2nd Draft

I've actually gotten some ideas for things to add to my script to expand it a bit that I'm excited about. I know my ending is too anti-climactic so I still have to work on that but right now I'm going back to the beginning and weaving in the new stuff. Hopefully that will help me come to a natural conclusion with more excitement.

2nd Draft

I'm editing my second draft, which is infinitely more fun for me than finishing the first draft. Now that I have all the crap out in the open I can tease out some okay stuff. My first draft was seriously under the page limit but I've written out a scene that was omitted plus some edits that have me over. I am perpetually overly brief with things. I need to expand.

Neglect

I've neglected my blog in the wake of my furious writing. I did not write as much last week as I intended, so I've had to make up for it this week. Unfortunately I was sick for a few days, so that didn't help, but in the end it was procrastination that did me in. It shall not conquer me again.

On the upside, I found some amusing Medieval riddles that sound dirty but aren't. I injected them in my script, whether or not that was a good thing I will find out soon enough.

Still no internet

I still don't have internet, and I won't till the sixteenth, but in a way that has helped me because I can't distract myself when I sit down at my computer. Being in the midst of crew preseason is also difficult because 3 practices a day is tiring, but I always get more work done when I'm busy. I've written more during preseason than before it.
Really have to admit that historical is more difficult than the quiet character drama I did for SW II. But even if it ends up being crap I think it's still a good challenge.

The hardest part, a problem which I never had before, is dialogue. It's a subtle dance to try to make someone sound like they are from the 14th century without going overboard.

Update

Update: reached the halfway point. I'm finding it very hard to stop myself from constantly shifting the plotline. For the second half of the script I have to be careful not to give into the temptation to revamp too much until I'm done, otherwise I get all confused.

Moving into my house this weekend, gonna be a bit busy.

Update

Hello, hello, updating on my dad's computer. Finally have a working computer but I don't have internet connection while I'm at home so I thought I'd update on here.
Wrote a lot, I'm making a concerted effort to add more action scenes, and I find it is extremely fun though I have trouble balancing between concise, screenwriting descriptions and visually interesting vocabulary.

On a side note, I saw District 9 this evening, and I really liked it. It's weird how expressive the CG guys can make fake eyes. Even though the aliens had no expressions, their eyes conveyed alot of feeling. Peter Jackson has a serious sympathy for unsavory creatures (King Kong, Golem, etc).

Progress

I'm closing in on Act I. I had to refresh my memory to make sure I was following the general three-act structure. I made a diagram and stuck it on my corkboard as a constant reminder.

Slowly the Black Death is creeping back into my story, I find it's helpful to establish the climate of the environment. I added a scene where Tanith stumbles upon a corpse of a plague victim in the beginning. Not sure if it was the right way to go but I'm gonna keep it in for now.

Back in the saddle

Soo, my sister took my mom and I to Puerto Rico this past weekend. It was nice but I'm too much a slave to my routine to really appreciate it the way some other people would.

I've been reading William Gibson/Bruce Sterling novel "The Difference Engine" because I am interesting in Gibson's work and it was the only book they had at Drexel library. It's really interesting even though so far very little has happened, the world itself is engaging enough to hold my attention.
I also read an article about Quentin Tarantino, which firmly cemented my only hesitant previous opinion of him; he's a douche.

Screenplay-wise, I've resumed work after a weekend away, and I want to have Tanith at the Mannix farmstead by this weekend. I've found the best way for me to work is for long stretches chewing massive amounts of Stride gum. It's better than chain-smoking.

The goals I've been setting for myself have been working out, though I confess I do not update this as much as I should.

Updates

Lots of things have happened:

I finally got my movie magic screenwriter up and working, so I've got a few pages of my opening sequence.

More importantly Tanith has finally taken a real shape and direction in my head. I'm going to juxtapose her constant movement with Virgil's stagnant lurking in his manor. That being said I'm going to formulate a confrontation before Tanith leaves the estate that establishes an unsavory connection between the two. They share a common desire to overcome what they perceive as burdens on their minds; for Tanith, its her sensitivity, and for Virgil, its his guilt. This might sound too introspective but its really just a way for me to motivate their actions. I will make everything as externally available as I can.
One thing I do know is that I don't want to make Virgil a caricature villain, I want him to have as much dimension as possible without turning the story into a bore.

Update

I e-mailed the movie magic people about getting my serial number yesterday. I'm still waiting for a response. Meanwhile I'm formulating the opening sequence in my head. Plus I've got midterms so they're kind of invading my creative bubble.

Movie Magic

My movie magic screenwriter is on an external hard drive after my old computer crashed and I have to try to successfully slide it over to this computer. Lets hope this works.

Updated Biographies

Tanith Garret

Childhood:

Tanith was born to Fergus Garret and Eileen Flaherty, a seamstress. Fergus was the well-respected Marshal to Lord Virgil Thorburn’s horses. Tanith was born out of wedlock, and under some strained circumstances ended up living with only her father on the Thorburn estate. Fergus raised her as he would one of his horses, if a bit more clumsily, because she was obviously a creature he was not used to rearing.
By age 10 Tanith had finished any sort of schooling she would receive at the hands of the manor’s clergyman. She could read some and write her name, recite the Lord’s Prayer, and sew. These skills seemed completely useless to Tanith, however, and as far as she was concerned their conclusion just opened up three extra hours of the day to spend on her real education in the stable yard. Fergus took on his daughter as his full-time apprentice, and her deftness with the animals was undeniable. She even established a few new training techniques that Fergus incorporated into his routine. For example, employing vocal commands as well as leg pressure to direct the animal. It was with this addition that Fergus became indispensible for his training skills.
An indispensable aspect of Tanith was her light weight, which allowed her to start breaking in horses via riding before they reached their full size without injuring them. This boon hastened the overall training period of each mount, saving Lord Thorburn a lot of money in the long run. A poor diet and a natural inclination to wiriness kept Tanith from filling out as most young women do, so her duties never had to be abandoned.
Lord Thorburn would never allow a woman to ascend to the rank of Marshal for his estate, but he allowed Tanith to work because as a child she did not require a salary.
Throughout her adolescence she became painfully aware of the fact that when her father retired the position would go to one of the less talented stable-hands. More and more she would be asked to dismount during training to allow more time for the squires. It was a bone of contention that gave Tanith a chip on her shoulder as adolescence set in, but the alternative to obedience was no contact with the horses at all, which was impossible for her to deal with. So she put up with it insofar as she did not make any obvious attempts at sabotage.



Personality: Tanith is smart, but she has a volatile temper that has its outlet in destructive behavior. Her back is striped with long lash scars from the multitude of times her father has disciplined her throughout her childhood. The painful consequences of her tantrums have forced a sort of pseudo-maturity. She can withhold her fury for extended periods of time, but it boils within her and she has tunnel vision until she can find a way to seek revenge. The art of trickery is a skill she has honed, and her fellow serfs regard her as a nuisance and constant source of anxiety. Where Tanith goes, trouble follows.


Tanith is:
Angry
Skinny
Sneaky
Dirty
Clever
Single-minded

Lord Virgil Thorburn

History:
Virgil was the fifth child, fourth boy born to the fertile Lord Lionel Thorburn. At that time the Thorburns only owned a modest landholding in Southern Ireland. They grew crops and barely came up with enough profit to keep their serfs. The soil in the rocky area was not conducive to harvest, but Lionel had no interest in bettering his situation or doing much of anything. After his wife died in her last (Virgil’s) birth, he lost his motivation. It was not that they were particularly in love, just that she was the only one who could ever spur him into action. Virgil’s earliest memories of his father were of a richly outfitted form lying, unmoving, in a great pile of pillows in his sitting room. When he was 13 his father finally died. The man lay cold in his pillows an entire day before anyone took notice.
Virgil’s oldest brother, Boris, assumed the Lordship and began to pick up the pieces of the broken manor. 5 years later he had nearly resuscitated it to the point of complete rehabilitation when he was called to battle by a higher lord. He and the second oldest, Carlisle, answered the order and were promptly slaughtered within a month by the French. Until this time Virgil had lain in wait, glowering in his position as fourth-eldest. But this windfall provided a way to escape the inevitable life of priesthood that seemed to await him. Of course Virgil would never risk doing the deed himself, so he convinced his sister, who had always been heavily under his influence, to poison him.
As the new master of the Thorburn land, Virgil began to make revisions immediately. He married his doting sister off to a distant earl in exchange for a selection of horses. Virgil decided that horse-breeding was a more lucrative enterprise than simply farming. And he was right; the Thorburn estate has been flourishing ever since.
Recently business has dropped off a bit as other lords in the area are catching on to the horse-trade, so Thorburn has concocted a scam to double his profits. He has his Marshal take the horses to market and sends his hired sword Bran tail them. Bran observes who the Marshal sells the horses to- usually only one client will buy most if not all of them- and then promptly thieves the animals from right under the new owner’s nose. The thieves then ferry them quickly to a waiting foreign buyer who takes them out of the country. It is a foolproof swindle that has increased Virgil’s wealth tenfold, and no one except the lord, Bran, and Bran’s men know about it.

Personality:
Virgil is consumed by an intense greed tapered only by his fear of getting his hands dirty. This has driven him to murder, theft, and unprecedented success, however only the last one is attributed to him. Most of the time Virgil’s work is done through another person’s effort. His forte is verbal persuasion. Virgil could talk the leaves off a tree. He holes up inside his massive estate and shoots out orders like arrows to his minions.
With all that talking comes a lot of thinking, and with thinking comes anxiety. Virgil spends endless amounts of time pacing, worrying, plotting. He knows he is playing with fire in this crime operation but he can’t see how the extra money isn’t worth it.

Virgil is:
Manipulative
Anxious
Well-prepared
Selfish
Tidy
Ghoulish


(Conri Carey bio coming soon..)

A couple updates

I've got the treatment mostly done in my head but of course the real chore is finding the time to put it down. Starting tomorrow afternoon I should have some free time. I've also come to realize that the inspiration for the story, the Black Death, is really taking quite a back seat and I will be surprised if it will be in it much at all. I've been told it's a hard topic to write a story around and that statement has definitely been proven correct.

Beginning of treatment

Very rough first section of my treatment. I've been a bit distracted with the holiday weekend.

1. Dawn is breaking, TANITH, a scraggly young woman of about 18, rides a large stallion deftly around a sprawling field littered with small obstacles. FERGUS, her lanky father, 48, about rides on another mount. They carry wooden swords and clash every so often. MICHAEL, 15, looks on sleepily, holding the reigns of a small mare.

2. Torches can be seen through the trees. Fergus calls to Tanith who swiftly dismounts and switches places with Michael. LORD VIRGIL THORBURN, 42, arrives with his men, specifically two red-haired brutes and BRAN, 28, a lion of a man with a stature that dwarfs Lord Virgil. Tanith uses a long lead and proceeds to trot the mare in a wide circle.

3. Lord Virgil is under the impression that Michael is Fergus’s apprentice as he doesn’t approve of a girl assuming the role of marshal for his horses. He talks to Fergus about the horses that are going to market the following day.

4. Later in the day Tanith is training some horses and some farmhands give her a hard time. She loses her temper and charges at them with her horse. Fergus sees this and reprimands her, sympathizing with her but emphasizing that she must control her anger.

5. The next morning Tanith prepares the horses for travel, including the stallion she rode the other day. Her father sets off with a half-dozen horses, Michael and a few others.

6. Bran and his two toadies leave Lord Virgil’s manor shortly after Fergus, but they take a different road.

7. Fergus sells the horses in town to some local landowners. Rumors about the Black Death are discussed. The buyer of most of the horses ends up being a relative of Michael and invites Fergus and his men to spend the night at their homestead in thanks. Fergus agrees.

8. Bran watches the horses being led into the buyer’s stables from the perimeter of some woods.

9. Most of Fergus’s men sleep in the stables but Michael and he are invited in to sup with the buyer. They drink mead and stay up late laughing and talking.

10. Bran descends upon the homestead, breaking into the stables.

11. Fergus goes to relieve himself outside and spots the stable doors open. He rushes down to see the horses being snuck out the other end. He yells and one of the men turn. It’s Bran, and he locks eyes with Fergus. The two red-haired men advanced over the littered corpses of Fergus’s men towards him.

12. Fergus mounts the stallion and races off, with a shout to Michael to protect the landowner and his family.

13. A breakneck chase ensues as Fergus tries to reach Lord Virgil to seek his protection. Bran and his thugs pursue him but they are no match for his horsemanship. In the darkness Fergus gets confused.

14. Tanith is scratching a profanity with a stone on the house of one of the boys that made fun of her when she hears shouts.

15. From where Tanith stands she sees a long stretch of the road. Suddenly her father’s horse canters out of the trees with a limp figure on its back. She runs to him and finds his body cold. The three thugs, too far away to recognize, emerge down the road. Tanith slides her father’s corpse onto the road and mounts the stallion, galloping after them.

16. Tanith loses track of them and turns back. Fergus’s body is gone.

Fun but twisted

(I needed to stop thinking about my movie plot for a moment)

Dr. Eban Paulie is an expert in genetic customization. He specializes in giving couples a child with exactly the kind of traits they desire; blue eyes, athletic predisposition, etc. Being a child of this system himself he is incredibly handsome and obviously intelligent. All his life he has grown up with a constant assurance of his awesomeness, the compliments blurring into a comfortable white noise that lull him to sleep at night and keep him amused when he is bored on the way to work or listening to his assistant blather.



But something strange has happened to Dr. Paulie. Somewhere along the way to his current 32-year-old self, he fell in love with himself. Narcissism is a vice rampant in humanity, but his infatuation went beyond mere vanity and quickly snowballed into obsession. There were days when he would weep at the cold inaccessible reflection of himself, so perfect but so untouchable. Something had to be done, he must have himself.

So he took a sample of his DNA and cloned himself, creating an exact duplicate, down to the age, weight, and length of toe nails. Dr. Paulie called him Eban, and reveled in the joy of addressing himself and receiving an answer. Eban had no basis for any life comparisons and was very much a large infant, so for a while Dr. Paulie labored furiously, embedding Eban with information as well as teaching him things outright. They spent every waking moment together, and with the exception of Dr. Paulie's assistant, Binny, a mousy grad student, they had no interruptions in Eban's studies.

The clone and his original sped furiously through material that should have taken decades to comprehend, but with Dr. Paulie's technology it was only a matter of months. Paulie had to make Eban his intellectual as well as physical equal. Their progress was halted however, when the doctor was forced to attend a medical conference. He would be away for a week, and Binny would be entrusted with Eban's care...

to be continued...

So the physician set about making a clone of himself, a perfect soulmate in every way. His only equal in physical and mental capacity.

I just watched The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I always like silent films but I especially liked this one. I identify with Cesare, I feel like a somnambulist who can tell the future sometimes.



Tentative Character List:
Tanith O Marcaigh- Protagonist
Fergus O Marcaigh- Father
Lord Virgil Thorburn- Antagonist
Conri Carey- Love Interest

A working biography of Tanith O Marcaigh

Childhood:

Tanith was born to Fergus O Marcaigh and Eileen Gerrety. Fergus is the well-respected Marshal to Lord Virgil Thorburn’s horses. Tanith was born out of wedlock, and under some strained circumstances ended up living with only her father on the Thorburn estate. Fergus did not know how to deal with the emotional side of parenthood and raised Tanith under the false impression that she was a foundling. He used this lie to retain an aloofness, to avoid the fatherly expression of love, though eventually they established a bond of relaxed affection that both were comfortable with. Life on the manor left little room for frivolities like love, anyway. The simple fact was they both had each other’s quiet company and a single unending duty; horses.
By age 10 Tanith had finished any sort of schooling she would receive at the hands of the manor’s clergyman. She could read some and write her name, recite the Lord’s Prayer, and sew. These skills seemed completely useless to Tanith, however, and as far as she was concerned their conclusion just opened up three extra hours of the day to spend on her real education in the stable yard. Fergus took on his daughter as his full-time apprentice, and her deftness with the animals was undeniable. She even established a few new training techniques that Fergus incorporated into his routine.
Lord Thorburn would never allow a woman to ascend to the rank of Marshal for his estate, but he allowed Tanith to work because as a child she did not require a salary. Throughout her adolescence she became painfully aware of the fact that when her father retired the position would go to one of the less talented stable-hands. It was a bone of contention that gave Tanith a chip on her shoulder, but she never really accepted that as her future, because her life had been so strictly adhered to order that she assumed something would shift in her favor before the time came, as things tended to do.
An indispensable aspect of Tanith was her light weight, which allowed her to start breaking in horses via riding before they reached their full size without injuring them. This boon hastened the overall training period of each mount, saving Lord Thorburn a lot of money in the long run. A poor diet and a natural inclination to wiriness kept Tanith from filling out as most young women do, so her duties never had to be abandoned.

Personality: The only perspective that Tanith has on herself is in relation to her orphan status and her horses. Fergus raised her on a faerie-tale story of his discovery of her; he was transporting some Hobbys to a horse dealer and a snake on the road spooked them. A couple took off into the woods, and he pursued them. Though it was midday inside the towering, gnarled trees the sun was blocked out and he could hardly see his hands in front of his face. The echo of the horses whinnying sounded dimly and he followed their noises to a strange clearing, flooded with misty air and huge mushrooms. In the center of the space the Hobs were nuzzling a wicker basket. Fergus recaptured them with no problem, so enthralled were they by this parcel. He opened it and gaped as he saw a babe lying there, just looking at him. She had a full head of black hair and she was big, no question, at least a half-stone. The wicker basket must have held oats before it held her for their scent was still strong within it. The Hobbys kept nuzzling her and searching for the treats but they couldn’t find any. And even though these huge creatures were nuzzling her all she did was giggle and smile. Fergus took her home with him and raised her alongside his foals n’ colts. In reality Tanith was conceived by Fergus and the wife of an often-traveling cloth dealer. She was brought to term and born without the man’s slightest knowledge, and after she was taken to live with Fergus.
As a direct result of her father’s story, Tanith sees herself as someone slightly removed from the ordinary. She does not acknowledge this in any conscious sense, but she does not see her anger or sadness as the same as other’s; to her, her feelings are somehow more deeply felt. Even so she is extremely self-contained, usually to her detriment as the build-up of emotions leads to volatile outbursts. These monumental eruptions only justify her mindset, as their caliber is considerably more powerful than the more complacent, average folk around her. Fergus punishes her strictly after these episodes, embarrassed by her abandon, but Tanith is not easily swayed by physical force. She lives very much inside herself, projecting personalities onto the horses to keep her company. Other children her age quite appropriately found her snobby and inaccessible.
The general dislike directed towards Fergus’s daughter from her peers only ripened with age, leaving Tanith with no marital prospects. This vaguely distressed Fergus, though he had never really considered the idea her getting married.



Skills: Horse-training in the areas of warfare, domestic, and hunting- Very rudimentary understanding of mounted swordsmanship-Literate- basic knowledge of farming- birthed over 2 dozen foals- shoed hundreds-

Tanith's going to leave the manor and find an abandoned village with three or four villagers left. I'm thinking of making something to do with wrangling up the horses from the surrounding estates that have escaped their pens after their owners died. I want to incorporate more with the horse skills but I don't want to make it a Hidalgo thing... the horses have to be more of a force, like the weather, except they can be harnessed.
This screenplay is going to have to skirt some lines, because the horses have to be a big presence but not in a PETA/Black Stallion way, and Tanith has to be a strong female lead but not in a Xena Warrior Princess way.

Tanith is understated, stubborn but in a passive aggressive way because she was raised under the radar, assisting her well-liked, widely-respected father quietly. The horses are familiar but she treats them with a certain superiority, they are still animals.

http://http://www.horse2buy.com/horse-breeds/irish-draft.html

The horses will be Irish Hunters, not that it will be clear, but it helps me.

Test Blog

I've never had a real blog before so this is just a sampler post.

Progress-wise I'm reworking my pitch and will hopefully have something by the end of today.