Since 1996, I've written four complete screenplays. The last one was I wrote was in 2003. Although I enjoy writing and I could probably write another one without too much trouble, I just don't have much interest in it anymore. I'm not very prolific when it comes to writing fiction. I seem to be much more prolific at blogging. :)
My first screenplay was a little horror story called "The Pumpkin Patch." It was about aliens being hatched from pumpkins on Halloween night and terrorizing a small town. Some people who read it liked it, but I don't think it was very good. I gave it to my creative writing teacher in college as extra credit, and he wrote that it was "derivative." He was right. It was. I copied a lot of cliched elements of many horror movies, including "Alien" and "Pumpkinhead." Still, as bad as it was, I tried harder to sell this script than any other script I have written since. My logic was that even though it might not be that good, I thought it was still better than the horror movies Hollywood was putting out in 1996.
I remember going to a horror-movie convention and showing my script to a director named Ted V. Mikels, who made a movie called "The Corpse Grinders." "The Corpse Grinders" is pure exploitation horror, and not even good exploitation horror. It has a rating of 2.2 on the Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068414/). Ted Mikels browsed through my script, and dismissed it very quickly.
"This has way too much dialogue." he said.
It did have a lot of dialogue. I had pages and pages of kids talking, and there wasn't any real violence or gore until the last 30 pages or so. Perhaps if I had corpses being ground within the first 5 pages, he would have liked it more.
In 1999, I took a screenwriting class in college. The only way to get an "A" in the class was to write a complete screenplay. This gave me the push that I needed to start writing again. I'm usually pretty lazy when it comes to writing. Someone or something really needs to motivate me.
The screenplay I wrote in that class was called "Descent." This was a story about a guy with an extremely boring life and extremely boring job who is slowly going crazy. At the end of the story he goes on a murderous rampage. Again, in looking back at this story, I don't think it's very good. Some people who read it thought that my main character went crazy far to easily and too quickly. The only part I can read now that I actually like is a scene where the main character accidentally drops a condom on his food during a first date with a woman he is trying to impress. At this point, the woman loses interest in him, thinking he was only interested in having sex with her. It's a pretty sad and pathetic scene. In some ways, this story was just a pale imitation of the movie "Taxi Driver."
I took one more screenwriting class in 2000, and I wrote a third screenplay. This one was called "L.A. is Dead." It was a personal story about a married couple on the brink of divorce who start going to seedy underground nightclubs hoping to spice up their marriage. Out of the four screenplays I've written, this one is the most autobiographical. I took incidents that came directly from my first marriage and embellished them a little to make it more dramatical. I never went to any seedy L.A. nightclubs (well, actually I did go to one, but just one.) But some of the conversations with the husband and wife, and their friends, was very close to verbatim of what was happening around this time in my life.
My ex-wife was enrolled in the screenwriting class with me at this time, and during the class we would all have to read our scripts out loud, with other students reading the various characters in the story. It must have been pretty tough for her to sit through this when it was being read. I like this script the best because it's the most personal, but other people hated it.
In 2003, when I was dating this Russian girl named Iryna, she convinced me to start writing another script. She claimed to know people in the movie industry (which turned out to be a bunch of BS), so I gave it another shot. I decided to try to write another horror story, so I wrote a script called "Small Town Evil." This was about a single father whose daughter becomes possessed by the spirit of a murdered girl. The father goes to the town where the girl was murdered, and he ends up falling in love with the mother of the dead girl. Obviously, I didn't have a daughter at the time I wrote this, and my ex-wife told me that I didn't know how to write "the way children talk." I think I did okay, but looking back it now I think the story is a bit formulaic. Better than "The Pumpkin Patch", though.
So now it's six years later, and I have yet to write any new fiction story. I did write my blog about my life in Taiwan last year, but that kind of writing comes much more easily. Telling a fictional story is much harder for me. First, you have to try to think of an idea that hasn't been used before, and that's almost impossible. Just about everything has been done before. The best you can really do is try to think of a new way to tell the same story, and hopefully do it better.
For me, I also have to overcome the blank screen in front of me when I begin writing. It's quite intimidating. The first line of the first page is always the hardest. Whenever I was writing a script, I never had everything planned out. I only had notes about scenes that I liked, and very vague ideas about what was going to happen.
Next, I often ask myself "Who's' going to read this?" as I'm writing. When you're writing for an audience that you know is going to be less than the fingers on your hand, it's easy to give up. My last script I wrote primarily for Iryna, and other than her, maybe only about 5 other people read it. Finally, becoming successful as a screenwriter has very little to do with being a good writer. It's all about "connections" and who you know. Even if I wrote something everyone thought was great, it's very hard to get a screenplay into the hands of a producer.
Writing a blog seems to be much easier. I can write as little or as much as I want, on pretty much any topic that I want. On a blog, I don't consider anything "off limits." I might only get one reader for one blog entry, but maybe 50 for another. You never know, really, who's reading at any given time. This just seems like the best medium for me at this time. If I decide to write a new story someday (and I probably will eventually), I'm sure I'll publish it here first. It's my blog, right? :)
My first screenplay was a little horror story called "The Pumpkin Patch." It was about aliens being hatched from pumpkins on Halloween night and terrorizing a small town. Some people who read it liked it, but I don't think it was very good. I gave it to my creative writing teacher in college as extra credit, and he wrote that it was "derivative." He was right. It was. I copied a lot of cliched elements of many horror movies, including "Alien" and "Pumpkinhead." Still, as bad as it was, I tried harder to sell this script than any other script I have written since. My logic was that even though it might not be that good, I thought it was still better than the horror movies Hollywood was putting out in 1996.
I remember going to a horror-movie convention and showing my script to a director named Ted V. Mikels, who made a movie called "The Corpse Grinders." "The Corpse Grinders" is pure exploitation horror, and not even good exploitation horror. It has a rating of 2.2 on the Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068414/). Ted Mikels browsed through my script, and dismissed it very quickly.
"This has way too much dialogue." he said.
It did have a lot of dialogue. I had pages and pages of kids talking, and there wasn't any real violence or gore until the last 30 pages or so. Perhaps if I had corpses being ground within the first 5 pages, he would have liked it more.
In 1999, I took a screenwriting class in college. The only way to get an "A" in the class was to write a complete screenplay. This gave me the push that I needed to start writing again. I'm usually pretty lazy when it comes to writing. Someone or something really needs to motivate me.
The screenplay I wrote in that class was called "Descent." This was a story about a guy with an extremely boring life and extremely boring job who is slowly going crazy. At the end of the story he goes on a murderous rampage. Again, in looking back at this story, I don't think it's very good. Some people who read it thought that my main character went crazy far to easily and too quickly. The only part I can read now that I actually like is a scene where the main character accidentally drops a condom on his food during a first date with a woman he is trying to impress. At this point, the woman loses interest in him, thinking he was only interested in having sex with her. It's a pretty sad and pathetic scene. In some ways, this story was just a pale imitation of the movie "Taxi Driver."
I took one more screenwriting class in 2000, and I wrote a third screenplay. This one was called "L.A. is Dead." It was a personal story about a married couple on the brink of divorce who start going to seedy underground nightclubs hoping to spice up their marriage. Out of the four screenplays I've written, this one is the most autobiographical. I took incidents that came directly from my first marriage and embellished them a little to make it more dramatical. I never went to any seedy L.A. nightclubs (well, actually I did go to one, but just one.) But some of the conversations with the husband and wife, and their friends, was very close to verbatim of what was happening around this time in my life.
My ex-wife was enrolled in the screenwriting class with me at this time, and during the class we would all have to read our scripts out loud, with other students reading the various characters in the story. It must have been pretty tough for her to sit through this when it was being read. I like this script the best because it's the most personal, but other people hated it.
In 2003, when I was dating this Russian girl named Iryna, she convinced me to start writing another script. She claimed to know people in the movie industry (which turned out to be a bunch of BS), so I gave it another shot. I decided to try to write another horror story, so I wrote a script called "Small Town Evil." This was about a single father whose daughter becomes possessed by the spirit of a murdered girl. The father goes to the town where the girl was murdered, and he ends up falling in love with the mother of the dead girl. Obviously, I didn't have a daughter at the time I wrote this, and my ex-wife told me that I didn't know how to write "the way children talk." I think I did okay, but looking back it now I think the story is a bit formulaic. Better than "The Pumpkin Patch", though.
So now it's six years later, and I have yet to write any new fiction story. I did write my blog about my life in Taiwan last year, but that kind of writing comes much more easily. Telling a fictional story is much harder for me. First, you have to try to think of an idea that hasn't been used before, and that's almost impossible. Just about everything has been done before. The best you can really do is try to think of a new way to tell the same story, and hopefully do it better.
For me, I also have to overcome the blank screen in front of me when I begin writing. It's quite intimidating. The first line of the first page is always the hardest. Whenever I was writing a script, I never had everything planned out. I only had notes about scenes that I liked, and very vague ideas about what was going to happen.
Next, I often ask myself "Who's' going to read this?" as I'm writing. When you're writing for an audience that you know is going to be less than the fingers on your hand, it's easy to give up. My last script I wrote primarily for Iryna, and other than her, maybe only about 5 other people read it. Finally, becoming successful as a screenwriter has very little to do with being a good writer. It's all about "connections" and who you know. Even if I wrote something everyone thought was great, it's very hard to get a screenplay into the hands of a producer.
Writing a blog seems to be much easier. I can write as little or as much as I want, on pretty much any topic that I want. On a blog, I don't consider anything "off limits." I might only get one reader for one blog entry, but maybe 50 for another. You never know, really, who's reading at any given time. This just seems like the best medium for me at this time. If I decide to write a new story someday (and I probably will eventually), I'm sure I'll publish it here first. It's my blog, right? :)
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