So if you know me a little bit, you know I’m very, very interested in that little thing called National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), put on by the fabulous people at The Office of Letters and Light (OLL). Starting in September I start getting excited, planning my October (which basically means planning for my planning for November). I tell everyone I know, I try to recruit new novelists, and I just generally ride this amazing euphoric roller coaster that’s all thrills and doesn’t end until December 10th or so.
If you’re involved with NaNoWriMo, you may be aware that the folks at OLL are now working hard to put on Script Frenzy, an April event where participants write 100 pages of script materials in 30 days for screenplays, stage plays, web series, TV shows, short films, and/or graphic novels. It’s the same kind of insane writing project that NaNoWriMo is (50,000+ words of fiction in 30 days), and there is an equally passionate following as there is for NaNoWriMo, I am sure.
I was surprised to realize today that I am totally not one of those people who gets excited about the possibility of writing a script for anything. Why surprised? Because it’s still writing, and I love writing. I love getting to be creative in just about any fashion, really.
But I don’t read scripts for fun. I’m betting nobody reads scripts for fun – I bet they read them to decide whether to create the script into its intended form, or to research how a script is made, or to see how the script varies from the finished product. And so in my head, what’s the point? It doesn’t seem fun if I can’t see a reasonable possibility of getting the finished product into the hands of consumers, whether the consumers are friends, film producers, graphic artists, or theater patrons.
IDGI*.
That said, I’ve been having the dilemma lately where ideas for my stories are very visual, and I’m thinking about them as if they were on screen instead of in words. I think to myself, “Self, it’s really too bad you don’t write scripts, because this just doesn’t translate very well to paper.”
So even though I just don’t get it, I’m still thinking that maybe I will give Script Frenzy a shot some year. Not this year – I’ve already got April writing plans. But some year. Maybe next year.
As for my assumptions about scripts – anyone care to prove me wrong, or share why Script Frenzy works for you?
*IDGI stands for I Don’t Get It, also the name of my laptop.
