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2008 guiding principles
February 10, 2008
lsgl - story development work
by sven at 7:00 am
Back in September, I promised myself I'd get back to work on Let Sleeping Gods Lie on January 15, 2008. And so I did.
Where I left off in autumn: thrashing around in Act II, trying to figure out how to tell the billion year history of the Elder Things cinematically. On my first day back, I did much the same... Experimenting with different visual looks -- but feeling like I was pretty much just flailing.
So, I've taken a step back. One of my mantras for 2008 is "hammer on the story." Novelists are encouraged to know the world that they're writing about inside-out. That's what I'm going to try to achieve with LSGL. I'm going to do my brainstorming in writing, until I've answered every question -- and what has to be shown on screen becomes perfectly obvious.
My second week back at work on LSGL, I set myself a big challenge: write 50 pages of story development within seven days... And so I did!
I wrote 51 pages -- 27,968 words -- in 17.25 hours, over the course of four days. My averages are: 3 pages per hour, 548 words per page, 1621 words per hour.
For comparison, during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) the goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Granted, doing story development is much different from writing a coherent narrative... But still, it pleases me to no end to think that I generated more than half a novel's worth of text in four days.
And, frankly, there's little doubt in my mind that I'll hit 50,000 before February's over. My goal this month is to know exactly what my final vision for LSGL is -- by the 29th. I've got a ways to go yet.
For the obsessively curious, here's your chance to read the story work I did in January:
- January 17 - 10.5 pages
- January 18 - 5.5 pages
- January 23 - 10.5 pages
- January 24 - 17.5 pages
- January 25 - 13.5 pages
- January 26 - 10 pages
(Total for January: 67.5 pages ... 37,181 words.)
posted by sven | February 10, 2008 7:00 AM | comments (4) | categories: let sleeping gods lie
Comments
Go, go, go!! :D
Ive only had time to read the first link but heres some thoughts...
I like the idea of lots of camera moves during Act 2, since you are scanning millions of years of history to pick up the main points, it makes sense visually for the camera to do the same.....
Im still developing the content of the 2-D scene for Unearthed, basically the same concept as youve got here, showing some kind of history in the contents of the tome....possibly how the giantess-cave was built/born, maybe the creation of the tome itself or maybe just an animated map showing Herbie where to go to find the cave....really Id like to incorporate all of these things, its just a matter of figuring out how....
and DUDE! tunnels!!.....my 2-D segment starts with a tunnel....Herbie unlocks the book, book flies open after a series of metallic clangs and vault-like sound fx...Herbie sees the image of a woman, hand drawn.....the drawing turns slowly to face herbie, moves closer, opens her mouth and we enter, a dark tunnel which ends at the beginning of the history, mentioned above....Im also trying to decide how to do the tunnel, handdrawn? stop-mo? shadow pup/props?
*I think Id like to see something involving the loss of wings, could be handled quickly but still be poignant
*I like the sections on 'spectacle', thats pretty much how I wrote the Jenny script...
Posted by: ubatuber at February 11, 2008 5:58 AM
oh my goodness, that's a lot of writing! it'll take me a while to get through it all. does your brain hurt yet? :)
Posted by: gl. at February 13, 2008 8:08 PM
I'm impressed. 'Nuf said. (Except I will put this on my list of things to read! - congratulations!)
Posted by: dot. at February 17, 2008 10:40 PM
holy cow. i think i expected more of a conclusion after all that, but it looks like you still have more questions than answers. one of my favorite ideas was having a chance to visually show how the elders think geometrically and how the shoggoth ruin the perfect order of their universe.
Posted by: gl. at February 19, 2008 11:39 PM