2008-03-28

Side project: Pseudopod specific submission

(Not Mike's Rent...) I dug up a story idea that I want to flesh out into a flash fiction bit (aiming for 1500 words) specifically to submit to Pseudopod. Once it's in the second draft, I will be looking for beta readers.

2008-03-21

Identities

I know who my villain is. I know why he's doing this. I know how he's doing it. I know how he can be stopped.

I know who my heroes are. I know why they work together. I know why they're in this story, and why they're trying to stop the villain.

I know who an important, shadowy figure is. He's the boss.

Now, I need to know how to tell it all to other people in an engaging, entertaining way.

2008-03-12

Backstory

     I'm going to write an eljay post about this, but I spent 2 hours tonight writing back story for the narrator of this horror bit. (Note to self: come up with working title other than "monster movie...") This helped with finally getting the voice of the secondary character, the motivational guy. He's not really a motivational guy like Matt Foley. He's just a driven person, and my narrator is willingly swept up by this guy in whatever must be done.
     The way things are written right now, you find out that the Driver (in more than one sense) is a werewolf pretty much up front. You don't find out that the narrator is a vampire for 2 or 3 pages. This wasn't done to build up suspense. The narrator is not willing to admit to every Joe Schmoe that he sucks the blood of the living. He's had to hide it for a long time. I think he only admits to it because his listener stuck with him through what they found in the woods.
     In the back story bit, I don't know who the listener is, but they already knew that the narrator was a vampire. They knew that the driver was a werewolf as well, but they didn't know about him as a person. The back story explains a lot about the driver and gives me a stronger sense of the narrator. The back story is not going into the final written story, though. It might be referred to. (I guess I'm the listener for the back story, but I know that I'm not for the main narrative.)

2008-03-09

A shameful admission

I'm stuck. I mean, I'm really stuck rewriting that damned "ghost story." I'm taking a break from it. Instead, I'm writing a story that I came up with two years ago. It has no hope of ever being published, but after it's done, I might share it. How do I know it won't be published? Let me pitch it to you:

You'll love it. It's a buddy road story with a werewolf and a vampire on their way to a mystical job interview. On the way, they run into a scene of mass ritual carnage. It turns out that this directly relates to the job they're about to take. A lunatic with too much psychic power has stolen an ancient relic needed for a terrible blood rite. The time to perform this rite is coming up in three days, and they have to retrieve the object and put the kybosh on the looney before then to keep themselves and a whole bunch of human beings alive.

See? It's crap. It's too many things, and it's all too weird. I love it, though. I don't care if anyone else loves it. It was originally going to be a short screenplay, but I really don't know how to write a screenplay. And don't make me smack you for saying I don't know how to write anything. I don't know how long it will actually be, but I love writing in this narrator's voice.

Editing this down is going to suck. Perhaps the narrator's voice is how I want mine to be. He's a lot more sarcastic than I am. He's also a lot more bitter. Yes, he's more bitter than me. He's fun, though.