Scripts Galore! (Speck's Non-NaNo)

[Speck]

I'm not officially doing NaNoWriMo, but I am doing a Script Frenzy during the month of November. The challenge for me is to write 100 pages of script in 30 days.

For the challenge, I'll be working on the script for my second webcomic project, "Henry and the Humans." (Credit goes to Thundy for naming it, I believe.) It's about a monster boy who finds himself thrown into the human world.

As an added challenge, I'm not going to write the script as I normally would. Usually, I would write a comic page-by-page and panel-by-panel. I think it would probably be better if I just get the story, setting, and dialog out of the way first before thinking about what each page of the comic is going to look like. So, essentially, I'm writing it like a movie script. >.>

Before November, I'll be sketching some character concepts out. While at least half of the story is set in the human world, I still need a diverse group of monster characters.

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PAGE COUNTS:

Henry and the Humans: 0
Timothy Green: (27) + 5
Jackie's Castle: (2) + 0
The Seven Ravens: 17

Total: 22

[Speck]

Forgive me if most of this seems disjointed. That's primarily because I haven't decided on many of the key turning points in the story.

SPOILER: Click to show

- Henry accidentally steps through a portal from the monster world into the human world. Likewise, a pigeon is transferred from the human world to the monster world. Dr. Bugston, the inventor behind the portal, thinks that Henry has been transformed into said pigeon.

- Henry evades a few police officers and animal control agents, breaks into a suburban home, and hides under a kid's bed.

- Jim discovers Henry under his bed, and promptly freaks out. Henry convinces Jim and his parents to keep him safe. (Yes, Henry can apparently speak English.)

- In the monster world, Dr. Bugston helps catch "Henry" with the assistance of Pete (Henry's best friend).

- Government officials come to investigate the power surge that was caused by Dr. Bugston's portal device? Despite the fact that the portal was mostly powered by a stationary bicycle generator? Dunno.

- In the human world, Henry is fascinated by this new and wondrous place. While Jim is at school, Henry watches documentary after documentary. He becomes a huge fan of the in-universe equivalent to the History Channel as well as The Discover Channel.

- Jim is paired up with a girl in his class for a school project. Said girl accidentally discovers Henry when she comes over to Jim's to work on the project. She leaves immediately, dropping a few of her things in her hasty departure. Jim is in the bathroom when she leaves.

- (That's all I've got so far.)

SPOILER: Click to show

- Henry is brought to Jim's school as a show-and-tell presentation.
- Henry goes to school with Jim for no apparent reason, and is promptly ostracized and bullied. He is befriended by a nameless girl, and immediately develops a crush on her... yeah...
- Henry hides in a tool shed. Scrapped because the scene was too much like E.T., and I didn't have the heart to do a parody. (So many have already been done before.)

[Trilly (18426 words)]

This sounds so cute! ^^ I'll want to see the webcomic when it gets put up. Mmmm... webcomics.

[Rikku]

I agree that this sounds adorable. =D And it has the potential for lots of interesting stuff to happen and such. Will there be banter? There should be banter. Fun kid-banter.

[Speck]

Haha! Kid-banter is fun to write! So are the games where kids are pretending to be other things. "Well, I brought my t-rex, who EATS force-field dogs!" comes to mind. Kids really like to god-mode so they can "win" the game.

Oh crap. I just lost the game! D=

[Speck]

I'd say this is a good time to write down some of the characters...

Henry Bourger - (*French pronunciation.) The main character of our story. He likes sports, video games, adventure, and getting into trouble with his best friend Pete. He's a blue, furry monster with a white and red sports jersey, and yellow horns.

Pete - Henry's insectoid best friend. He is somewhat more academically-inclined than Henry is, and a little bit more cautious. Pete is a giant ant-like monster with four legs, two arms, a brown-red exoskeleton, and bright green eyes.

Dr. Bugston - Henry's eclectic inventor of a next door neighbor; his house is filled with all sorts of useless junk that Dr. Bugston classifies as "building material." Despite his name, Dr. Bugston looks nothing at all like a bug. In fact, he is somewhat of a cross between a toothed bird, and a vulture. He also has a big pair of horn-rimmed glasses.

Jimmy Yang - One of the first humans that Henry actually talks to. He swiftly becomes Henry's first friend in the human world, and convinces his parents to help the monster find his way back.

Gregor - (May or may not make an appearance in the comic.) Pete's older half-brother. He's a tall, gangly fellow who walks on two legs and has two pairs of arms. He's green and has bright blue eyes. After his parents divorced, his mother married Pete's father.

Reeteka Pathik - Human girl; Jimmy's classmate. Um?

Sylvia -

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I also have a bunch of notes on the monster world (specifically to do with the different species within that world), but I still need to refine them. I've got a whole chart on what species can breed with what, as well as notes on "miniscule" and "gigantic" breeds. Yeah... <3 worldbuilding.

[Speck]

I started working on my Timothy Green script... I had to cut a couple of old (script) pages because I really wasn't feeling it. The plot was at a standstill from two characters just talking with each other. (Tim was talking with a galapagos penguin who had followed him from the island that he had just left. It wasn't very exciting at all.)

[Speck]

I'm looking forward to drawing this page.
Don't read it if you don't want to be spoiled on the comic. I'm serious. =(
(I'm not giving you the page number, but still...)

SPOILER: Click to show

Panel 1 – The camera is a little too close for comfort, just as the shark is. TIM is trying to swim away from the shark. The teeth are mid-bite.

TIM: Gah!

2 – C/U of TIM’s shocked face. A completely red-toned panel as TIM is bit on the lower left part of his shell. His left rear flipper seems to be caught by the shark’s teeth as well.

3 – TIM is still trying to swim away, eyes shut. The shark’s jaws are clamped down tight; his only focus is TIM right now.

TIM: Help!

4 – C/U of the shark’s open eye, looking at TIM. Perhaps a reflection of TIM’s shell is in his eye?

5 – C/U of shark’s open eye, now focused directly at the audience. Perhaps the reflection has changed to that of the charging dolphin.

6 – The shark lets go of TIM as the river dolphin charges it with a headbutt.

[Speck]

I'm not sure if I want to make it an official goal of this writing challenge, but I think I want to try to finish the (rough) script for Timothy Green this month.
At this point, I just want to finish the comic. The first step to that is to finish the script.

[Speck]

I'm not sure if I've said this before or not, but my comic scripts are really boring to read.
My apologies. XD

[Speck]

Four scripts! FOUR! Ah ah ah.

Yeah, I am now working on four scripts this month. The newest addition to the list is The Seven Ravens. That could be a working title, but I'm not sure. Regardless, it's my re-telling of the fairy tale of the same name.
I've wanted to do a comic version of the story for a while, since it is (strangely enough) one of my favorite fairy tales. =)

That's all for now.
I'm going to get back to catching up on my writing, and hiding my DS so I don't play Pokemon for the rest of the day.

[Speck]

I've found my groove again! Yay!
And I think I've finally found a script-writing style that works for me. Instead of numbering pages and panels, I simply label scenes, and write them panel-by-panel without numbering the panels. Since I'm going to be thumbnailing them anyway, it saves me that extra step.

The Seven Ravens is coming along quite nicely. I've expanded the story more to show the brothers, the father, the stars, the sun, and the moon as more three-dimensional instead of merely supporting characters. I did this in part because I drew some fantastic character designs for the Moon and the Sun, and I didn't want them to go to waste! XD
Originally, they would have had a couple of lines, and then be forgotten. By giving them more "screen" time, I allow them to become the main antagonists of the story instead of just a passing threat to the main character.

I'll be posting those character designs later.

My cast for this story seems huge, though. I've got the seven brothers, the mother, father, midwife, moon, sun, stars, gnome, priestesses, lunatic wolves, Sun's minions (Sunspots), the daughter, the gnome, villagers... I hope there aren't many more. I have to design all of these, after all.
(Fortunately, the villagers and the priestesses don't make a huge appearance, so I don't have to give them as much attention when designing them.)

This is fun!

[Speck]

Seven Ravens:
I've been writing a lot of parts non-linearly right now. It's easier to write them down when they're fresh in my mind than to wait until they show up in the story. And when I get to it, it's just a simple matter of copying and pasting those scenes in. =)

And with that, I have the final scene written: the return home. I'm not sure if we're going to follow the sibling's full journey home, though I might show them exiting the Glass Mountain.
Anyway: the ending. What I've written so far is rather bittersweet, and much more focussed around the father.
He's happy that his sons have been returned to their true forms, and happy that they're home... but he's still guilty that he caused this whole trial in the first place. Insult is added to injury when one of the sons presents him with a "souvenir" to remember the ordeal. It's a pillow embroidered by the daughter, and stuffed with all of the brothers' shed feathers.

And then the entire family gathers around to have their first meal completely together. The end!

So that's where I am. Yup.
One major hump that I am not looking forward to getting over is how the danger from the antagonists is resolved... I guess I'll worry about that when I get there.

[Christos]

Have fun with this, I did Screnzy last year and finished with 101 pages even when I started 15 days late </gloat> xDD

I will keep checking this thread, good luck

[Speck]

Oh whoa. I'm one fifth of the way through the 100 page total already? Huh. (I should be at the halfway mark by now, but I just recently got back into writing.)

I'm really pleased that I've found a script-writing style that suits me, at least for the first draft. The ideas just keep flowing, and it's easier to keep myself motivated to write the scenes. I mean, if I get tired working on one scene, I can easily switch to another. Instead of switching between projects. Yay!

I think I've got most if not all of the plot written out for Seven Ravens, which is fantastic. I'm getting a clearer picture of the world that these characters inhabit, and am showing more of how upset the mother and father are at losing their sons, even eleven years after they've flown the coop. (Pun totally intended there.) The father is still guilty, and the mother is still heartbroken, but they find joy in the life their daughter gives them... until she runs off to find her brothers. I feel worse for the mother than for the father: the father quite literally wished that his sons would turn into ravens; the mother had nothing to do with it, except for giving birth to a weak baby girl.

It's funny, though... In one variant of the original story, the brothers are mad at their sister for causing them to turn into birds. It makes sense, I suppose, since they have nothing else to blame. Although, in my version, they drop the pitcher full of healing water (which they are fetching for their weak baby sister), so maybe they think that's the connection. That dropping healing water will make you turn into a raven. XD

I don't know if I want to include any insight as to what the brothers were up to in the eleven years they've been gone. The perfect place to put it would be the siblings' journey home from the Glass Mountain. I mean, those boys have eleven years' worth of stories to tell. Hm... We'll see.

It would be a good idea to simply write a list of major events in the raven brothers' eleven year absence, though. Even if I don't write it into the story, I still need to know what happens to them. Especially if I want to flesh them out more.




I might write a brief summary of what typically happens in the Seven Ravens fairy tale. I'm not sure everyone's familiar with it. (Heck, I didn't know many fairy tales before I checked out a collection of Brothers Grimm stories from the library.)