That sinking feeling...

Disclaimer: if you don't want to hear a sulking, self-indulgent story about a guy laying down his sorry trip - well if that IS your mindset you wouldn't be in this blog right now anyway, so just forget this disclaimer altogether, it's not necessary.

So I spent a fair amount of time during Spring Break working on my feature, the one I had been obsessively outlining. It wasn't as much time as I'd like, but there was effort put into it. Didn't get the whole first act, but got the first 20 pages in. Here's the thing with "the process": as you write it, it doesn't feel right, intuitively you know it's not working. Your characters don't sound like they speak like people, it's just words on the page. But you barrel on, convinced that that's the thing about a first draft. Then you reread it (and here the delusions begin) and you think "it's not as bad as all that". So you change a thing here, maybe switch a sentence from the passive voice to its active counterpart, maybe add a couple of adverbs. Then you re-read it again, this time it doesn't feel half-bad, hell it's almost good. Sure, there's a lot of work to be done, but you figure the idea's there and it works. But still there's that tiny little voice in the back of your head pushing the brakes. You muffled it.
Cut to:
Presented my screen pages in class today. It was horrible. Soapy melodrama: the people reading it couldn't say the lines with a straight face. It was bloody massacre, and I don't blame my classmates for spoofing the hell out of the reading. Fuck, that's the kind of treatment over the top nonsensical lines like the ones I just wrote deserve.

Which is not to say that it wasn't a huge dissappointment. Talked with the professor afterwards, because by the end of the workshop I didn't even feel like it was worth continuing with the damned script. "Don't be afraid of your own ambition" was all he said. What the fuck does that mean!!!! Sounds precisely like something you would tell a student who had just come up with a hideous, half-assed, half-baked, dead-end piece of writing. Suffice it to say that it wasn't a very healthy meeting for me. In fact, it's a wonder I still haven't burned the text.

So now what? I'll plough on with the script, I'll rewrite those first twenty pages this week. Do I have any options? It's not like I have any other ideas. Also: I'm working hard to keep the ego in check. What did I expect? A masterpiece on my first go? So it's back to the drawing board. That's writing: rewriting, taking in all the derision and flattened expectations and going back to rework it all... until it works.

Still, it was a terrible, sinking feeling the one I felt in class today. I hate that gurgling sound, you know, the bubbles a sinking paper boat makes... I guess it's the sound of failure.

Diagram This

I am currently in the midst of doing prep work for the writing of my first feature script. I have been outlining the hell out of the story for two weeks now. I look awful: unshaven, unkempt three days' stubble, baggy eyes with dark circles beneath them and the perennial beer gut growing bigger by the second. Good news though, I am ready to start writing now. This diagramming stuff is a new thing for me, but I've found it to be very useful. I am hoping that once I open the Final Draft program and begin the screenwriting process in earnest it will be more like filling in the blanks or connecting the dots. I guess that's the wisdom behind the outline, it helps you get your story's structure straight rather than diving into the screen pages and trying to find it in the writing. That's a recipe for disaster, it might be o.k. for stream-of-consciousness type novelists, but if you're trying to convey a visual story you better know where you're going. As my proffessor last semester commented, everybody knows where their story starts, the important thing is to know where it ends.

On that note, I must say that I'm not sure about how I feel about my story's ending, but at least I have one, and it is very specific. Spring Break is this upcoming week and I plan on bulldozing through my first act... 30 pages more or less. I don't think it's an unrealistic goal. At any rate, I need all the good vibes I can get.

An honourable murderer, if you will...

Yes, Shakespeare. Yes, I am the living cliche of an aspiring screenwriter, gushing over the bard. Yes, Othello blew me away. Trying to pinpoint why I have to guess it is all about Iago. What an antagonist! He is the prototype of the malicious, power-hungry person who delights in plotting and machinations for his own benefit.

There's a fine line between evil and malicious. The malicious person breeds evil, whereas the evil person can only bring about what is in his nature. Maliciousness is a choice, evil is ingrained. In this sense, maliciousness is more "writeable" since it would depend on the character's actions (like Iago's).

Of course, the thing about Elizabethan theater is that the playwright couldn’t stage that much physical action. Drama is action and with Shakespeare action is in the language, as it should be when writing theater, good theater that is. He had to keep the dialogue dazzling and provocative in order to keep the crowd engaged.

One thing that struck me this time around is the amount of pop wisdom tossed off in the lines. You may not agree with Emilia’s thoughts on cheating, or with the duke's lines about not holding a grudge, but they are both beautifully phrased.

Sooo, being the nerd that I am, I have taken it upon myself to compile my favorite bits from Othello. Here they are:

Iago discloses his nature and motive to Rodorigo (the ballad of the schemer):
O sir, content you,
I follow his to serve my turn upon him.
We canot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly followed. You shall mark
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave
That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,
wear out his time, much like his master’s ass.
For nought but ponder, and when he’s old, cashiered.
Whip me such honest knaves! Others there are
Who, trimm’d in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,
And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,
Do well thrive by them, and when they have lined their coats,
Do themselves homage. These fellows have some soul,
And such a one do I profess myself. For sir,
It is as sure as you are Rodorigo,
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago.
In following him, I follow but myself:
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty
But seeming so, for my peculiar end;
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
No complement extern, ‘tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.

The duke attempts to console Brabantio over the fact that his daughter Desdemona truly loves Othello the Moor:
Let me speak like yourself, and lay a sentence
Which as a grise, or step, may help these lovers.
When remedies are past, the griefs are ended
By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
Is the next way to draw a new mischief on.
What cannot be preserv’d when fortune takes,
Patience her injury a mockery makes.
The robb’d that smiles steals something from the thief;
He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.

Iago warns Othello of the passion (the GREEN EYED MONSTER THAT MOCKS THE MEAT IT FEEDS ON, jesus! What a description!) that he is craftily instilling in him as he speaks:
O beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;
Bu O, what damned minutes tells he o’er
Who dotes, yet doubts- suspects, yet soundly loves!

The green-eyed monster eats away at Othello, he ponders marriage:
O curse of marriage,
That we can call these delicate creatures ours,
And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad
And live upon the vapour of a dungeon
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others’ uses. Yet ‘tis the plague to great ones;
Prerogatived are they less than the base.
‘Tis destiny unshunnable, like death.

Iago comments that his plan is working and says why:
Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of Holy Writ. This may do something.
(The Moor already changes with my POISON)
dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,
which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
but with a little act upon the blood
burn like mines of sulphur.

Is this where the phrase crocodile's tears comes from? Othello uses it to describe unfaithful (in his mind) Desdemona’s crying:
If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears,
Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.

Emilia, Iago’s wife and Desdemona’s trusty companion, discusses the difference between men cheating and women doing so (there really is none, so it boils down to why do men and women cheat):
What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is. And doth affection breed it?
I think it doth. Is’t frailty that thus errs?
It is so too. And have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well: else let them know
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.

Othello, having killed Desdemona in a fit of jealous rage then learns that it was all Iago’s plotting.
Iago
I bleed, sir, but not kill’d.
Othello
I am not sorry neither; I’d have thee live,
For in my sense ‘tis happiness to die.
Lodovico (Desdemona’s uncle)
O thou Othello, that was once so good,
Fallen in the practice of a cursed slave,
What shall be said to thee?
Othello
Why, anything;
An honourable murderer, if you will,
For naught I did in hate, but all in honour.

The Moor's last words…
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am. Nothing atenuate,
Nor set down naught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that lov’d not wisely, but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,
Perplex’d in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Judaean, threw a pearl away
Richer tha all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unsed to the melting mood,
Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medcinable gum. Set you down this,
And say besides that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduc’d the state,
I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog
And smote him- thus.
-He stabs himself-

Oh-my-god!!!! What an ending…