Beyond ScriptFrenzy

So I won ScriptFrenzy.

The competition is the screenplay sister to the amazing National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo, which invites you to write 50,000 words in just one month, November.

With the scripts, it's 100 pages in April. I took part in NaNoWriMo in 2007 and 2008, wrote one story - 72,000 words - the first time around, and two stories - for a total of 101,000 words the second time around. However, I also found that the tough tempo during November led to a backlash in December. I hardly wrote anything worthwhile for more than a month after NaNo, as it's commonly called.

Luckily, ScriptFrenzy is more relaxed. I found that out last year, when I first 'won' the competition with a screenplay that was, to say the least, a bit average. I did like the tempo of having to write just an average of 3.3 pages a day, especially if you know the way properly formatted scripts look - there's hardly anything on a page. It all comes down to knowing and feeling your story, and being able to take it to its logical conclusion after about 100 pages, in my case this year, 109 pages.

I was thinking of doing a more modernized version of an old tale - I considered historical figures from Cleopatra to Napoleon's wife, and finally settled on that semi-mythical English person who had Belgian chocolates named after her, Lady Godiva. I let her lead her life in the Middle Ages but I added other elements to spice up the story.

So I won ScriptFrenzy. All you need to do to win is write the 100 pages and have the website's counter count or 'validate' your number of pages. The end result is that you get to show off logos like the one at the top of this blog post.

Now that ScriptFrenzy is over, I don't feel a backlash at all. Quite the contrary. I'm playing with ideas for three stories, and none of them look like scripts.

The first one is a classic action thriller, which if it were made into a TV series, would look somewhat like 24 but with more exotic and international connections, if that's possible. But as said, it's not a TV or not even a movie script, but a novel. Which means it needs up to 100,000 words.

You know what those script sites say about TV scripts: no violence, no gore, no nudity, because it's TV. Well, my second idea for a novel would not make it as a TV script. The problem is not the violence, there will only be a little bit, not the gore, I don't plan any horror, but if it were TV, it would have to have a lot of nudity. Which does not mean it's all about sex or eroticism. It might have some Sex and the City elements but they will not dominate. I'll explain it later, but I can tell you now the novel will be an intrigue about strangers with mysterious pasts coming together.

Both previous projects are more than just ideas, since over the past month I worked out their outlines, wrote about the main characters and the direction the intrigues are supposed to take.

The third and final idea is really that: just an idea, no outline, and no plan to start writing straight away. It might be something for later this year, or next, once the two other projects are finished.

The story idea combines elements from LOST - but without the strong supernatural and time-jumping tones - with The Da Vinci Code - but no churches and biblical plots nor medieval conspiracies. Strange things will happen, and the hero will race against the time to save the world from a dangerous threat. Yes, it's a thriller again.

All three stories could be categorized as thrillers, because that is what I love to read and watch. But the three stories will definitely have individual tones: the first one is an international action thriller, the second one almost a single-location mystery with holiday elements, and the third one a thriller with supernatural and futuristic elements.

Tomorrow is Day One of 2010 Post ScriptFrenzy.

Season One, Episode Fourteen: The First Elder

Charlo' returned to their room at the Brother Hotel at 9 p.m. She found Markus changing, preparing to go out.
‘How was Taipei 101?’
‘Awesome. The tallest building in the world. The mall was too expensive for me though. I thought everything in Taiwan was cheap.’
He let that one go.
‘There is one in Dubai that's taller. It's called the Burj Dubai, 160 floors high. But since it's not completed yet, this one is still officially the tallest one.’
‘I see you've done your research. Anything else while I was away?’
She picked up the book from the sofa. American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
‘So are you going somewhere?’ she asked as he was rifling through his bag. ‘Without me?’
He picked out the statuette of the three Chinese men, the thing he called the Three Elders.
‘We're going somewhere, so get ready,’ he said.
‘I only just got back. Can't I get some rest for a change.’
‘Later. We've got an appointment.’

Markus marched around the Renai Circle, looking into a side alley for a pub he used to know, but it was no longer around. Fancy French bakeries and Japanese design stores were the new standards around here. The circle was a major traffic intersection on Taipei's tony east side. Charlo' walked behind him, as if they were on separate trips. She had had no time to change, so she felt sweaty and self-conscious in her pink T-shirt and jeans. She wasn't dressed for an important visit, but maybe the target of their visit wouldn't mind.
Markus kept looking left and right, as if lost. Asian cities changed much faster than American ones, and Markus Bentley had been away from Taiwan for at least five years. He looked foolish, but then Charlo' couldn't know.
He stepped into an alley where local couples were leaving a restaurant through a garish red gate. Charlo' didn't read Chinese characters, and she wondered whether Markus could.
He turned right, she followed. He turned left, she followed. Several times, she had to press herself against parked motorcycles as some black limousine worked its way through the narrow alleys built for, well, motorcycles.
It was 10 o'clock sharp when she saw Markus stop outside the doorway to a five-floor apartment building and press the bell. She couldn't hear what he was saying, but she slowed down, as he had told her to. The buzzer rang, he went in, and turned around, motioning at her.
‘I'm in?’ she asked.
‘You're in. But don't say too much. Don't say anything about what we did back home together.’
A concierge in the marble and gilt lobby gave them a magnetic card that allowed them to take the elevator up to the fourth.
The welcome was warm. A bulky man in a Hawaiian shirt, about sixty, long gray hair and a beard covering his smile. He embraced Markus in the doorway and then let them in.
‘I am Lassiter, so you can call me Lass,’ he told Charlo' as he shook her hand.
The apartment had bright white walls, but dark wooden furniture, most of it Chinese, giving the place the appearance of an antiques store. Lassiter signaled them to sit down on a cream leather couch, while he disappeared out of view for a minute before coming back with three bowls filled with a dark brew.
‘Red bean soup, the best sweet in the world. Watch it, it's hot,’ he told Charlo' with a smile.
The conversation was thin, the brew wasn't. Lassiter and Bentley obviously were aficionados, Charlo' was the newcomer to Chinese food, the odd one out.
‘We have something in common,’ Markus said when the two men were reaching the bottom of their bowls.
He pulled the statuette out of his bag and put it in the middle of the table. Lassiter stared at it with an expressionless face and turned back into an adjacent room. He returned with what looked like a precise copy of the same Three Elders.
‘Where did you get yours from?’ Lass asked.
‘My sister gave it to me before she died.’
Lass looked taken aback but didn't say a word.
‘Your sister died, my condolences,’ he said, as an afterthought. ‘Who told you?’
‘A man came to my house one morning with a laptop showing what happened.’
‘You mean like on YouTube? What did he look like? Who was he?’
Markus gave the story of the man in the car who deposited the computer at his place, and continued with the visit later that morning.
‘He was really messed up. Blood all over, falling, moaning. He called himself Riot. Never seen him since.’
Lassiter didn't register any reaction.
‘So you think I can help you?’
‘My sister had this guy bring me the Three Elders. That must have been her way of telling me the solution lies here,’ Markus said.
‘Did this Riot guy pass on anything else?’
‘Nothing significant,’ Markus said.
‘Where are you staying? Just in case I can reach you with new information.’
‘At the Brother Hotel,’ Charlo' cut in, just too hastily. Bentley shot her a look of why don't you shut up you were doing so well.
Lassiter refilled their red bean soup. The conversation turned to memories of old Taipei from there on. Charlo' was fascinated.
‘The man looks like the pilot from Lost,’ she told Bentley after they had left the building.
Markus pulled out the Three Elders and pointed at the one wearing yellow.
‘That's Lassiter?’
‘That's Lass.’
‘Where are the others?’
‘We need to find one more,’ Markus said.
A dark BMW turned into the alley, careful not to scrape against the parked motorcycles.
‘What about the third one?’ Charlo' asked.
‘He's my father.’

NEXT: Markus Bentley looks for the second elder in Taiwan in Season One, Episode Fifteen before February 13.