Nick Bryan

Writing About Writing

Script Frenzy 2011 – Postamble

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Tonight, I finished Script Frenzy. As I did with NaNoWriMo, I think it’s time for some kind of blog in which I look back on the experience, before I forget about it forever and move on to a new writing project, like the cheap no-attention-spanner that I probably am.

To keep this structured, I have once again broken my learnings down to three points, which I’m going to number…

1) Script Frenzy is easier than NaNoWriMo

I’ve done NaNo a few times now, and it has always been a huge, life-consuming experience. Every time I’ve missed doing my NaNo words for a given day, it’s with the knowledge that the next two or three days are going to be crap as a result.

Script Frenzy, I did 25% of the page count on the last two days, and it wasn’t particularly hard work. This isn’t because scripting is easier than prose, I stress, just that 100 pages of script in a month isn’t as hard a target as 50,000 words.

Not sure what we can learn from this going forward. I could try 200 pages next year?

2) I rather miss comic-scripting

I wrote a lot of comic scripts in my early twenties, and then kinda stopped, mostly because I didn’t have enough money to pay someone to draw them, and the networking and praying involved in getting someone half-decent to draw them for free was a bit much.

Of course, I now have savings, although I was perhaps going to save them for buying a house or something, rather than vanity comic publishing. But I did still enjoy doing it again, so I might look into whether it can be made to go somewhere.

3) My new netbook works just fine

In that NaNo post-game blog, I mentioned that it was time to pension off my huge elderly laptop, and I did indeed manage to upgrade it to a nice netbook, that was donated to me for free by someone from Twitter. Score.

So I’ll mention here that a reasonable chunk of my Script Frenzy was written on it, the battery runs for a good two hours, and I am quite happy with that. Hoorah.

Script Frenzy 2011 – Preamble

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Yes, it’s time for a non-story blog post. I am (probably) going to be doing Script Frenzy in April, so I thought I would do a nice intro to it. After all, Script Frenzy is the scripting equivalent of NaNoWriMo, and I did a preamble blog for them.

Script Frenzy requires I produce 100 pages of script in a month, which doesn’t sound too hard. After all, I wrote a sitcom script a couple of months back, and ended up producing 35 pages in less than three days, so I’m going into this primarily with the attitude that it’ll be a fun aside that won’t dominate my life.

If it does take over my writing time completely, I will probably ditch it and focus on the novel, but I have found a scripting project I actually want to do, so hopefully this won’t be too futile. I have a novel I wrote for NaNo a few years back which I thought might make a decent comic book. (Or “graphic novel” if you’re unwilling to admit you read comics.)

Thus I’ll be attempting the adaptation process. This carries the added bonus of not requiring a new idea, only a bit of re-planning.

Fans of this website will be sad to hear it may stop me producing Friday stories during the month of April, sorry about that. I may attempt some blog posts about Script Frenzy; if not, there will definitely be updates on my Twitter. Oh, and if you too are doing Script Frenzy, feel free to add me as a “Writing Buddy” or whatever people do.

Friday short story time: "Locked Out"

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It seems my weekly Friday story schedule will forever be beset by inconvenient other commitments demanding my time. After NaNoWrimo and Christmas, we had my coursework submission deadline for my creative writing MA.

Still, that’s done now, and so I’m back with another one. Perhaps because I’m still in academic serious writing mode, this is a bit less silly/toilet-centred than many of my previous efforts. If you haven’t read said previous efforts, get into the archives so you can compare and contrast the level of scatological obsession.

Otherwise, click below to read today’s instalment.

Locked Out

By Nick Bryan

Traditionally, when the night wore on and his family started stirring from the TV, Phil always headed for his local pub, The Crossed Arms. Because, despite the sulky name, they could always be relied on to let him in late, give him a pint and host a lock-in with other regulars.

The lock-ins were a jolly occasion, because the landlord waited until the riff-raff had cleared off. And he didn’t mean people of a lower class, no; Phil would never generalise like that. He meant anyone who wasn’t local, a regular, someone he knew and properly respected.

Those kids cleared off, casting a few eyes back at the older drinkers remaining in their seats. Clearly, they thought these were pissheads, soaks, alcoholics who only experience fun when too obliterated to do anything else. Little did those brats know that they were the ones staying out and having a good time.

The fun would start when they had gone, and not an instant before. Wait a few minutes, close the blinds and then The Who comes on.

The closing of the blinds was a formality, to be honest; the police didn’t bother them as long as there wasn’t any trouble. A while back, some young guy came along as a guest, got a bit too drunk and started kicking up trouble outside. That was the last time they let anyone bring their mates along.

So it was with a sense of belonging and imminent warmth that Phil reached the red door of the pub and knocked politely. He couldn’t hear any merriment, which troubled him. More to the point, behind the heavy blinds seemed only darkness, rather than a teasing hint of light. Surely the lock-in was not cancelled?

Starting to fear for the fun factor of his Friday night, Phil pounded with greater urgency. Was he going to have to go home? Nothing happened for a second, and he thought his heartbeat was going to thump his eardrums outwards, until a light snapped on behind the doors.

He allowed himself a moment of hope, although expectations still floated low. The signs were looking bleak.

When the landlord’s daughter opened the door, then, there wasn’t much surprise. She was an angry young woman, and with messy hair too. ‘Yeah, hi, what? I was about to go to bed.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Phil gave up right there, but it seemed rude to run away immediately. ‘I was wondering if the lock-in would be happening, or…’

‘No, it will not. My father had to go visit granddad in hospital, and I’m not bloody doing it.’

‘Of course, I…’

‘It’s bad enough I had to keep the pub open until closing time, I’m not letting you people stay on longer.’

‘Sure, that’s entirely…’

‘I mean, what do you take us for, some kind of charity? Keeping pissed middle aged men off the street for a few precious minutes longer so their wives can relax?’

‘No, not at all, just…’ Phil adjusted his hat nervously, before shouting her down when she tried to speak again. ‘Sorry to hear about your grandfather. And sorry to disturb you. I’ll be on my way.’

‘Glad to hear it. Goodnight.’

The door crashed home, and with it Phil’s dreams. All he’d wanted was another hour away from his brother at home. Maybe a few alcoholic beverages to make it a little easier to take when he did have to see him again.

‘Phil! Phil!’

Unfortunately, he didn’t even get the walk home to prepare himself.

It was Mark, wide-eyed and curious as ever. ‘Are you going to the pub? You left your mobile at home!’

‘Sorry, must’ve been an accident.’

Mark held the phone out, and Phil took it out of his hand carefully. He was going to snatch it, but that would have been risky. He didn’t want to trigger some kind of hysterical crying fit.

Still, nor did he bother saying much else. They ambled back to the house, Phil shivering occasionally at the cold and the other never noticing it. For a moment, Phil considered complaining at his wife for not keeping Mark at home, but even that would cause too much hassle.

That was this week’s story. If you wish to somehow use it on some other website, do email me rather than stealing it outright and I imagine I’ll agree. Unless your website scares me.

NaNoWriMo – Afterthoughts

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A while ago now, I wrote a post saying I was considering doing NaNoWriMo in November. As you’ll probably know if you read my Facebook/Twitter updates in that period, or even spoke to me in real life (gasp), I ended up doing it. And then, I “won” it.

Not just based on the criteria outlined in that original post, no, I ended up doing the full fifty thousand. Why? Do I regret it? Did I learn anything? Well, in order to make my post understandable in an increasingly short-spanned world, I have broken this down into three points.

1) I need a better laptop.

Not the most interesting of discoveries, but probably the most important. My laptop, for those who haven’t encountered it, is massive, old and was bought on eBay for less than a hundred pounds about five years ago, so could well be approaching its tenth birthday. Here’s a picture of said laptop compared to a lovely modern MacBook Air.

Performance-wise, it does suffice, since it can run Word as long as I don’t use anything else at the same time. In terms of concentrating on my writing, this could be a good thing.

The reason it may get pensioned off anyway is the battery-life, which is non-existent. Once removed from power, we’re talking minutes. This was tolerable most of the time, as when I went to these communal writing events, other people had power extensions, but sometimes, major inconvenience to myself or others was caused. If I’m going to continue going to such things post-NaNo (and I might), it’s time to upgrade.

2) Other NaNo people are, it turns out, pleasant

So, yeah, I actually went to those meet-ups and it turns out other people who do NaNo in London are friendly. I’ve done the challenge a few times before, but usually as an exercise in typing away in isolation, with slight encouragement from my friend up the road.

Well, said friend dropped out of any kind of competition after about a week this year, and has also moved to Oxford, so I thought it might be interesting to go and encounter others. Not to mention, at the time I was still entirely unemployed and looking for any encouragement to stop procrastinating.

And yes, everyone was welcoming, I eventually learnt people’s names and have a few new people to talk to on Twitter, and what more could you want from anything? (If you’re me and have a skewed sense of priorities.) Oh, and one of them ended up getting a job in my office. See, if I hadn’t socialised during NaNo, an aspiring author in London might still be unemployed.

3) I also did some actual writing

Yeah, the part where I wrote fifty thousand words. As I muttered in the previous blog post, I was going to try some kind of quality-over-quantity drive, in which I produce less at a more focused speed. That obviously went out the window in the latter days, especially the final few in which I wrote approximately five thousand words each day.

Does this mean the last 15K or so will just be deleted? Very possibly. I have shown a range of earlier chapters to people and had varying feedback (ranging from “this is really good” to “this is awful, just start again”), so there will be extensive re-writes. But I am aiming to try and keep a more ongoing rewrite process going, and end up with something that doesn’t need as many years of edits to become worthwhile.

Having said all that, I have been utterly fatigued since finishing. This and the last three or four Dork Adore reviews have been the only writing I’ve really done. I’m hoping to get back into it soon, though. We’ll see. It was definitely a positive experience, anyway.

And congrats to anyone who stuck with the whole of this blog post. More to the point, congrats to anyone who took part in NaNo, win or lose. It was a good time.

NaNoWriMO – Vascillation Continues

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I’ve been back and forth on doing NaNoWriMo in 2010 for some time now. It is always fun, but also stressful, life-consuming and tends to leave me with manuscripts that are based on decent ideas, but not really well written enough to do anything with. At least, not without ridiculously extensive editing.

Around two weeks ago, I concluded I’d probably try and get a chunk of words done on a new novel in November, but would have to play somewhat fast and loose with the official NaNo rules. I’ve always done this anyway, as I never actually finish the stories in the allotted 50,000 words.

So, I have made up some ridiculously complex personalised rules for myself. I won’t bore you with them, but it involves trying to do about 1,000 words a day, then read over them to make the writing less clunky. And if I miss a day, so be it. No cumulative backlog power-dumps.

This means I’m likely to end up writing… maybe 25 – 30,000 words at an absolute maximum? Which, by NaNo standards, is crap, but is a decent chunk on a new novel and might help me decide if this story idea is working. And hopefully they will be words I don’t venomously hate.

So, yeah, I’m doing NaNoWriMo very badly. Good luck to those of you doing it properly and if you wish to add me on the official NaNoWriMo site, feel free.

(Also, I’m so busy tomorrow with regular blogging/MA stuff that I may not even get my words done. On the first day. This hardly bodes well.)