Spanner R5 #amediting Update: The #amprocrastinating Is Almost Over

When FAWM came around this year, I decided to take a break from editing Spanner Book 1. That "break" lasted into the next month, making it two months I haven't done a single edit. Maybe a few notes, but no editing. I've decided to end the break soon, even though starting tomorrow I'm doing NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month), which takes place the same month the now defunct Script Frenzy used to. It won't exactly be Script Frenzy, though considering how fast I script, I could easily write a full 100+ pages of Spanner TV series script (the basis for the final Revision 5) even while I write 30 poems.

Here's another way Script Frenzy, NaPoWriMo, and Spanner intersect in my mind: in the Final Revision, I'm writing all dream and vision sequences in the form of poems. I originally made the decision last year during the long and difficult Chapter 1 edit because I was bored with dream sequences that read like I plagiarized them out of self-help dream books and it struck me that the best way to apply the Rule of Cool to them was to rewrite them as surrealist poems (the Surrealists, remember, were big into dreams). NaPoWriMo will give me a lot more practice writing poems, and I intend to apply whatever I learn to Spanner wherever I can. However, that goes in the novelization; for the script version, I'm following Alfred Hitchcock's example and using avant-garde film techniques, or as close to them as you can put into a TV script (the director, cinematographer, and editor will of course have to help your humble showrunner do the rest).

And so while I'm writing 30+ poems for April (and incidentally practicing singing the 28 FAWM songs I write), I'll be doing a one-man Script Frenzy on the Spanner Series 1 script as well. Here goes...

Spanner R5 #amediting Update: A New Attack on the Chapter 2 Mess

Every time I look at the current state of Spanner Chapter 2 in yWriter5, I have to admit it's a complete mess. Out of frustration, I took an alternative solution: adapt it back into a TV script in Celtx! It worked like a dream on 2.1. Then, looking back at the Revision 4 version, I had a sudden realization: 2.2 and 2.3 are in the wrong order! The events in "Ghost Hunting" properly follow those of the "homecoming" sequence in the final version of 2.1 and what in R4 is 2.3, especially since it covers a six-day period. So I picked through the many potential scenes that had been piling up over the past year, picked the ones I judged were the best fits for the R5 continuity, and turned them into 8 pages of script.

Now the script versions of 2.1 and 2.2 are complete. Some of the changes:

1. The "Leila comes to Bremerton" sequence that has been in the story since Revision 1 is no longer a group of scenes put together (dream, two flashbacks, and a scene in the present), but an intercut thread that takes all place in the story present. Now I slap my forehead and wonder why I didn't do that in Revision 2.
2. I made 2.1's victim, Tremayne, the villain of the week instead. Not only did I change the identity of the villain Rebel Styles kills through the TV screen in 2.1, I had her do it at the end of the opening scene, as a true TV-episode "teaser".
3. It's no longer just Leila who gets a dream scene. Shira does too, as part of the new "coming home" thread. Nike — that is, the victory goddess whose body is the corporation — tries to attack Shira in her own dreamspace. Followed by...
4. The "Call to Adventure" in the form of a literal phone call from Teachers Guild president (and Hope's archnemesis) Dr. Jenna Hunter to Shira. Shira accepts, of course, in the expectation that their respective plans will eventually collide. This is the first event in what will become the School Arc in Chapter 5.
5. The interrogation scene I put after "Ghost Hunting" in R4 is still the penultimate scene of 2.2, but now part of the "coming home" thread rather than the sequel to "Ghost Hunting". Shira tells her future Javert or Zenigata exactly why she pulled off the Spanner Incident — and why she'll get away with it.
6. In Chapter 1 R5 (finished but not yet posted), I turned Shira, Desiree, Elle, and Akimi into hoverboard racers. After the interrogation scene, it's not COPCO or CPMC that punishes them for the Spanner Incident, but the CEO of the Xtreme Racing League. And it's not for doing the crime, or even getting one of their number (R5 new character Rico X), but for doing it without his permission (read: the opportunity for him to profit off it, Corporates being Corporates). He fires them and claims their racing handles as his "intellectual property" which he's now forbidding them to use. This is Shira's cue to bring up Kitsap Kouriers:
   

   Elle: What'll we do now?

   Shira: Remember that courier place at Seventh and Park [in Bremerton]? They'll be more than happy to hire some off-season superstars.

7. And, looking at the unused yet named "index cards" in the Celtx project, 2.3 is about to begin with the end of the Leila thread, the actual homecoming in the "coming home" thread, and the introduction of the first of the nameless women (the mysterious Asian one; conveniently, as the new manager of Shira's apartment building).
8. Last but not least, the chapter name itself. Up until R4, it was "Sex Bomb". That's now the name of 2.6. The old name for 2.6 is now the chapter title: "The Dangerous Type".

Then there's "Ghost Hunting", which began as the entire Chapter 2 in R1. For 2.3 R5, I'm going to cut it apart into its constituent scenes and intercut in a series of new short scenes of Shira being interrogated by Locke, Diana, or J.T. in which she simultaneously denies being part of Rebel's assassination-by-TV of (now) minor villain Jesse Jameson and reveals just what kind of threat Rebel really is. So that's next up. After that, 2.4 and 2.5 should be easy enough before I get into the third and final real challenge of this editing session: 2.6, with its many flashbacks and its ending sequence from R4 that I'll be intercutting into it.

And so it continues...

Script Frenzy Day 2: In Which the Muse Changes My Script

Script Frenzy day 2. After I got home and posted my first Screnzy entry, I started writing. But the muse refused to write my visual novel script! She's still hyperfixated on Spanner. She wants me to adapt it, and she won't let me do otherwise.

And so I put my visual novel aside for now, and started Spanner where I left off last year. In other words, episode 4 and later. So I upgraded Celtx, signed up for their online cloud service (web app and cloud storage), and resumed writing the TV scripts. Starting with yesterday's Chapter 7 preview, no less. After that, I went back two chapters to write the climactic sequence to Episode 5, which so far I haven't yet written for the novelization's fourth draft. And then I went back again to start completing Chapter (Episode) 4.

Don't worry, though, visual novel fans! I'll still get to The Jennifer Theory. Thing is, I still have to climb my way up the learning curve first, and that's going to take a little time...

Script Frenzy 2011: Chaos Angel Spanner, The TV Series?!

I originally envisioned Chaos Angel Spanner as an ongoing comics series inspired by my favorite manga and anime. I attempted to write the comic's script for Script Frenzy 2008. It turned out to be my only Screnzy winner. Yet after a few good scenes, I ended up winging it. Then I started novelizing the script for JulNoWriMo and ended up changing just about everything, including the scene order. Certain scenes and storylines, I dropped altogether.

Now I'm coming full circle. I'm adapting the half-edited novel for Script Frenzy, this time as a TV series. I kind of gave up on comics, actually. For one thing, it's actually extremely difficult to create a comic, and I failed to learn how to draw. However, scriptwriting has always come easy to me. So why not write a script for another medium?

Actually, the reason I chose comics in the first place was because I always knew whatever I wrote would be unfilmable for strictly political reasons. Then I chose to write it as a novel for the same reason: there's things you can get away with in words that no one could ever get away with in pictures. And yet I'm adapting the novelization into a TV series? What's gotten into me?

Well, there's this series running on MTV called Skins. It's about teenagers on the bad side of town who get into sex and drugs. It pushes a lot of boundaries, including even limits on what's actually legal to show on TV. Since Spanner is in effect Max Headroom meets Skins by way of Reds or similar stories about revolution, my muse figured, "Why not?" and got me thinking about actually putting this five-volume controversy magnet on TV. In fact, she had me actually write the novel as a 23-episode TV series in prose...

And so I'm entering Spanner into Script Frenzy for the second time, this time as a TV series, or at least a pilot episode. And then I'll novelize the first season back, maybe even for the novel's second draft. Who knows, I might adapt the whole thing right back into a webcomic...