"Script frenzy" fail

Do you remember how half a month ago I was Failing Script Frenzy ?
At that time I also said that it was going to get better and that I was going to win anyway. Well it didn't happen. I don't even feel bad about it, it was still a lot of fun.
I ended up with 44 pages on one script and 6 for the other, which is half of what I should have get for one script only. That's pretty much a epic fail.

I don't really know why I failed except for the fact that I was obviously not writing, or that when I was I was actually writing really slowly and really wanted to sleep. But it can be a link between a lot of things.

First my horror script turned into something really deep and psychological and it was really hard to combine that with blood spreading scenes. Ending up that my main character Charlie was looking for those creatures and ended up stuck with them in the train and I still don't have a clue how to get him out of there. Someone already suggested the window but 1) that's a subway train, 2) he has a time travel stone and 3) he still needs to follow them wherever it is they are going. I bet the only way is to rewrite the last part but at the same time that's the only really bloody part so far... see the problem.

Second my mood drastically changed in the middle, I mean I got a lot lighter so putting myself in Charlie's shoes and general randing about loosing his best friend and wanting revenge was kinda impossible.
But as a fighting depression story it's probably a master piece, just I'm not depressed enough to finish it... maybe.

Third, in the middle of the story I also started to think that Charlie could be the main character of "The flower" so that "The flower" became the sequel of "The unknown". That's what happens when you actually don't have names for your characters. I kind of got really attached to Charlie's way of thinking I guess, and it's better to have one character really depressed instead of two. But the thing is that "The flower" was to be a romantic story and travel to India and all... see the problem.

Fourth, I'm more of a novel writer than a script writer, seriously it was killing me not to give details about everything around and the smell and stuff. I find scripts really reductive.

Leeds to having 2 unfinished script that I don't have a clue how to finish right now and failing "Script Frenzy". But writing "The Unknown" was really fun and exciting so I guess I'll add what I have to the blog soon, so that you can also have fun reading it (and see how crazy my mind can get.)

Failing Script Frenzy

So as the title says, I'm doing Script Frenzy this year again. And as the title says, I'm failing at it this year again.
For those who don't know what Script Frenzy is, let me explain a bit about it.
Script Frenzy is a writing contest taking place during the month of April, and during which you are supposed -I mean if you participate- you are supposed to write a 100-pages long movie script. 100 pages long because that's about the number of pages you need to obtain and average length movie. That being said you can also have a look at their website.
So question time.

What am I writing ?

Well actually nothing much taking my page count into account. More seriously I'm working on two scripts.
The first one is called "The flower". It's my personal script and it's about a guy who has a recurrent dream about this incredible flower and he is trying to find it but apparently he can't. Why would you ever want to see a movie like this or read the script, well I don't know. Just I like it because it's kind of mysterious.
The second one is called "The unknown". It's supposed to be a group script but I have been the only one writing is so far. I will never get how people can be that busy. Anyway I still enjoy writing it on my own. I generally enjoy stuff on my own, that way I don't have to put up with other people requirement. Anyway it's kind of an horror movie even though I have problem to actually create a real horror scene in it so far. That's probably because I'm not so far in the story. It's about a guy who is in this group to defeat vampires or something like that, it's not even properly determine yet if they are vampires or not that's why it's called "The unknown" I suppose.

Why am I failing at it?

Well I could say I started really late already 5 days behind because I was in Taiwan. Because I'm learning Chinese hard core (more about this later). Because I have an amazingly extended social life. Because of qq. Because I'm trying to write 200 pages in a month when most people trying "Script Frenzy" can't even have 100 pages.
Ok I'm stopping there, just giving those excuses to someone else who need them. I mean I just haven't been writing enough and didn't take the time to write. But the good thing is that's not going to last forever, I mean have you ever seen me fail at a writing contest anyway.

The finished script will be uploaded for you to read as soon as I hit the bottom line.

I won Script Frenzy : Vienna's Ghost

So that's it I'm officially a script frenzy winner as you can see here. Writing a script was a lot different than writing a novel, I'm glad I started this new challenge at the beginning of the month. I didn't write every day like I usually do for the novels. Probably because when I started to see how fast the page count was going up I had a little bit of overconfidence like my friend is explaining here. I wasn't the only one suffering from it I guess. Writing a script is still easier than a novel. Just next time I won't let 45 pages for the last 2 days. I think that's a bit over doing it.

If you are already familiar with my writing you will encounter in this script characters you already know, Brownie, Sahel, Viorel and Gideon from "Demon soul" and Kallisto and Seti from "Demon and fairy". I know I promised more of "Demon and fairy" and that will come really soon now that I'm done with the challenges. I'm also intending to finish the edition of "Demon soul" for my free print. I'll show you pictures when I'll get it.

Tips about writing :
1) If you don't know what to write add a vampire. I'm just half kidding here but Viorel tend to make the story funny and interesting... heu, don't use him ok, get your own vampire.
2) Repeat the same song while writing. No that's not boring !! Repeating seriously help to concentrate, ok, I'm kind of sick of that song too, I used it for like 15 hours in 2 days. But I can sing it all too :D
3) A script is not like a novel. I never had problem to finish the challenge and to get the word count write for the novel. But I did for the script. I finished the story with 93 pages. I was a bit annoyed. So I started editing a bit and adding more part (especially about the side characters that I know well) And that worked pretty well, proof is that I win.
4) Take a shower, yeah in the middle of the afternoon too, that will reset your creativity.

I was also working on a group script, but we couldn't manage to finish (over-confidence again?) Anyway I hope to have it finish sometimes and to put it on here for you to read as long as my writing partner are happy with that of course.

So here is the script in question "Vienna's Ghost", it's only partially edited so forgive the mistakes in it.

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Update on April's challenges

En français
So as I explained earlier I am participating to two contests for the month of April.
Now we are the 12 of April, already almost in the middle of the month so I think it's time to take a look at what I have actually been doing for those challenges. I probably should have written something about it a bit earlier, anyway, it's here now.

Script Frenzy

For Script Frenzy I am a bit behind at the moment. I was supposed to write 3.33 pages a day. Actually I went out a lot since the first of April and ended up with being 16 pages behind in the writing. However, I'm not the kind to let things get worse and worse and I manage to write 17 pages yesterday. So now I have a total of 33 pages. I'll surely reach 40 pages tonight to be right on tracks again.

As I promised in the announcement of this challenge, here is a little summary of the story so far : Vienna's Ghost

Arman has the particular ability to be able to travel in people's dreams. Some people like it as he can help them dream about what they want and some people don't. But Arman sleep really few at night and never dream himself.
Yurei is the family ghost. She is scaring people unwillingly until Arman finally manage to talk to her. What Arman doesn't know is that Yurei is secretly in love with her and that she is the girl who appeared in his very first dream the day before and that he is desperately trying to fine.

As I always slide some links to my next story in the one I'm writing, I hide a little wink to "Demon and fairy" in this one. I didn't write much on the novel.

International L2 Reading Contest

Here is the International L2 Reading Contest. I have seen some of the read pages number of some people and I was really impressed. I surely over estimated my abilities when I joined this contest. But the good point about it, even if I am sure that I will never make it to the top 5, is that it allows me to test my reading in Japanese and also to read different kind of material. I really intend to push the effort until the end of the month (never left anything half done.) and I'm also intending to continue reading as much as I can after the contest.


花ざかりの君たちへ (Hana Kimi)

 I read 20 pages of the manga. I don't really know how to count them though. Normally 10 pages read count for 1 page in the contest. But I read all pages three times (so maybe 6 pages).
The first time I just go with the knowledge of Japanese I have. That kind of give me a flavor. I'm almost done with Heisig's remembering the Kanji.

But if I can write the characters fine when I have the meaning and if I can recognize a kanji that I know, getting the meaning of it coming to my mind is not that easy.
So here is where the second reading of the page comes into place, I look up all the kanjis for which the meaning didn't strike me and sometimes write them down.
The third reading allows me to actually fix things with the hiragana and katakana and to make sure that I understand what I read.
That may seem a slow process and it's actually slow but that's also a lot of fun and that also showed me that I can understand more than I thought I was.

あのときの王子くん
I read two chapters of the little prince with the audio (audio books list). That's about 7 pages. These I read several times too, that depends of the sentences really. I like to have the audio with me because the hiragana tend to really really kill me. It's way more difficult to understand than with the kanjis.

I also read the equivalent of five pages on wikipedia about different topics. Basically, when I'm looking for something I will check the Japanese pages as well. I find it very convenient as I spend a lot of time on the computer. So each time I need a small break I will end up there.

And I read 6 pages of pure kana for the Japanese test for registration and placement into Japanese classes. I was already laughing when the girl put the paper in front of me. I had learned the hiragana the night before and I had told her so. I asked for something written in Japanese but she told me that that was the test I was supposed to take. I failed at it 7/58. Hopefully my supervisor wasn't really happy with the time table and decided that I will take the classes in fall instead. I can't tell how happy I am. I live with people who actually took this class at beginner level last semester and my Japanese is not worse that theirs so I really think that 10.5 hours in this class would really be a waste of time for me. I know kanjis, I'll know kana better in no time and I'm listening to Japanese all the time, I don't think a class would do more than to force me to say something my brain refuse to say at the moment. I already noticed that I'm able to say some complicated things when something apparently simple is totally alien to me. People ask me how I can know something complicated when I don't know something easy. Or also how I can know kanjis if I don't know kana. I don't know that's just the way it is at the moment.

April's challenges

En français
So the month of April is coming and it's going to be really really busy. I intend to participate to two contests that I will describe in this post and I also intend to continue writing my third novel "Demon and fairy".
So what are those new challenges I'm giving to myself and what are they all about ?
The first one is Script Frenzy and the second is the International L2 Reading Contest.

Script Frenzy

For Script Frenzy I will write 100 pages movie script. I already prepare my story, meaning by that I know the beginning in the end. It will be a love ghost story. We will find some of the characters present in "Demon Soul" and "Attic mirror" as some part of the story will be taking place in the usual house where the previous characters and the new one live.
I'm not planing on giving you the script in pieces. Script seems to be a lot different to write than a novel as they need a lot of formatting. I'm not really sure I will be able to cut it into scenes and to finish the story in just 100 pages. So I will probably write it all and edit it before giving you a chance to read it. How ever I will tell you how things are going regularly and if i managed to write my weekly 25 pages, something like that as well as little summary of the story.

International L2 Reading Contest

For the International L2 Reading Contest I will read as much pages in Japanese as possible. You can read in any foreign language as you want but as I'm currently living in Japan and learning Japanese, I think it's a great opportunity to improve. I don't think I will make it in the first 5 to win however as my knowledge of the Japanese writing system is not yet optimum. If everything goes as planed I should be able to finish Heisig RTK in 12 days, also I forgot all the kana I already learned and will need to go back to it. But I still can hope, I'm a polyphasic after all so it's at time like that that it can make things turn out to my advantage.

What do I intend to read ?

Harry Potter in Japanese

I have it as a printed book so that will help when I get tired for reading on screen. Also I'm way slower at reading on screen. Another advantage is that the Kanjis have furigana the first time they appear which will help me get through learning their pronunciation.

花ざかりの君たちへ (Hana Kimi)
Reading manga with a lot of picture is going to help me increasing the number of pages faster (I still need to read 10 pages of manga to have it counted as 1 page of normal text)
Also that will help me relax a little from page of text where I won't seem to be understanding anything at first.

あのときの王子くん
I will read the little prince as an audio book (audio books list). The text is written for children and then full of hiragana which worries me a little. But having the audio as well will help be go through it and learn the kanas more easily, or so I hope.


ジーキル博士とハイド氏の怪事件
I'm not too sure about that one I think I need a book with more kanji to be able to read by meaning more than by sound. It also comes from the same audio books list. So I think this one is going to be good for that, however I can still find something different in the list. Another good point about it is that I already read it in English so that will help a bit.