Binary Bonsai

So I’m a bit late with declaring bachelor weekend, but hey…

Rikke was off home to her mom friday, and I’ve been secured in front of the computer ever since, going out only to stock up on Coke and… ehm, well just Coke actually.

Now I had actually planned to spend this bachelor weekend writing, but somehow I got sucked into K2 instead and I ended up not only moving the entire project to Google Code Hosting, but also fixing some bugs and adding some new features and—who would’ve thought—even working on the documentation wiki. It’s looking very solid at the moment. There are a few quirks here and there, but a new proper release is on its way soon. Very soon.

Anyway, about that writing. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been taking a dramaturgi class in relation to work, and it’s positively enlighting and inspirational. At the same time I’ve read most of Robert McKee’s Story and what better way to get some experience than to put these new skills (or wannahave skills) to the test by actually creating and working on a project?

So I’ve dived in and started laying out what is basically a film. That is, I’m thinking of it as being a film and I’m writing it in script format. It is of course a science fiction film, in case you were wondering, and it will most certainly turn out to be absolute crap. But practice makes perfect and all that.

The most interesting observation thus far has been just how much procrastination I can do before I finally settle down and work on it. The second-most interesting observation is how gripping it is to get lost in your own little fictional world, regardless of how banal or meaningless it might be. And since you were wondering, the third most interesting thing, which probably turns out to be the most useful, is how I’ve learned a new way of approaching the concept of writing a piece of fiction.

I mean let’s face it, I’ve wanted to write the next Star Wars since I was a kid; who hasn’t? And sure, I’ve had the idea many times over, and fueled by the drive to just write the shit out of that sucker, I’ve sat down at the computer/paper and… nothing.

Well, it turns out the trick is: index cards.

Yep, index cards, like the ones the libraries used to have back in the day (and still have most places, hidden away). I went out and bought about a hundred or so of them as well as a nice leather box to hold them as well as a new eraser and stick-on tabs for indexing the ehm… index cards.

And this is probably old hat to some of you, but I’ll be damned if I ever learned this in school. For writing a screenplay, which is of course at its smallest component divided into scenes, you then write the outline of a scene on a card. Where it begins, where it ends and what the turning point is, as well as any notes that might go along with it. But keep it simple.

You of course need an idea of where you want to go with each scene and in turn each sequence, and one by one you lay out the scenes so they align to each other and click with each other as needed. And because index cards are cheap and you haven’t expended a lot of energy writing the scene in detail (why would you?), you can shove them to the back of the box if you decide against a particular scene. Brilliant!

Yes, you could do it digitally, but personally I like the analog feel of actually having the components of the story between my fingers, being able to move it around on the tabletop.

Then, when you’re done for the day, pack the deck of scenes, in order mind you, into the storybox and pick it up again at some later time…

Which is where I’m at now, after having spent the last 12 hours saying “I’ll write in just a sec, I just need to do this thing with K2 first…”.

I’m now officially tired and spent. But I am nonetheless determined to get some work done on my story before my brain turns in for the night, damn the torpedoes!