Eibon Films - News

I just bought a couple of sets of these 100 Record cards.

When I revise for things I tend to try and condense everything into tiny bite-sized chunks of information and cram as many notes as I can onto these cards; as I believe the act of writing something down helps me remember things. Repetition is key. Not losing them is also key. Getting them cheap is recommended. To me, these ones that already come with a ring binder are a brilliant and simple yet effective idea!

When I am writing in an ‘old school’ fashion, needing to hide away from my machine and the evil lure of the unfiltered Web, I often break my scenes or plot points down on Index Cards. then, in trying to follow Syd Field, or Blake Snyder, I attach them to my corkboard in order to visualise all of the elements of my story and then see if I need to reorder them in order to shake things up and keep the structure fresh.

Obviously using software tools like Final Draft, Celtx or Scrivener I can do this virtually without a need to kill a tree or needing to be wary of battery power or being near a plug socket. But sometimes that tactile element is incredibly important - to move something and be able to still see the entire structure in one go, and not have to keep scrolling. Currently no software package can do that for you. It’s old school brainstorming or mind mapping.

With these great cards you can carry them around, make oodles of notes and do some healthy planning and then later if you need to take the binder away and start arranging them on your carpet floor or stick them to your corkboard. Pin them to the 4 corners of your mind and then write!

That reminds me. I have a feature to get back to work on! Soon my board will be full of ideas and not a distracting picture. ;0)

Screenwriter Don Roos has an interesting technique for ensuring that he gets the job done - by using a Kitchen Egg Timer and a series of handy tips behind the method to ensure that he sticks to the time allotted. But why do we have to go to these lengths?

Many writing tools offer you the ability to write - distraction free, ie in full screen mode; but they can’t make you stick to it. (more…)

Flasher than flash fiction - I never thought it was possible to write a story in the limited number of characters that one Twitter post allows you; that is until I finally decided to try Twitter and then stumbled across Sean Hill’s Twitter Profile Very Short Stories aka http://www.very-short-story.com/. (more…)

I’ve just been reading about the new offering from Adobe - ‘Story’ - designed to enable Adobe to encroach on the world of writing applications.

You can create Screenplays, Novels, TV Commercials etc, complete with Character Bios, Loglines and genre info etc as very starched and sterile looking ‘projects’. You can import from packages such as MS Word, as well as the usual offenders such as Final Draft and other screenwriting apps.

So far it looks like a very primitive version of something like Celtx and Scrivener, merely dressed in the Adobe CS look-and-feel. However, it’s real strength may be the ability to work online and offline, work collaboratively and benefit from the tight integration with other future Adobe apps - especially any production / breakdown software they might be planning, or OnLocation etc. The ability to share XML and meta data within the rest of the eventual new release of the video production suites, to build the end product, may be the real string in its bow.

It will be interesting to see how much this early version will eventually retail for. Right now you can obviously try it out for free.

Watch the video presentation (19 mins) HERE.

Find out more and download a trial version HERE.

The Hacintosh has landed - and is working perfectly, thank you very much.  The only thing different from that pictured is that when operational mine runs Snow Leopard 10.6.2 - the Mac OS.

It hasn’t been the easiest customisation and it is not complete. It took days of a very talented friend’s IT skills to negotiate the dodgy instructions previously documented by various non-English speaking IT geeks and a certain amount of trial and error; as we deviated from the plans to have it as a dual boot (Win XP and Mac) systems. Instead, it is nothing but Mac software, with various kernel extensions - to enable certain functionality, such as getting the sound working and customising the battery life indicator.

I have swapped the Wifi Card for a Dell 1390 Wifi Card, as the Mac OS treats it like the Apple native Airport card, and now the Wifi works. All I have to do now is upgrade the RAM before it is a fully functional writing productivity enhancing tool.

The main test - that of getting the machine to run iWork and Scrivener etc is complete. It works perfectly, albeit on a much smaller and less powerful machine than I am used to. Now all I have to do is put it through a week of rigorous testing, before I consider the customisation complete and sell my EEE PC. I may even stick an Apple sticker on the back. ;0)

Lessons learned are that if I had an £80 extra to spend, buying the Dell Mini 10 would have been far easier to do.

In other news, I have been greatly enjoying John Connolly’s “THE GATES” - a hilarious and very entertaining Adult tale for Children. I wish I had the merest ounce of his talent. It is definitely helping me to rediscover my love for the written word.

I am 4864 words into my nanowrimo novel. It is only day three and despite being prevented from writing during lunch and on the train home, due to people wanting to chat to me, I still made today’s target of 1,610 words. I am 216 words short of my 3 day target, but I am not disappointed. After the day I’ve had, i think writing anything at all was not only a pleasure, it was a frickin’ miracle.

Don’t get me wrong, I like people. Well, sometimes. Well… okay, I tolerate people mostly. But some of them amuse me. Others irk me and end up becoming a victim in my future work. But the point I am making, badly, is that when you obviously have a laptop open and are clearly poised to write, why is that the perfect moment for someone to begin a conversation with you? And more annoyingly why can’t I just glance down at my impatient fingers, in way that clearly suggests what I would rather be doing, and ignore them????

Despite the distractions, I am enjoying the process, although I have to be very careful not to go back over the material I typed the day before; otherwise I’ll be dragged down by a desire to constantly edit and rework, rather than move onward towards my end goal.

Will it be worth reading? Maybe not by the end of the month. But after some judicious editing? Perhaps. Publishable? Erm… no. Not with the current bonkers plot and niche settings and semi-fictional world that I have created. I doubt that. But I would like to think that this process inspires me to try again next year and attempt the books that I really would like to write.

It’s obviously still early days. After all I have another 45136 words to write at least. Right, back to it. Tally ho!

I am currently taking a small break from writing a new short story - a slaughterhouse tale - one that is definitely stretching me in unexpected ways, due to the amount of research I am needing to do, and the restructuring that I need to do to the plot to make it work for me. As a result I am having to learn new, more grown up, ways of working. Mainly because I tend to write instinctively and throw things together, then force them to bend to my will, rather than plan everything intelligently from scratch. I tend to see it in my head and go for it and that is why I often get bogged down later on, when the process is interrupted by the stress of my day job and then I struggle to remember where I was going with something and the mood I was aiming for at the time. I am slowly forcing myself to plan, to plot, to make notes, to research and delay the actual writing process until I am truly ready. It’s quite a demanding process and a bit too much like homework for my liking.

And this hopefully brings me around to the actual point I am trying to make [and badly]: that I am curious as to what tools you [Dear readers] use to construct your masterpieces?

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For when you don’t live in Hollywood but really need to get a printed script to someone: Hollywood Script Express

Hollywood Script Express is a premium Screenplay Printing & Shipping service that makes sending your script to agents, managers & contests simple, especially for Overseas and Out-of-State Screenwriters.

The Website claims - “Upload Script - Print and Bind - Ship Same Day” - sounds good to me!

“Hollywood Script Express provides all the services you need to get your professionally presented screenplay into the right hands and onto the top of the script pile. We take your script file, print, bind and ship it without you leaving your desk. We can even register the intellectual property rights at the same time providing you with peace of mind while you market your script.”

If interested - Click HERE to register.

I don’t need it now. But I can’t wait to use. If you have a go - please let me know how you found the service!

Hal Croassum (Scriptforsale.com) has written a brilliant and thought-provoking article that potentially explodes the old myth than you need to grab the Script Readers attention in your first ten or twenty pages. After conversations with many producers he believes that it is the very first page which is key!

Read the article

The article contains some great writing examples too.

Now cue me dusting off my scripts and re-analysing every first page! Yikes!

Screenwriter of Oscar winner MILLION DOLLAR BABY, CRASH - video HERE. Very interesting views on the industry and how he finally learned to write after many years already in the industry.