50 Kisses

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Stephan

I don’t want to mention every competition that comes up, but competitions and open submission opportunities for screenplays are much less common than those for plays or prose.

The London Screenwriter’s Festival 2012 have a filmmaking challenge, called 50 Kisses. It’s broken into two parts, the first for writers and the winning scripts will be made available for filmmakers to produce. The winning films will then get a theatrical release next Valentine’s Day.

The challenge for writers is to write a two page screenplay set on Valentine’s Night that must contain one kiss. The deadline for submitted scripts is June 30th.

Update

I couldn’t resist, I have a submission for this competition. While the romance genre is hardly in my comfort zone, if I can’t fit two pages of screenplay into my schedule, there’s something very wrong with my time management.

Grimm, Once Upon a Time and Urban Fantasy

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Stephan

I’ve always been a fan of the Urban Fantasy sub-genre, that intersection between fantasy, horror and the modern day. The best known example is Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden franchise, though personally I prefer Mike Carey’s Felix Castor novels. True Blood has been the best example on TV. In comics, the most successful example has been Fables, which places fairy tale characters in modern day New York.

Which brings me to the two contenders currently bringing the Fables-style Urban Fantasy to our TV screens. Once Upon a Time‘s protagonist enters a community, ruled with an iron fist by an evil stepmother of a boy who believes that they are all amnesiac fairy tale exiles. The narrative of each episode is spliced with a parallel tale from the land of fairy tales yet cleverly leaves the ‘real world’ narrative ambiguous, leaving doubt as to whether the boy is externalising his delusions or whether the fairy tales are true histories.

Grimm on the other hand follows the story of a cop from Portland, Oregon who learns he is the last of the Grimms, the literal descendant of the eponymous writers. Writers and warriors against the unnatural creatures who prey on humanity. Each episode is part police procedural and part individual fairy tale retelling, whether it’s Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

While the scriptwriting in Once Upon a Time is tight, imaginative and clever, Grimm’s is obvious and clichéd. If you think you know where the story is going to turn in Grimm, chances are you’ll be right. It’s lazy, common denominator stuff. Audiences seem to agree; although Grimm has already been green-lit for a second season, Once Upon a Time has managed to draw twice the audience with every episode so far.

Kickstarter – Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Stephan

More and more people are getting into Kickstarter, the site for creative projects to gather financial backing from people in exchange for perks.

Last month I pledged to Chuck Wendig’s Bait Dog Kickstarter, but this month something new hit my radar: The Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes by Jess Nevin.

Jess is the nerd librarian to end all other nerd librarians, and what he does is write encyclopedias like the sadly out of print Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana and detailed guides to the likes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Being able to support his project, get a copy of the book and a few extra perks sounds like a good deal to me…

BBC Writer’s Room spring submission window opens

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Stephan

The BBC’s Writers Room was always a pretty good resource for script writers, whether film, TV or radio, with its back catalogue of scripts, templates and advice. Furthermore, it was the route to submitting unsolicited scripts to the BBC.

The Writers Room has relaunched now, a much need spruce-up. But the submission system has changed from ad-hoc to a quarterly submissions window. The spring window is now open until May the 21st, so get cracking! Even I might be able to hit that deadline…

Review: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Stephan

Lev’s Grossman’s The Magicians was a birthday gift from a friend, and a very pleasant one at that. This may come across as a little inflammatory, but imagine if someone had written Harry Potter/Narnia fan fiction. Voilà! You have The Magicians! I do Grossman a bit of disservice here, he is clearly a very gifted writer and I enjoyed The Magicians a lot more than I did the Harry Potter or Narnia novels, but the influences are inescapable.

None of the characters, the protagonist included, are particularly likeable, but that doesn’t mean that following their journeys, real and metaphorical, isn’t enjoyable. We follow the main character, Quentin, from his arrival at Brakebills, a university of magic (not Hogwarts) in the first half of the book and learn about his new world and the people therein. Small encounters, seemingly throwaway moments, are later found to be relevant to the ongoing story, adding to the overall cohesiveness of the book, and the not-Narnia of Fillory is a recurring element that becomes increasingly relevant in the second half of the book.

Mostly The Magicians acts as a standalone book, perhaps even one that could easily been expanded out to cover more details skimmed over. But by the last pages it is clear that this is meant to be part of a longer series. I’ve already added its sequel, The Magician King, to my wishlist…

The Nick Darke Award 2012

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Stephan

The Nick Darke Award is a stage, screen and radio writing award and this year their theme is the environment. This means that I won’t be taking part, as there’s no way I could possibly pretend that my current WIP is anything at all to do with the environment.

However, the competition is a tempting one. They want an outline and 20 sample script pages and the winner receives £6000 to allow them to complete the script to industry standards. The deadline for entry is Monday the 14th of May.

Maybe there’s still time before then to kick off a new project…

Review: Empire State by Adam Christopher

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Stephan

Adam Christopher’s Empire State is a pulp science-fiction super hero parallel worlds story that is certainly rich in concept. In his own words, it’s “kinda Raymond Chandler meets The Rocketeer in Gotham City – robots, superheroes, airships, Prohibition, a lot of rain, and a lot of shady characters, and more than a few double-crossings”.

To me, in many ways the story lines reminded me of Fringe and Dark City, both of which I have a lot of affection for. However, when I asked Adam on Twitter about his influences, he assured me he had yet to see yet to see Dark City. Furthermore, while he thought that the Fringe Episode ‘Brown Betty’ fitted the aesthetic of Empire State very well, he had not seen any of the series until after finishing the book.

There are so many twists, double-crossings and surprises throughout the book, so it’s hard to go into details of the story, but it was a gripping story, keeping me engaged. The characterisation is good, doubly so. And the aesthetic worked for me; Chandler-esque pulp noir with super heroes and robots? What’s not to like?

Currently Reading

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Stephan

Chuck Wendig’s Shotgun Gravy, is an e-book novella, a short tale meant to be part of a series of books. Genre-wise it’s “kick-ass troubled teen takes on the injustices of a small town”, but it eternally feels like it’s about to turn into a zombie apocalypse, right down to the shotgun and the nearby genetics lab…

Red Planet Prize – Denied

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Stephan

The reason I’ve been quiet on here for the last month or so was that I had entered the Red Plan et Prize for screenplays. The idea was to submit the logline, synopsis and the first ten minutes of a one hour screenplay. If successful in the first round, you would be contacted to submit the remainder of the script. With hindsight, I really ought to have finished the rest of the script before submitting and then fine-tuned the whole thing, but I didn’t. This is probably part of why I didn’t get around to finishing the rest of the script.

So here I am, unsuccessful in my latest competition entry, sitting on a half-finished script, trying to build up the motivation to finish it. I know I ought to, I have a terrible habit of starting projects and not completing them, but it’s harder now to bring up the enthusiasm.

Kindle Wishlist

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Stephan

There are a number of books that aren’t available for the Kindle yet. Here’s a list of the ones I’d most like to see making it to a digital format:

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72- This is particularly going to be interesting in the run-up to the 2012 US Presidential Election. Also, it was clearly an influence for Ellis’ Transmetropolitan.
Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable- A fantastic writers reference, I already have this in hardcopy.
~~Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable~~- The original version of this work is available for free here.
Brewer’s Dictionary of London Phrase & Fable- Again, a brilliant writers reference that I already have in hardcopy.
The Maltese Falcon- Very few of Dashiell Hammett’s novels are available for the Kindle, only his short stories.
The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana- This is long out of print even in hardcopy and their price reflects this.
Travels in Hyperreality- I managed to find my hardcopy version of Umberto Eco’s essays the other day but I still wish I had an electronic copy to dip into from time to time.

Endless Realms

On writing and other traps