The Month of November at 6500

The month of November brings us smack-dab face-to-face with hyphens and National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo or Nanowreemo). And yes, we are heavily involved in it this year again, too. We've done it every year since 2004 and have managed to meet the 50,000 word goal each year, although we failed to finish one novel, we finished the others. (Two are here: The Priests of Hiroshima and Calvado.)

The trick, for me, seems to be having some Real Meaty Characters that either I enjoy writing, reading about, or just plain reading. The characters pull the story they want to tell better than I could force the characters through a story I want to tell. (The one novel I didn't finish, Caraculiambro, had great characters but even they couldn't end the story - a detective yarn.)

This year's NaNoWriMo novel: 

The Murder of Tan Tinh Ai by Ruggles Royce, Ex-Priest

Characters include (so far):

• Ruggles Royce -  ex-priest current mercenary 65 years old built like a linebacker and fast.
• Wings Kenosha - 40, tough, lanky, works for 'the company.'
• Tan Tinh Ai -  flirtatious 24 years old, works in a fruit stand owned by her mother and aunt.
• Da Xu Xi -  rough, male, 27, in love with Tan Tinh Ai. Owns a bar.
• Maxine -  50, American female black market exploiter living in Hanoi.
  

The Plot, so far:

Ruggles is asked to find a kidnapped woman. The woman, Tan Tinh Ai, was last seen leaving a grocery store in Hanoi. In his efforts to find her, Ruggles discovers himself, his heart, and love. All in the wrong places. 

Having read the synopsis so far, I am totally going to change it before I get into the meat of the story (I'm 6500 words into it - about 30 pages).

Dancing On the Arc of A Dream: A Novel Writing Idea

Good morning, everyone and welcome to Tedorigawa for August 7, 2007 and my new brainstorm.

Dancing On the Arc of A Dream

I stumbled upon a great idea at Plotastic.com via The Writing Show with Paula B. (on iTunes, of course, where else?). Seems Mark Putnam, creator/editor of Plotastic, wanted to write a novel but couldn't concentrate on any of his many ideas. He created Plotastic.com and a survey wherein people could vote on main character, plot points, motivation, etc cetera for Mark's novel, which he would write given the parameters of the survey. He is hard at work and as of today has about 35,000 words of his projected 100,000-word novel.

Dancing On the Arc of A Dream

Bear with me here; I'm getting to the point. Mark inserted a link to NanoWrimo on his website. NanoWrimo is National Novel Writing Month which is held each November. Your goal in NanoWrimo, should you decide to accept the challenge - and what writer can't? - is Simply? to write a 50,000-word novel in one month. I have dragged my carcass through NanoWrimo for the last three years and have reached the goal of 50,000 words each year. (Yeah, me!) Meaning, in my case, two completed novels (Calvado and Tristram's Printer) and one incomplete novel (Caraculiambro) but still over 50,000 words.

Dancing On the Arc of A Dream

Now, what does NanoWrimo, Mark Putnam's Plotastic, and me have to do with this great new novel writing idea I have? Read on, MacDuff, there's more. I also enjoy hand bookbinding. I'm a very, very beginner but enjoy it. Here is a link to one of my books on Flickr, if you're dying to see what a handbound book by me looks like.

Dancing On the Arc of A Dream

Get to the Point! I hear the one person who is reading this blog scream. Okay. Let's see what we can add up: bookbinding, NanoWrimo, me, Plotastic. What do you get? Me, handwriting a novel in one of my handbound books before the year is out.

Dancing On the Arc of A Dream

I've already bound the book and I've already started scribbling. I'm eschewing computers and anything more high-tech than a ball-point pen. I'm writing it without a net (no outline), and I'm editing it as I write In the Book! First draft is the last, all editing marks, crossouts, misspellings, doodles, and other aids to procrastination included.

Dancing On the Arc of A Dream

I have a title but no plot ... But! the plot is forming as I write! Talk about organic (see The Writing Show episode for July 29, 2007 with Anthony G. Williams "Scales" for more on organic.) And what is the title? Look: Dancing On the Arc of A Dream!

Ocassionally incredibly illegibly hand-written by George Stenson using pen, pencil, doodles, art, notes, and re-writes, Dancing On the Arc of A Dream is the first hand-bound, hand-written, first-draft novel written since 1450: the first and only draft of Dancing On the Arc of A Dream.

Here's the plot so far: Two men and one woman borrow money from the wrong people to open a greasy spoon coffee shop. They discover to their horror that they are in over their heads and have to beg, borrow, steal or print lots of money real fast. Murder, revenge, back-stabbings, double-dealings, drugs, rock and roll, and a woman known only as The Suit. Wish me luck.

Photos of Dancing On the Arc of A Dream are here: Dancing on the Arc of a Dream!

Film Noir Podcast

There's a film noir podcast wherein two academics talk about film noir. Personally, if you can get past the academic jargon ('source material' for 'the book it was based on') and the introduction wherein one of the two academics makes.... pronouncements about the movie in question, the podcast, Out of the Past, is pretty good with some insights about the genre, etc.

As for my film noir screenplay, Die Me A Genealogist, it is not going through a re-write. I'm just not un-busy enough to put it up or put up with it. Plus, I had a major computer crash. Two, in fact. One computer has been returned minus the faulty hard disk (with tons of data.) The other computer - with Die Me A Genealogist on it - is still in the shop and if it comes back with an erased disk, well, Die Me A Genealogist is poof, up in smoke, in the nether regions of life and quite an experience it was, too. I do, however, have a cool vampire movie in mind titled: Vampire Steaks. No, that wasn't it. Oh, well, I can't think of the original title so I'll go with that.

Anyone have any idea for a plot?

Go in peace. Live in harmony. Promote Good Thoughts.

Script Frenzy Script

I have finished my film noir screenplay and have been announced a winner (over 20,000 words - aout 100 pages) of the Script Frenzy frenzy. Someday I plan to put most of the script up here on a related page. If I figure out how to do it.
I believe, if memory serves, only five people get killed in my screenplay, the good guy gets the money but not the girl, and ach... six people get killed. Maybe I'd better read the damn thing to find out what happens. This is one of the special results of writing in a frenzy and not really paying attention to what you're doing: writer's alzheimer's - makes reading it a new and fresh experience!

Film Noir (black film?) Screenplay

I have decided to join the ranks of the chosen millions (especially in Los Angeles) who have decided that they, too, can be the next Shane Black (a man who has gotten way too much cash for his scripts - unless someone buys mine, then we're both underpaid) and write a movie. Or, as we say in the biz, a script.
Not an ordinary script, though, (I wish) but a film noir script. A dark, twisted script with three basic characters: the hero, an ex-hitman turned bookstore owner, the femme fatale that makes the ex-hitman jump through the hoops, and the bad guy who tries to manipulate the femme fatale and the bookstore owner. This is all because of Script Frenzy in which we unwashed of the world pretend to be on deadline for a script.

• One month. June.
• One script. Die Me a Genealogist
  
• One film noir ready for sale. Ha.

So, naturlich, I looked up film noir ala wikipedia to make sure I've got all the ingredients for this particular caldron of soup. According to that we need the following pieces:

1. cigarettes - what genre comes after film noir, film cancer?
   
2. flashbacks - love it. All the screenplay gurus (Syd, Robert)say never use flashbacks.
3. a dame
4. a flawed hero
5. a flawed bad guy
6. voiceovers, of course - and, hey, didn't I write about this very thing not too long ago? Am I repeating myself? Do I have blog-alzheimer's? Yes I did! May 23 of this year. Look below! - Who am I shouting at? Myself? Probably. Who's in charge of this blog anyway!?

Today's recommended film noir movie (redundant, or what?) is "Touch of Evil" (released the same year as "No Time for Sargeants" with Don Knotts.) directed by Orson Welles, starring Orson, Charleton Heston, Janet Leigh, and, in a pre-Psycho crazy role as a motel clerk (can you say Norman 'Hi, Mom' Bates), Dennis Weaver (no, Weaver isn't in Psycho, I know that. That was Anthony Perkins. It's just that Weaver's hotel clerk in Touch of Evil is an over-the-top weirdo two years before Psycho was released.)

A bit over-acted in parts, the main reason for watching this flick is to watch Welles' directing - his camera positioning, his angles; his, what, ten-minute first tracking shot. And to watch Welles' character fall into the abyss as Heston watches and may have pushed a little bit, Janet Leigh gets gang-scared, and Dennis Weaver freaks out about marijuana.

If you're interested in film noir scripts, I've got one for you. Let me know. Contact me. Hit comment. Smile. Enjoy your life and hey, let's be careful out there.

"Die Me A Genealogist"
If this genealogist checks your lifeline, you'd better run.

Seth Harwood's Jack Palms II Podiobook

As if to show me I'm wrong about my last post (see below, bunnykins), I heard a portion of a new podiobook by Seth Harwood, Jack Palms II on Podcast411 episode something. Seth does a good job of doing two things: one, reading and two, writing. A lot of people who read are either overblown Dramatic with a capital D or monotone; Seth is neither. He hit it quite nicely in the middle. He also used special effects but only as necessary. He didn't go overboard. And the writing, for the most part, held my attention which, of course, is the point. There were a couple of points where I grimaced at a forced transition or two but generally really good. On Podcast411, we hear an interview with Seth and a 15-minute clip teaser of Jack Palms II which is scheduled to be put up on Seth's podcast starting June 3rd. The 15-minute portion on Podcast411 leaves us with a cliffhanger but that was to be expected. (Ah, got it, episode 203 of Podcast411. Two hundred shows? That's incredible, eh?)

This is all to say that Seth's podcast came across as a good old fashioned radio drama minus a lot of overdramatic music but without the different voices for all the parts; Seth reads all the characters himself with one exception.

This is also to say that I realized why a lot of the crime dramas on old radio shows were told in the first person. First, because that was the way crime novels (hard-boiled, Chandler, Hammett,- two Ms, two Ts - and pulp fiction) were written - Think Bogart in the Maltese Falcon. And because it sounds more like the character talking to you instead of someone reading to you or pretending to read to you. That said, I think I'm going to check out Seth's serialized audiobook.

In the next post on this blog I'm going to talk about a podcast called Behind the Black Mask, which looks like interviews with several pulp/crime/detective novelists. Should or could be interesting. (By the same people who do a podcast on film noir called Out of the Past.)

Eat in Peace.