A Lar by any other name

( The Ashgrave Chronicles - From Day one of Script Frenzy )

~~~~~ more to come!!! ~~~~~

To those of you who know the "comic book" world a bit better (or understand the process of creating the script for one), I would love your input. This is only my second year doing this and I still haven't been able to track down an actual script for a working book (so that I can see BOTH sides of the process) or a decent book/website that might tell me more about how to write this. I get a lot of "Whatever works for you" from the Script Frenzy site. They did mention a book that I'm going to look into getting.

Any other suggestions (both on the formatting of the script and the overall vibe so far) are greatly appreciated.

Pixie is back from the computer doctors! Hooray! She went in because the speakers didn't appear to be working correctly. Simple, they said. I believed them. Be sure to make a copy of everything on your computer, they said. I didn't believe them. Should have believed them on EVERYTHING. I don't know the why of this but they set the computer back to original specs when they fixed her. This means I had to redownload everything and lost a few things from iTunes that I forgot I had (until I didn't have them and then I was like "Grrr... why did I forget to move that?") and now I'm trying to find a new wallpaper... AGAIN. The first one took me three days of constant searching through LJ to find just the perfect wallpaper. It was great! Of course, I can't find it anymore so I'm looking to find something else that says THIS IS ME, WORLD! but doesn't distract me.

Tomorrow is the first day of April. This means I have less than 24 hours to decide what to write for Script Frenzy. Have a pretty good idea but I'm unsure how to start the project. While I think this project will work really well as a Graphic Novel, I've enjoyed writing bits and pieces of it and it works as a story, too. And the more I delve into this project (and I've actually devoted HOURS to the backstory of this idea), the more I like it... which makes it hard to do it for Script Frenzy. That's crazy, you say. Just do it, already. The thing is, the more I get into it and realize how well it would work as a Graphic Novel, the more I want to see it as a Graphic Novel. I don't want this one to molder in my Google Docs. I want to see it in living color! Which means I want to do it right. The problem is that I'm finding all these sites that talk about how to write a Comic Book... but not a lot that talk about writing a Graphic Novel. Granted, there aren't many Graphic Novels out there that aren't technically Comic Books on steroids but I do have a couple of really good examples of what I want to do. Or I've seen them at B&N and flipped through them. *grins*

The key this coming month will be getting off Facebook! Gah... that site has literally stolen hours of my time this last month. Okay, it didn't steal them. I handed them over freely and felt good about it at the time. But I've got to save those hours for ME this month. I need them all.

Bought a new backpack with my Coke Points. Still have hoards of them. *pets them* There aren't many things I still want on the site but I can't stop inputting points. Even give some to trustworthy causes and I still have tons. The backpack is nifty because there's a place for Pixie and a place for the phone and still plenty of room for notebooks. Notebooks rule my life. I love them. That's where most of my writing takes place these days. One of the major reasons that I got Pixie was so that I could write on the go but I do love writing my hand. Then the version (if it ever gets that far) on the web is the second version which makes it a little tighter which is always a good thing.

I'm really hoping to do all 100 pages I need to get done to complete the Script Frenzy challenge but I'm thinking it may not happen. Some things I've learned between this experience (which has been super fun, don't get me wrong) and the failure that was NaNo 2007.

1. Don't try a writing challenge without a laptop or a computer that is hooked to the internet. A notebook and pen, while great for creativity, will only get half the job done. The other half... the typing half... is much, much harder to do when it is a second step.

2. While it is possible to do these challenges with a real life, it's not always easy. My parents are ever so cool about me locking myself in my room and my new co-workers have learned to quit asking me silly questions when they see me with my notebook under my arm or spread out in front of me on the breakroom table, but it's harder to do what I need to do when there are so many other options available to me. I'm really no good at making myself do the work.

3. Creativity will strike at any time. Literally, any time. Thank the good Lord for small scraps of paper that seem to follow me around at work. Otherwise, I'd be doing a lot of writing on my arms.

4. It can be done. I'm sure it can. And it's harder to fail after succeeding so often. So I will do it. Or get as close as I can and be happy with the outcome.

5. I still really like the process of putting together a Graphic Novel. It's been fun to imagine what the finished product might look like!

Some good info on GN formatting that should come in handy later one, especially

Dark Horse sample script... more about how to use panels effectively

Step by step formatting tips as well as other interesting side notes to explore since I've never been to this particular site before

Advice to new writers from David Brin.

A good definition of Graphic Novel

I plan on adding more here later as I find interesting sites.