Sunday, March 8, 2020

A Week in Writing #289 - Amusement Parks and Homework


If you remember, last week, I promised that this week might not be my most productive and I like to think I'm a man of my words. In addition to attending Disneyland on Tuesday, I also had to read two scripts and do a quick pitch for a UCLA class I was attending on how to pitch feature films and, in my case, TV series.

Now, reading a script isn't hard work, though it is time-consuming. For the class, we had to read the script for The Big Sick as well as the pilot for Game of Thrones. To accomplish this took the better part of three nights. Add to that and I had to compose, along with Paul, a quick pitch of our idea, which turned out not to be homework after all, since only Paul and I seemed to have written ours up for class.

The professor is a working writer who was sharing his experience with pitching ideas for both TV and film. (Animated TV was not something he was as familiar with, but much of the same still applies.) It takes more than a great idea to pitch and, in fact, you have to put together several versions, in addition to a Pitch Deck, which is really important for animation. You also need to be able to include in your pitch the significant plot points and emotional journey of your characters, though for TV it is more the end of the pilot. I won't pretend to be an expert at this and the class was really helpful in pointing out what we need to include in our pitch. More work to be done for sure.

Speaking of Powers Squared, and we were, we are doing a signing at Golden Apple Comics at 7018 Melrose Ave., in Hollywood, on March 14th at 1 pm. We'll have copies of all 8 released issues of the book as well as a special trading card designed especially for the event. I hope you will come out for that. And remember, elbow bumps are FREE!

Now, I did try to work in some work on The Runaway during the week. I will say that after returning from Disneyland, I did try to work on the book but I honestly couldn't concentrate on it enough to be more than a token attempt. I did have the idea to plant a character that I want to use later in an earlier part of the book, which I did manage to do during the week, including last night after returning from class. So, at least one new chapter was written this week. Now, on to the rest of it.

And, it should come as no surprise that no new reviews again from me this week. No time. Fortunately, the other two writers on Trophy Unlocked are up to the task. This week's Saturday Morning Review was Paul's look at Darksiders III. I need to get back to this as well.

Looking ahead, we will need to pull a few things together for the signing but I think we're in pretty good shape for it. And there is Daylight Savings, which just happened. I don't know about you but it usually takes me a couple of days to readjust for the time-change either way. But we'll see how things go. I will be back next week to tell you all about it. So, in the meantime, keep writing.

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