Here we are.

This is the kick off to 2022 and hopefully the beginning of getting back in the saddle with this screenwriting project.

This post is different in that it’s a look forward for the week, not a look back on the week as I usually do. I’ll be making progress after this post and we’ll go back to the traditional summation of my progress and thoughts next time.

Ok, see you next week.

Ha.

I’m going to be starting again with Mutant Chronicles, right where I left off. Before that damned Lamenters Codex popped off (two weeks, lol – kill me)! I want to get this done as I’ve had this story and series rolling around in my mind for the better part of nearly two decades. As I mentioned last week Mutant Chronicles will be the last series I’ll be working on from an idea that isn’t my own. The series is a small franchise from the 90s that I thought deserved some attention. As a writer, I feel that attention is best served by a television series that can give the story a place to breath (rather than the poor film). If you aren’t familiar with Mutant Chronicles, check out this brief summary on Wikipedia.

Screenplay

Virtually everything for the script is completed on the “pre-production” front. I’ve hashed out all the story beats and elements, as you’ve seen in previous posts. I had a script of about thirty pages written, but I altered the story to make it flow better. The first version I started was heavy on exposition. I want the exposition to derive from the experiences of the characters and their problems, not dumped in long winded explanations. I’m not really sure if that accurately describes the issue I created, though. Exposition dumps have become a real problem in modern films and I’m afraid this will turn out just like that. There is so much to lay the ground work for, but I just need to pace myself. I’ll just write it out and edit it later, but being aware of the problem helps.

I’ll probably take everything that worked from the previous draft and just edit in the changes because I like a lot of what I wrote already. Some of those changes are huge, but I can salvage most of the scenes.

Bible

The bible is a mess. There is almost nothing right now but a lot of loose notes floating all over the place. So, this will be a scratch write up. That won’t take long because the point is exposition in this document, so I can go ham. I’ll keep it simple, but for the purposes of a bible the background material needs to be present. I’m not sure how much of that I want to include as the RPG books would be a critical piece of the production puzzle. I’ll probably summarize them as best I can. If this were a formal series I would have full right to utilize that material and I would put it all into a confidential production bible at that juncture.

Pitch Bible

I can’t start the pitch bible until I get everything else done. These projects can be a bear to make. Each pitch bible, or bonus document, can take a few weeks. But, I have a lot of fun developing them. I’m brainstorming a theme for the look and feel of the book but I haven’t settled on anything yet. I’ve played with merging the pitch and main series bible into one document like I did for Housebands, but I think there is too much information to be laid out in a series bible for a world this dense.

Go!

So, that’s it. Time to get started. I’ll see you all here next week on Sunday (accountability day) for the weekly progress report.