words

We writers are fond of deluding ourselves aren't we? - particularly about our own work. A little while ago in this very blog, I commented on some prep work for my own writing - "Being a monologue it is fairly organic - zapping easily back and forth between disparate places, people and incidents over time in a way a script could never do." See I wrote that just down there a few posts back.

Now I've had to rethink that 'in a way a script could never do' - why not? - I mean why ever not - why can't a script do that? In fact as the script progresses it is becoming more and more obvious that that this is exactly what it has to do - so yaa boo and sucks to whatever informed that thought. See the thinking process can be meandering, smug and not always correct . So here's to 'multi-layered temporality' or something like that - if I can get it right

I didn't ever want to have to mention Madeleine on this blog - but now I've done it so here goes. This whole weekend I've been glued to the Sky News Madeleine developments and over the last 24 hours have probably scrutinised every available analysis on the internet. It's not as though there's been a dearth of more interesting or pertinent social issues to follow (particularly here in South Africa!) But I do admit I've been a compulsive Madeleine news follower pretty much from the start - every new trail from Praia da Luz I've probably discussed at length with hub. My Madeleine interest is more to do with the way the story is playing out - with its twists and turns, highs and lows. At one point there was even a 'Schrödinger's cat' type paradox - when two sets of potential DNA results could have meant that Madeleine was dead and that she was alive (with both probabilities existing at exactly the same time.) Even Lynda la Plante's best split screen TV hasn't thrown up a conundrum like that..

And today I skimmed through hundreds of online Madeleine blog comments and conspiracy theories, commentaries and blog psychics reports and psychics' analyses and photographs and drawings. And the worst of all these things - something that really took my breath away and chilled my blood was a poem (posted a couple of months ago) & supposedly written to satirise the pseudo psychics - a poem written from the point of view of dead Madeleine - talking about 'why and how her mother killed her'... I won't go into detail but you can probably find it fairly easily....

And after that, I stopped looking - because I'd found what I was looking for - in all the stories and facts and fictions - here was something so awful, and nasty and compelling and vicious - that it almost rang true -and yet it was just words...

headway

Even though I've been blogging now for nearly a year, I don't think I've mapped the entire course of a new script before. The current project was mentioned when it was a mere one pager so I may as well carry on.

This hasn't been a typical way of scriptwriting. The one page contained a word on which most of the story is pivoted - the word 'accident'. Then came the treatment - which was just a chronology of events that didn't really focus on either the character or story direction. More drastically, for some reason the treatment missed out the crucial word 'accident'.* Then a long monologue which told the entire story from the POV of the lead character and finally a flexible one page structural outline.

So now I'm finally writing the script and on page 12 so I'll keep updating on how its going.

Laters

* Hmm - so I suppose what I'm demonstrating here is that it is possible to completely forget the 'raison d'etre' for a story while getting lost in the detail.

finished

- well finally finished the monologue which rambled on for a whopping 26 pages in the end. Don't think I've ever done so much preamble before starting scripting but it has really helped focus the story. Now I'll move on to a one pager - mapping out the acts and key turning points - then finally on to the script.

I did up Lianne's meme but I've taken it down now.

In other news, I've been chasing up my plaque and euros. The latest from the accounts department in Lagos is that the euros are on the way to them (from Italy) before they send them on to me (by which time they may well be worthless)

Laters