scottStories

I did it. I completed the first draft of The Collection last Friday with half an hour to spare. What’s more, I’m very satisfied with what I’ve got and today have started polishing from the top. I will be finished the “first rewrite” by this Friday, and beyond finding a way to cut 15-20 of its 140 pages, it should be fairly easy going. As I’ve said before, I’ve been working on this story for the better part of three years and taken it through several different inceptions. To do anything radical at this stage would convince me that I have no intention whatsoever of ever establishing a writing career. No, it’s time to push the birdy out of the nest – by now, it should be able to build it’s own damn nest on the way down.

I’m currently reading Icon, a comprehensive look at the work of Frank Frazetta. It’s helped a lot as I tend to approach my stories much like a painter approaches a painting: holistically, and with a specific palette suited to my vision. In a number of cases, Frazetta was forced by an editor to complete a painting by a specific date, only to go back to it once it was published to rework it more to his liking. That taught me a lot about how I should approach my writing. In every case, when I’ve finished a story it is done. Finito. I have no more use for it and nothing left to say. But that’s because I’ve taken all the time I’ve needed to get to that point. In a sense it’s an exorcism, and when Pizuzu has left town for other lodgings, he’s well and truly gone. I have some very clear purposes behind everything I write, and even though it may take me a while to satisfy them, once I have I feel relieved. Right now is one of those times. There is still some work to do, but more akin to rearranging the furniture than designing the entire room.

That’s not to say I don’t look forward to a day where I am under pressure to produce, and forced into turning over something that may satisfy the whims and purposes of another, or perhaps a team of others. Sometime that’s easier, because the parameters have been set and you can simply play with the limits of what’s available. When the limits are set by the writer, a project can often become unwieldy and lose focus. This story had those stages in its development, but seeing as it was only my inner harsh critic that it had to please, it was perfectly fine if it lay in pages of notes and various drafts humming with potential. However, today, I am happy to report, for all intents and purposes, The Collection exists as a complete draft. Sweet.

But I have learned a valuable lesson. Deadlines must die. They cannot rise again to eat away at your brain, causing you to lock yourself away in a boarded up basement forever. If I may offer a bit of advice, set them and keep to them. Doing so will force you to batten down your plot points and cinch up you characters, distilling a sea of literary opportunity into a wave of essential, narrative power. It will also force you to move forward when it is easier to drift sideways and be thrown off course. Fight until that hour of death is upon you and then take your draft and put a bullet in its brain. Once you’re through, start another, set a new one and do the same.

It’s been said that creative projects are never finished, only abandoned, and I agree to a point. But I still believe there is an essence that can be achieved that says to me that a project has fully matured. In terms of The Collection, I think I’m there. Now…

…BANG.

…when we practice to deceive. I had a teacher once who used to exclaim that anytime someone in class tried to offload a bunch of bullshit. And while writing a story isn’t exactly the same thing, it’s very close. If you’re trying to do too much at the start of the thing – interweave too many plots, take on too much science, work a myth too hard – the outcome is much the same. And right now, gentle people, I’m fucking mired.

You see that velvet Frazetta rip-off to your left? Well, that’s what I feel like right now: a cheese-up of all the right elements with none of the original genius. In fact, I feel like those subhumans summiting the velvety peak are my plot lines and character bits coming back to get me. Now, I could wrap things up by going to the old bag of tricks and plastering them over holes like scraps of duct tape until it all holds together, but frankly I’d rather chew off my own bollocks. It must remain as organic as possible if the tone is going to work. If I have to overly contrive something, bonsai a plot or two to get my characters where they need to be, or invite some deity into the machine, it must have resonance and stand alone as an iconic piece of creative chicanery. If I have to do a little soft shoe to get out of any expository dialog holes it must at least dazzle a bit before I come into the crowd, puppy-eyed, hat in hand.

I’ve spent the better part of three months on this script, and three years before that slowly pulling it together. I will tell you right now that that is way too long to devote to any project that won’t fly to the moon or cure a disease. The reason being, it gives you plenty of time to add clay until you’ve gone from a finely sculpted concept to a big, clay thing with odd bits of ideas so jammed into it that it looks like one of those crappy cupcakes from one of those crappy birthday parties where the parents thought “more” meant “love”; it doesn’t suck exactly, but the effect is so numbing and ultimately unappetizing that you just don’t want to bite into it.

I haven’t given up, and I won’t. In fact, a lot of my frustration is probably due to the fact that I’m far too close to it. And perhaps trying to polish every beat until it gleams with brilliance is not only impossible, but highly unnecessary. Maybe I need to relax and let a moment of dialog take center stage in order to spice up what might be construed as one of your more well-worn, but more than serviceable twists. As a reader, there are plenty of times where we prefer some narrative momentum to show-stopping, mind-blowing creativity, especially towards the end of a story, which is where I sort of am right now. And as long as the ending satisfies the investment that has been asked of us, we tend to appreciate the work as a whole – maybe even go back and revisit those moments where it felt the most fresh and original.

Well, I feel anything but fresh and original at the moment. But somehow I’m getting through it and I can only hope that it makes a sort of easy sense that still requires one to do some work, although not too much work that it becomes too much like work, does that work for you?

My deadline is Friday.

About a year or so ago I was looking to buy a painting. In fact, I’m still looking. I wanted something strong, inspiring – something that I could consider an investment. Given my penchant for horror and fantasy, I at least knew that I wanted it to provoke in a manner that would make most people uninitiated in my offbeat artistic tastes shiver a bit. I’m like that, you see.

In my looking around, I came across the works of Michael Hussar, a true dark genius who managed to stir something deep within my bones where my nightmares are stored. What struck me most was his ability to create fresh and frightening characters that felt plucked from fables hidden in some ancient, underworld library. They were begging for stories to be told about them – begging to come alive. I thought, “Wow, what if they could come alive? What would they say? Would they like me? Would they want to eat me…or kiss me?” You know, all the stuff everyone asks when they see a piece of art.

The image above is a painting by Hussar called Daddy’s Girl. I loved it from the moment I laid eyes on it. What could be going on inside this artist to imagine such a being? Is she good or evil or something else? She certainly seems overtly sexual and vain, which suggested to me a haughty pride that might make nut-shelling her a bit difficult. And what on earth was she eating? Instantly I began imagining her coming alive, the sound of her voice, her intentions. She was alluring and repulsive, and I knew that the combination of those sensations bubbling beneath the surface of my soul meant a story was coming. That story, as you’ve probably guessed, is The Collection. And she inspired one of the paintings that my main character, Patrick, brings to life. Her name is “Toxic Trixie, the Poisonous Prostitute”, and while the challenge of creating someone that evoked Daddy’s Girl without copying her (as, of course, I couldn’t show her unless I made the film myself with Hussar’s help and permission) stuttered my progress and muted my initial rapture, I was on my way, driven by the need to bring her to life and show her to the world.

I still feel that same need, however the story is no longer as much about those characters manifest as much as it is about how they add to our understanding of the painter himself. There are other Hussar paintings that have inspired characters in The Collection, and I’ve certainly tried to incorporate the tone of his paintings into my narrative, but screenplays are limiting for a number of reasons. Try being too esoteric with your imagery and you can lose someone easily. You have few words and even less time to implant an image into someone’s head, and as sad as it might sound, I find the need to err to the familiar and broad in order to keep the momentum of the story. As I’ve said before, I’m a filmmaker at heart, and if it were up to me I would abandon this script if Hussar were to call me and ask me to develop a film with him using his images. But since that’s unlikely to occur, I have to take the gift of his vision and use it to create one of my own that will work within the purposes of my medium.

I can do that. I will do that.

Halfway there, and loving it.

The name refers to a character in The Collection who feels “trapped” inside a body that, due to social pressure, she’s been compelled to hide. However, my main character Patrick, an artist with a taste for the unusual, thinks she’s the most amazing looking human being he’s ever laid eyes on. He feels this so much so, that it affects his plans to save his brother who is being sent into a mine standoff that will almost surely take his life. It’s his loving relationship with her, conducted entirely incognito via her blog, that keeps his demons – and by direct association – his dark powers at bay. And then…

…well, I don’t want to say just yet. But I was truly inspired by the photo you see above, and the way that beauty can be perceived in so many different ways. In our world, and to an extreme the world in The Collection, shapeshifting and nothing being what it seems has a devastating impact on society and how we define relationships. Therefore, for me, finding someone who is so much at the mercy of what they are on the outside has an endearing, almost liberating effect, regardless of whether they prove “good” or not. Sheridan covers up her freckles to fit in (and to protect her from a “sun that’s trying to kill her”), but they have already carved out her personality and made her who she is; her “spots” cannot be changed, forcing her to accept to a large degree who she is inside from a very young age. Patrick thinks she’s quite striking, and we watch his remote pursuit of her with both heartening optimism and deep anxiety. Knowing that his emotions are so precariously balanced to begin with, and now dangerously attached to the ebb and flow of this unique and yet, at its core, deceptive love fills us with a sort of charmed dread. Well, that’s the idea anyway.

Anyhow, I discovered this photo a long time ago and find it very intriguing that this young woman has her picture “out there”, yet has never been identified. It’s almost as if she doesn’t really exist, a whimsical notion that practically begged me to give her an identity of my own. I believe it was a stock image used for commercial advertising, but it’s also very much a picture of a woman who must have had a very unique perspective on life. If this entry finds her, thank you so much for inspiring an important and interesting character and sincere apologies in advance if she misses your essence entirely. In fact, in many ways, I hope she does.

One final note: I finished watching Pan’s Labyrinth and was very pleased with it overall. I also found it interesting that two of the three sequences surrounding her tasks were kept very brief, serving to give us the creeps and support the main narrative in small, but poignant ways. Not only did they serve the story in an important role in terms of structure, they also gave the film the fanciful tone that elevated it away from what was in the end a harsh and unforgiving tale. In pacing the more fanciful sequences in The Collection, I also found that I wanted them to comment more on the changes in my main character, as opposed to simply adding some harrowing action to a dark superhero yarn with cautionary undertones. Hopefully, as I approach one quarter of the way into my first draft, I’m succeeding.

Back under, I go.

I’ve just begun watching Pan’s Labyrinth, the fairytale set in post-Civil War Spain, that tells the story of a girl named Ophelia who is given three tasks by a mysterious faun. Meanwhile, her stepfather, the fascist Captain Vidal, viciously hunts for rebels in the region, and her pregnant mother grows ill. After hearing so many wonderful things about the film, I was both excited and apprehensive about popping it into my player. You know the drill: better than average film receives ridiculous hype and sets expectations wildly off scale. Well, I can say I’m both heartened and encouraged by what I’ve seen so far.

Not only am I finding it spectacular looking and refreshingly entertaining, I’m thrilled about its multi-genred approach to storytelling and its fearless ability to slip from delicate innocence into sudden and graphic violence. My story, The Collection, is also set against the backdrop of war, only one in a fictional future where the draft has been reinstated, and conflicts over a new fuel can erupt anywhere at anytime. I think the pervasive tone of paranoia and violence calibrates an audience to any number of horrible things, and it’s okay if large portions of the narrative want to escape into a tone of dark fantasy. It must be noted that this is a foreign import marshalled by Guillermo del Toro, and I’m sure Warner Brother’s didn’t have any problem distributing it due to his pedigree after laying eyes on the final cut. In starkly contrasting circumstances, my story will be in written form and my name will not be such that would instill the confidence required to answer an email. Yet.

Still, there is the chance that the success of such a film will see my pitches received with a bit more focused attention. Similarly, my logline and synopsis may pique the interest of a few more industry players as well, due to some similar tones, genre play and plot elements. Hollywood loves a bandwagon, and perhaps they’ll find it in their financial interest to begin to collect violent fantasy properties with troubled, yet sympathetic characters who, despite one’s political leanings, are simply victims of our inability as human beings to share common goals thereby forcing us to kill one another. Ahh…can’t you feel the magic?

Anyway, The Collection rolls along and, despite some interruptions of the real life variety, I still believe in it and I’m pleased with my progress. At this point in the tale, my main character, Patrick, has begun a domestic downward spiral into what he can only describe as “hell…for hell”. He’s also had a frightening incident where he’s been locked in a dark shed by…something. Later today, if I’m lucky and the phone stops ringing, he’ll find out what that something is when it gives him some unsolicited assistance against his violent, bullying step-father. In a flash, Patrick will go from hopelessly powerless, to infused with a power so fierce that he can only begin to understand it.

Yeah…back to it.

Today I’m going back into my screenplay/graphic novel script about a teenage painter whose creations come to life thanks to their exposure to a new type of gasoline called Ultratest. The story is called The Collection: Legend of Fortunate Son. Why am I announcing it to you? I dunno, really. Maybe because the process I use to create my worlds puts me very much into a trance. My thoughts become so focused that I’m worthless when it comes to normal human interaction. I may respond to you, but like that brilliant line from Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, “I’m simply not there”.

So if you’re looking for me, come back later.

The Collection calls up a lot of brooding and isolating feelings that I have stored in my creative reserves and that also plays a part in my social self-exile. My main character, Patrick (oddly enough) is a lonely and angry 17 year-old on the cusp of drafting age. You see, the story takes place in the recent future where the draft has been reinstated and the world is in constant conflict over a new and very powerful crude oil that has been discovered. His brother’s been culled from society to fight in it, and Patrick could be next. However, he doesn’t strike anyone as soldier material, as he’s rather small and frail and spends all his time locked away in his basement bedroom/studio painting all sorts of macabre and horrific subject matter. To make matters worse, Patrick’s just been enrolled at a private school where the rich and connected are, for all intents and purposes, babysat, sheltering them from the horrors of the world. If he does well there, he may find his way out of the same fate that has taken his beloved brother. However, he’s strongly against attending the school, and in part due to the torturous bullying he receives there, seems bent on letting the opportunity to join the “favorite sons” slip right by. His only refuge is his art. With it, he channels his various demons into his creations, and if they are anything to go on, this boy is more than a little tetched. When by accident he discovers a way to bring them to life, he goes from powerless to powerful in an instant – like a terrorist cell of one stumbling across an arsenal of atomic weaponry. And believe me, this lad’s got a few bones to pick.

But instead of going on a huge, bloody tirade (and this is where things become more “fantasy” than “horror”), his attempted response is more thoughtful and muted thanks to the grounding influence of a few people in his life that love him – his mother, his uncle, and a fellow misfit at school. With some success he experiments with his new found power as he attempts to understand who he really is and even pursues a closeted square peg love interest whom he is convinced belongs in the portrait of his life. But despite his best efforts, his demons still have a way of touching his reality and tragically setting things in motion. As well as a fanciful and spooky yarn that uses fantastic elements to chill and thrill a reader, it’s a cautionary tale about sudden power and the dangers of possessing it without intensive introspection and meditation. Its also a story, I hope, about the effects a culture of ubiquitous violence can have on a family and one’s own indentity in the modern age.

Having already completed a very detailed treatment stage, all that is left to do is immerse myself into the myth and construct the blueprint in the most engaging and entertaining way possible. I want it to excite our imaginations, yet ring true somewhere inside. I also want its themes to resonate without preaching, forcing us to question who and what we are as individuals and as global citizens. But if I just manage to draw one person into where I’m about to disappear, I promise an extreme experience of kick-ass storytelling. That’s my first reponsibility, and really why I bother to do this at all.

Oh, and there’s a very good reason you see Edward Furlong up there. I’ll explain later.

See you all when I come up for air.