they become obsolete.I haven’t worked this way in a long time, and while I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing, there are certain drawback
The Writing Week part 15 2008-04-15 14:04:00 It’s been an interesting week, I’ll say that for sure. I finished act one and, upon rereading it, discovered that I was mostly pleased with it. There was a beat that was missing at one point, and a little bit of dialogue that wasn’t working for me. But as a whole, I was happy with the product. Sure, it’ll probably get changed once I shine the light of the League’s opinions on it, but for now, it works. There’s not really anything I have to change before moving forward with act two. It reads quickly yet effectively, I think. And, perhaps most importantly right now, it’s still fun to write. So that’s good.But not everything this week was good. I managed to let one person put a huge damper on a fun night I was having Saturday. We were hosting a party, and someone I’d hoped w
Just a Name 2008-04-13 23:19:00 In Chinese, naming people are fairly easy. If it’s a girl’s name, chances are there’ll be a character that means quiet/ pleasing/ pretty/ some-sort-of-“famine”- animal. If it’s a boy’s name, then patriotic/ fierce/ smart/ successful/ rich/ bright/ some-sort-of-“masculine”-animal. Sexist, I know, but hell, at least it’s usually easy to differentiate between male and female names, and what the parents wished for the kid (unless they’re named after a scenic view or vegetation). When in doubt, name your boy “Love (your) Country” and your girl “Pleasing (to) Husband” or “Call (forth a younger) Brother”. (I’m not making this shit up. Those were pretty popular names.)Names written in English, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily mean it's an American/Englis
Happy ESL Time 2008-04-10 04:47:00 It's almost 6 am and I have a fever so I decided to start a new section, called "Happy
ESL Time". It doesn't have to do with writing as much as my relationship with the English language. This will be the eleventh year I've spent in America (3rd+4th grade, then high school onward). The only time someone sat me down to teach me English was in 3rd and 4th grades. When I came back to America the second time, I had to jump into Shakespeare and learn a foreign language like everyone else (I took Spanish. My teacher told me I don't conjugate as much as I mutilate. He was one of my favorite teachers.)Most things you simple pick up when you've lived in another country for this long and 90% of your friends don't speak your native language. But after a certain point you start hitting words that peopl
The Writing Week part 14 2008-04-08 12:57:00 If I continue writing these weekly updates for a year, which I fully intend to do, then last week marked the quarter-way point. In between then and now, I started a new script. I got more jazzed up about writing it than I have been about a new script for a while. Mind you, I always have a fire lit under me for the first ten or even thirty pages, but this was the hottest I've felt the flames in a long time. Then something happened. Without getting into the gory details, because I'm attempting to write this project without even discussing it with the League, I'll tell you that the script involves a number of deaths. I wrote a scene that involved a death similar to one a classmate of mine experienced. I wasn't great friends with her, but the school was small, so everyone knew everyone. And I
Sun's out! 2008-04-05 14:14:00 As soon as I get writing again, the weather takes a turn for the wonderful. There's nothing quite as distracting as SUNLIGHT.I've managed to get just over an hour of writing, but looking back I noticed I misspelled "waitress" as "weaters" in three different paragraphs. It just goes to show that my mind is somewhere else.
Whole New Worlds 2008-04-04 15:57:00 Maybe it’s just Spring. April showers, May flowers, and burgeoning… feelings. But I feel as though there are a number of worlds, a number of things, deeper understandings and worlds, opening up to me at the moment.Ok, I’ll start with the most clichéd. It’s disgustingly sappy, so you’ll have to forgive me. I’m talking about love. I’m not saying I’ve fallen in love. Rather, I think, for the first time really, I’ve begun to understand it. I haven’t really bought into it before; that’s not to say that I don’t believe it exists or is felt every day. I do. Just not by me. But I recently returned home for a weekend and saw a friend of mine—she was always the last one we’d expect to be in a relationship, and even the relationships she was in were defined by her wild in Read more:Whole
, Worlds
The Writing Week part 13 2008-04-02 16:47:00 Another week, more... progress? Change, for sure.I feel like I'm echoing LoKor's recent post about departures. I was out of the City over the weekend to attend a going away party for a friend, whom I won't see for 27 months. Then, I came back to the city, only to attend another going-away party tonight. Change seems to be in the air.I also feel it in my bones. I'm not sure whether I'm deluding myself or not, but I feel like something should and very well might happen soon. I have a number of projects to work on, all in varying degree of completion. I have another that I really feel compelled to start working on soon. I'm not sure whether it's a play or a screenplay, to be honest. It feels like a play, but there's a moment at the end, the moment that the entire project revolves around, that
Back From Paradise 2008-04-02 13:48:00 I've actually been back from my visit to the Bahamas for a while, but this would be my first post since soaking up some rays. I was a little concerned for a moment that all the great food and chill island vibes would melt away the crusty shell of New York determination that I've been building over the past few months. I was wrong. Still writing, and with tan lines to boot. I expect to finish the script for my first ever feel good sports movie this week. One small step forward in my quest to delve into every genre. I don't write off of an outline often, but so far I'm finding that it's probably worthwhile with this script. The sports movie genre always strikes me as one of the simplest, formulaic genres out there, but it's actually been kind of difficult to nail. I'd much rather be writing Read more:Paradise
The Writing Week part 12 2008-03-24 11:32:00 Another week bites the dust. It's amazing how quickly time seems to be passing. I remember "just" thinking to myself how February was on the horizon and would most likely fly by. Now, we're almost at April. With nearly a quarter of the year gone already, I feel it's time I evaluate my progress in my resolution to make something happen with my writing this year.To barely skim the surface, I first look at this past week. After coming off a nearly ten day stretch where I did very little actual writing, I have to take some solace in the fact that I have started re-writing my latest script again. It feels good to sit before a challenge each night. Not that I know the pages I'm re-reading are perfect -- obviously, they're not; I'm re-writing them. But it is always a little difficult for me to ma
The Writing Week part 11 2008-03-18 22:36:00 As far as weeks go, this one has been relatively uneventful - writing wise - and relatively eventful - non-writing wise. For one, this was probably the longest week I have worked since I've been employed by the company I am at now. Over the course of six days, I wound up working nearly 60 hours. I know there are a lot of people out there who do that on a regular basis, so I'm not asking for any sympathy on that front. But, I am unused to that, and found that my more hectic than usual work schedule, in addition to other things I had going on, made writing difficult this week. Top that off with a case of food poisoning on my only day off, and I didn't get much down on the page this week.However, that's not to say that nothing was accomplished. For one, I thought long and hard about the graph
Stark Realizations 2008-03-18 16:35:00 I won't rob long time readers of a proper reflection, but for the here and now, be it known that the grad school application process is just about wrapped up. To date, I applied to six schools for a MFA in creative writing, received four official rejections, one unofficial rejection, and am waiting on my last, long shot, school.This happens to people, and I'm not unrealistic about my writing ability, especially in prose, but I don't think I can go through this process again. Next December I'll turn 26. I have no marketable skills, no career prospects, and a writing ability that is strong but unfocused from the years I've spent dabbling in so many different mediums (cyberspace, I guess, included).At one point in my life, if there was something I wanted to do, no matter how unlikely it wa Read more:Stark
People I Hate, no Loathe. 2008-05-08 16:28:00 I hate people who say, "art is dead." I also hate people who say, "the earth is dying." This post is only about those who say art's dead -- but fuck you pessimistic earth lovers. Thank God every single one of you will be in the rotting ground before you know how that story ends.As for those who believe art is dead or just wriggling in capitalistic oxygen like a suffocating goldfish, let me agree with you on one issue -- it takes a shit ton of blood money and marketing and evil product placement to make a movie. But if a movie isn't live art, if Murakami's Van Deutch bags aren't either, then what is "live" art? Kant's definition of pure art, "A Priori", is not live either -- Art is only pure when it comes out of a writer's head, and artist's hands, a poet's soul. And you know what that p Read more:Loathe
Honey and Whip 2008-05-07 21:12:00 While the Writing Block is a true and real, sometimes the enemy is just your own laziness, aka, the Slump. I’ve never had too much problem with the Writing Block. When I do, I contribute it to the work of the Devil, and tell myself “My Lord and Savior will help me overcome Goddamn it!!” And usually within a few hours I do. The Slump on the other hand, not so much. It’s hard to pray to God for help in defeating your own self. Mainly because it sounds like it’ll hurt, a lot (I’ve yet to decide which of the Old Testament deaths is the worst way to go). And, honestly, being lazy feels So. Damn. Good. So in these cases, I usually turn to the only logical help to get me to write again: rewards and punishments. Over lunch last week, Zombie told me that he would place Twin Peak
Don't Never Change 2008-05-10 19:00:00 We talk a lot on this blog about writing, our projects, our experiences. It's weird, then, that we haven't really written about our actual writing processes.As you can tell from my Writing Weeks, I'm abut 19 weeks into the year and have completed two first drafts of new scripts from scratch. Two new specs in about 10 weeks apiece. Factor in the fact that I tend to experience a two week lull after completing a project, and that brings it down to about 8 weeks I spend on a script. From start of the outline to finishing the draft. Yeah, I'm fast (... in my writing).Don't get me wrong, though, I don't consider those two months on each script to be all that I need to complete a project. I'm usually pleased with my first drafts, though aware of the work they need. I just can't get myself to loo Read more:Change
Rewrite! 2008-05-09 14:45:00 I want to re-comment on my last post -- I've been thinking about what I wrote about art being dead all night -- and I just want to give the reader the context of my thoughts...but I'll be brief!!!Last week I watched the Czech movie Lunacy dir by Jan Svankmajer -- in the beginning Mr. Svankmajer speaks directly to the audience telling us that his movie is a horror film with no redeemable qualities, but that's OK because "art is dead."While Lunacy employs grotesque stop-motion and blasphemy towards the church -- it was quite a story! (Don't eat while you watch it! Ick) I was disappointed Mr. Svankmajer devalued his own creation.On the flip side of art being dead, I watched the FANTASTIC anime movie yesterday Tekon Kinkrette, dir. by Michael Arias -- this movie is so on par with the time we l Read more:Rewrite
The Writing Week part 19 2008-05-12 14:54:00 I’d say “this was more of a reflective week,” but that would be cheating. This was really just more of an unproductive week. That lull that I mentioned in my writing process post is still clinging on for dear life, and I’m just starting to shake it off my leg, like an unwanted dog about to break out the “lipstick.”All of that isn’t to say that I’ve accomplished nothing this week. I
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