Bad Company: The Script Frenzy!

It's been way too long since I posted here. The reason? I got way too wrapped up in FAWM! Well, after 38 songs, 24 of them recorded, and after nearly missing out on NaNoEdMo, I'm working to complete the first draft of Bad Company again. This time, for Script Frenzy, I'm writing not one but two scripts: the movie, and the graphic novel! And I'm drawing the latter, and may even release it in regular installments (the frequency depends on how fast I can draw) as a webmanga like Spanner.

I have these periods when I can hardly write anything (like 4 whole months last year), and others in which I get so obsessed with something that I can't do anything else. In February and March this year, that obsession was FAWM. February was the month in which I discovered I can actually write songs, and write them well. I don't have the guitar or keyboard skills to actually play those instruments yet, so I used TuxGuitar and my MIDI keyboard to simulate a rock band. The result sounds okay, but the MIDI-simulated rock guitar is only satisfactory, and the simulated acoustic guitar is even worse! I'll eventually redo all my songs with real guitar and keyboard parts, and they'll sound tons better.

Here's my FAWM profile for those who want to listen to the songs I've recorded so far. But when 50 Songs in 90 Days, which FAWM will be hosting again this year, comes around, my profile will be reset along with everybody else's, so the best way to access all my songs will be at my Space Helmet Records site, which I'll update soon.

Meanwhile, I'm thoroughly replotting BadCo, preparing the story for the novel's first complete draft, and for its movie and comics adaptations for Script Frenzy. So far, I've changed the conflict dynamics. Since I'll need to dedicate an entire post to this, I'll sum it up: The great weakness of the standard political thriller is that it makes you believe that one person can bring down a vast and deadly conspiracy. Yeah, if you're Superman and they don't have a stash of Kryptonite on 'em. But there's one political thriller in particular, The Parallax View (Wikipedia, IMDB), that shows what really happens when a lone hero goes up against such a conspiracy: (spoiler alert) he's not only killed, but erased from existence by that conspiracy (in this case, the US government, this being shortly after Watergate). And you think the Parallax Corporation is monstrous and evil? Well, you ain't seen Dictel! And Bad Company is set during the last days of the Bush Administration, so Dictel has been so thoroughly embedded in the federal government that there's no way to tell where the government ends and Dictel begins. So no lone hero, and not even a crack hero team, can even hope to survive Dictel's unholy wrath. Thus, the only hope is to expose Dictel's crimes and true nature to the people, and strike up mass opposition to the company's schemes, especially the full-scale invasion of America the company launches after its favored candidate, John McCain, loses the 2008 election.

While I'm speedwriting my 2 (or more) scripts for Script Frenzy, I'm also taking part in the April 50-Hour Editing Challenge at NaNoPubYe. I'm making sure that first complete draft of Bad Company is complete, no matter what!

And so I return to the struggle. I'll get this BadCo thing finished yet!

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