Progress report.
I’ve made decent progress over spring break, unfortunately, I’ve run into some writers block, meaning that working out scenes has been difficult, and I haven’t made as much progress on the actual writing as I might have liked. However, this has given me an opportunity to further flush out characters, as well as learn more about typical writing conventions and proper formatting of scripts.
As far as problems go, as I just mentioned, I’ve run into a few. Firstly, I’ve only really been able to write one scene in the time I expected to be able to finish two, however, I spoke to my mentor and got the great advice of “most of the time, when there’s a problem in a script, it only started one or two lines before”, this is great advice I will bring with me into the writing of the next few scenes. If I work on scheduling my time better, so I’m writing in shorter bursts instead of longer writing sessions, I hope to be able to make up for lost time.
I have discovered that there is a very large difference between the formatting of a novel and a script. I learned a lot about how to format a novel last year, but i have found the formatting of a script to be significantly more difficult. There are more specific rules to follow when working with a script then a novel, and it’s been quite a steep learning curve. This has been an obstacle as I’m still not sure how to do the correct style of formatting in word, so for now, my rough drafts are formatted as close to correct as i can get them, but will remain not correct while i research a better platform to use.
Despite the afore mentioned difficulties, my mentor meetings have been going very well (other than a few scheduling issues). We’ve discussed formatting, climaxes and touched upon how to write effective dialogue, and she has offered me many great resources.
Evidence of progress.
This is a rough draft of scene two, act one. It is not formatted correctly.
We see another down room. It is cleaner, looks larger and has more furniture. Sitting on a couch center stage we see Kelsey, sitting comfortably, scrolling her phone. From stage right we hear a knock
Kelsey
Who is it?
Autumn (off stage)
Autumn
Kelsey
(standing up and walking towards the door. She looks through the peep hole and we hear several locks be unlocked) hey autumn
Autumn
(steps in hesitantly) hey dude
Kelsey
(reaches out and fist bumps autumn) I’m glad you came
Autumn
Yeah, uh, about that
Kelsey
What?
Autumn
I brought a couple friends, if that’s ok
Kelesy
(hesitantly) sure
Autumn
Come on in guys
(lian enters first. Kelesy moves a few steps back to centre stage as atheyllia and ryan enter, atheyllia looks nervous, but friendly, ryan looks hesitant and angry)
Lian
(reaching out to shake Kelseys hand) hi! I’m Lian
Kelesy
(looking confusedly at autumn) who’s this?
Autumn
Uh, my friends?
Kelsey
Yeah, I’m going to tell you all right now that you’re not down with what I had planned
Ryan
I told you guys. Let’s go
Lian
Hey, we should at least hear her out. What’s the plan kels!
Kelsey
Dear god please don’ call me “kels”. And I wasn’t planning on letting you all hear me out. Autumn, I’ve got a plan, the two of us can probably pull it off. Thanks for coming you guys, but the grown ups are going to talk now
Autumn
Whoa, dude, just explain the damn plan to them, trust me, worst case scenario we all walk out of here like nothing happened
Kelsey
You really think so?
Autumn
Yeah, I do.
Kelsey
(annoyed) fine, give me 24 hours, if you’re all still interested, I’ll come by your dorm
Autumn
(looking for a group reaction) ok. We can work with that
Ryan
I’m out
Atheylla
Me too, no offence, but this seems suspect
Lian
C’mon guys, it’ll be fine
Kelsey (speaking only to autumn)
Fyi, the next 24 hours are going to be a lot like this. I’ll call you tomorrow around 9? If they seem interested I’ll bring over my plans
Autumn
Thanks. Alright guys, let take this argument on the road. Bye Kelsey
(Kelsey nods goodbye and exists stage right. Lian and autumn exit stage left)
Ryan
She’s definitely known Kelsey longer than she’s saying
Aythella
You’ve gotta trust her for once
Ryan
Fine, I’ll try
(they both exit)
What has been the most difficult part of your mentoring so far? Why?
Finding times when we’re both available to meet. We both have relatively busy and often conflicting schedules. Between assorted extracurriculars, unpredictable commutes and often changing school schedules, there is only really one time we can fairly consistently meet at (although even that time hasn’t always worked). We haven’t been meeting as often as I would like, although, unfortunately at this point, our current meeting schedule is all that’s working.
What is working well? Why?
I feel like me and my mentor have similar interests (which makes sense given that she’s been my mentor two years in a row on two different topics). We understand references that the other person makes and often strategies that she’s developed for herself, such as one to help with writers block, work for me as well. I think since we think similarly and have similar interests, our meetings are often highly efficient.
What could be working better? how can you make sure this happens?
I think we have occasionally had the issue at meetings of me not having enough topics prepared, we’ll often schedule a longer meeting then I have questions to fill, I think to remedy this issue, we could exchange emails to become up with a plan for the next meeting so we know what topics to cover and make sure we have enough material to fill a whole meeting.