Creator meets creation : E.C. Henry and his script!
Well-p, I did it! Spec. script #30 is in the books. Dilly of a Duckling's Dally; my first animated comedy; is written. All 115 pages of it. Really hoped to have it done by St. Patrick's Day, as this story mostly takes place in a park. Still, done is done. Filed for WGAw registration, U.S.copyright protection, have it off a paid reader for evaluation. But most importantly Sweat Pea is now reading it! At one point I thought her and I were going to co-write this script, but after giving me a litany of names she wanted the characters called, and ONE LINE that she thought should be in the script, she pretty much left me alone to write the script I saw fit. MAYBE she'll have some ideas once she's read my draft, but that remains to be seen.
Right now poor ol' E.C. Henry feels DRAINED. I pushed real, real hard last weekend up until 3 p.m. last Tuesday, then gave up the ghost and sent my script to a paid evaluator. Since then I've read Dilly of a Duckling's Dally several times in Final Draft and made some minor tweaks. But at this point it's really minor stuff. For better or worse the script is "done".
I went into the writing of this duckling left alone story thinking I wouldn't put much Lit Expression in it. Lit Expression is a screenwriting aesthetic that I'm pioneering that uses colors and fonts to (hopefully) help make the story come alive and easier for readers to visualize the movie in their mind that I was describing. I ended up putting a lot of Lit Expression in the script, as more and more ways to Lit Express the script came to me as I was writing it.
At times I thought I was a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein, as I experimented with ways to bring the script "alive" through the use of Lit Expression . I came up with a bevy of cool "expressions" throughout the script. But getting there took a lot of time, as I hunted for fonts. Put them in, changed some of them, and played with the color palate.
Overall, I am VERY PROUD of the final product I arrived at. And I guess in the end that's what matters the most. I can't expect others to get excited about a product of mine, if I, myself don't endorse it. Happy to say I PROUDLY endorse, Dilly of a Duckling's Dally (formerly Ducky Goes on Holiday).
Sorry I've been away from this blog not posting over for over a month now. But all that time I was working and editing this script. There comes a time when an artist must "go away" and go on the journey his or herself. It's "cave time" where you take your "idea" and see what you can do with it. I gave myself fully to this project and held nothing back. In the end that's the best an artist can do. Try to the best of their ability to maximize their story's potential. And I think I've done just that.
Can't say I "half-assed" it. No, I did the best with the tools available to me. I Dr. Frankensteined the shit out of this story, and ended up creating something special.
Now, I wouldn't describe what I've written with Dilly of a Duckling's Dally as horror in the vein of Frankenstein stories of old. Rather what I'm alluding to is the say I played with Lit Expression in the writing and editing of the script. So much copying and pasting, which at times felt like stitching together Frankenstein. During the creation of this aesthetic I literally copied past Lit Expressed sections of the script and wrote from the inside out to mirror the aesthetic so that it was consistent. I did that A LOT. For over a month I was putting the alien pod down and birthing a new expression out of it. Again, not in the horror vein, but in a comedy vein.
Hard work behind me, I press on and go back to what I hope to be my opus --
The Legend of Thars series.
Five books with three maybe four adapted screenplays.
Need to bring that project to completion. So long as the world doesn't blow up, which it might! That's where my creative focus will shift starting either tomorrow morning, Monday, or Tuesday at the latest. I already took the master synopsis of the series with me to work this last week to refamilarize myself with it. It's a story that first came to me in the early 90s when I was living in Boise, Idaho. It predated Give It for Chimpy: the first spec. script I wrote by about 9 years. Yeah, when you hit your 50s, there is history behind your life as a creative.
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