I’ve made some Awaken progress. Is my SEO optimized yet?

Regrets

Remember in our last episode when I said this:

I’m hoping these four new projects don’t end up in some crazy hole I can’t dig myself out of for months.

Kill me.

Yeah, I started in on Awaken thinking this was going to be a quick in and out… not so much. I’ve got an excellent core that I have built on, but I had to take this back to square one. Unfortunately, this is becoming a recurring theme. There was so much work to do that I bought a second white board. My original white board was 4 ft. by 6ft. That’s a pretty good size white board. This new one is 4ft by 8 ft.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. (?)

So, now I have dueling whiteboards situated around my studio, it’s cray cray, but it’s been extremely helpful. I can build the plot on one board and keep track of story point, character arcs, and the reasons I hate myself on the other.

Awaken Problems

Everything has been going well but I ran into a few problems. I have five characters in the film. Three main, two support. One of my support characters just falls off the face of the flat earth with no arc whatsoever and I can’t figure out what to do with her. I hate to delete her because she’s so charming and she plays a large role in how the main character exists at the beginning of the film. I can’t get her background to mesh with the film’s themes and that’s been difficult too. I’m working on it. I have a few solutions I might sandbox (Sandbox is code for “think” about it while I watch Youtube videos).

I also have a problem with the film’s new themes and “message” being what I feel is directly contrary to the film’s ending. That’s one of my biggest stumbling blocks right now. Should my main character learn his lesson and change only to succumb to the fruits of his errors throughout the film? Is what the Greeks called a tragedy? Or — is that when everyone dies?

Beside that — *ahem* — I have the plot about 75% worked out. There are a few bits in the middle where I need time to pass that can have things happening but I don’t really have themed issues going on, no conflict, and I don’t really want a story where my characters are just pushing a boulder around waiting for the next event. I need to get all that straight and we are rocking and rolling towards a revised draft.

This week.

*fingers crossed*

Rando Thoughts

  • Oh yeah, and mounting that 4×8 board was nuts. My interior wall was studded out to 32″ on center. What kind of sick bastard does that? I set the mounting for 24″ on center, thinking I was going to use studs, but because of the largest stud cavities in the universe I had to use wall anchors like a crayon eating simpleton.
  • Today was my birthday. It was depressing.
  • Chasing after the McDonalds Pikachu card is suicide in a little, golden arch topped box.