I won Script Frenzy. Look!

Once my characters started marching toward their denouement, the story happened pretty quickly. This morning, I wrote until they were done. And the story is done; again, it needs a lot of work to get it up to snuff, but for my first screenwriting effort, I'm pretty proud of it.

Since I did NaNoWriMo just after my last birthday, I have finished a novel, a screenplay and six short stories. I can't express what an accomplishment this is; before that, I really had never finished anything. I had a major block about writing, even though I knew I could do it. I would read crappy books that had been published and think, why aren't you doing this? But I never did...

And now I am.

Maybe I'll never be a published author, but I'm now at least making an effort to be one.

And that feels really good.

Well, there are four days left in Script Frenzy (remember? 100 page screenplay in 30 days) and I can see the finish line.

Here is my writer page. As you can see, tonight I hit 82 pages. I wrote 14 pages today, so I'm able to write a lot more pages in a single day. Partly because of the formatting or maybe the fact that it's mostly dialogue and less description, but this seems way easier than NaNoWriMo was. I'll do as much as I can tomorrow, and I see no reason I won't finish before Wednesday.

Moreover, I actually like my story. My NaNoWriMo story was a mess by the end, because I hadn't really thought it out and just kept changing things up. In this case, I kind of knew what my story was about, and because I'd done a short story, I already sort of knew my characters. Granted, one of the secondary characters (Rob) in that story turned into the main character of the screenplay, and this will need a couple of rewrites before it's ready for the light of day...but I can see what this will become.

And I like it. :)

I've got 20 more pages to go, and things are looking pretty dire for Rob. The clock is ticking on the big destructive thing he has to stop; he's separated from his friends and all alone. His friend who is the big fighter is apparently dead, and his "deus ex machina" - Neil - has just been captured by the bad guys.

I have 20 pages to save his skin...

To be "on track" for ScriptFrenzy, I need to write 3.3 pages per day. (100 pages divided by 30 days in April.) Today, the 13th, that would put me at 43.3 pages.

As of this morning, I was at around 26.

I just finished up to 21 pages today, to put me at 47 pages overall. So, I not only caught up, but I'm a little ahead. And definitely on track to be at the halfway mark by April 15th.

The story is coming along well, too. My "heroes" just had their first "test" of their abilities, and I've introduced all of the team of main characters, as well as the main villain. I have also introduced our heroes' arch-nemesis. So, it's all going according to plan...

(My actual screenplay-writing, from a formatting standpoint, is crap, but I figure that part I can go back and tighten up - as long as the story's decent.)

I passed the 1/4 mark today: 26 pages.

It's going pretty well. Some parts are kind of lame, but that's to be expected when writing a draft - especially a draft at this pace. And some of it is actually quite good; the piece I wrote tonight was unexpected (for me, at least) and was pretty interesting.

It never ceases to amaze me when a story starts to tell itself, and you have no idea how it got there...

Well, I've gone and done it again.

First it was NaNoWriMo. Now it's ScriptFrenzy. The goal? A 100-page screenplay by the end of April.

I've actually never written a screenplay before, and since I just decided to compete today, I've had to take a crash course in formatting. I'm sure I'll need to do a lot of editing to it once it's done. But I like the idea of learning a new style of writing, and since there's no pressure, it's a good way to learn and see if I like it.

Plus, I've written a novel using this method...why not a screenplay? If I win this, and keep up with my GenreChallenge short stories, by the time I reach my next birthday, I will have written a novel, a screenplay and 12 short stories since my last one. Not a bad tally, especially since my birthday goal was to write more this year. :)

On the screenplay, I'm actually taking one of my GenreChallenge stories and expanding it. It's the superhero one: HeroCorp. It seemed ripe for expanding, and a lot of people wanted to know more about the characters, so it seems like a good choice.