Whilst I’m still in the middle of my mad affair with Twitter, I’ve created a Scribomatic account you can now follow to get alerts of all the new blog posts from around the Scribosphere.

Follow @scribomatic.

Not sure of it’s of any use to anyone, but here are the top 20 posts in terms of click-throughs from the widget over the past couple of months:

Bear in mind that these click-throughs are probably only a small percentage of the visits to any of these blogs, but it’s good to know that the Widget is doing it’s job. 

If you think there’s any worth in them, or would like to see them published more regularly, let me know…

A screenplay in under two weeks!

A complete(ish) first draft of ‘Return to Earth’ (working title) is sitting there glowing at me lovingly from my screen.

It needs much work, and some of the scenes have characters spouting gibberish until I do a bit more research and fine tune the detail, but the story is there.

It’s only 87 pages long, but as I was aiming for 90 and being as concise as I possibly could be, I’m more than happy.  I can think of at least two new scenes that could go in if needs be.

Think I’ll do a first pass rewrite v. soon to correct as many mistakes a possible – especially with the layout of the moon base which I only really got fixed in my head last Friday, and then stick it away for a few weeks to mature.

Hello.  My name is Andy Coughlan and I’m a Twitterholic.

There, that feels good.

Being somewhat addicted to Twitter these days, it’s been bugging me for some time why it is that so few screenwriters appear to be on there.

Having had Scribomatic running for some time now, it’s clear to me that Screenwriters like to blog – we love it.  At its best our blogging is educational, entertaining and enlightening, at its worst it’s irritating and condescending.

But whatever we put on our blogs, the act of writing our posts doesn’t really help our own screenwriting. Blogging, as a writing form, is far more akin to traditional prose writing than it is to screenwriting.

Screenwriting is about being concise, of excising all waste.  Every line of action and dialogue must move the story forward – if it doesn’t, it shouldn’t be there.  We all know that (I hope).

Now with Twitter you only 140 characters to play with, so every Tweet you write is a fabulous exercise in concise writing. Over the past few weeks my grammar and vocabulary has been constantly challenged and my use of redundant phrases and repetition exorcised like never before.

It’s really paying dividends with the new screenplay I’m writing.

But even more than that, it’s fantastic for building relationships.  Far better, I would argue, than posting comments on each others blogs. I guarantee you’ll meet up with interesting and intelligent people… if you want to.  I certainly have.

I’ve hardly checked my feed reader in the past few weeks, in part because I was annoyed I couldn’t go to Cheltenham and didn’t want to read about the fantastic time everyone was having, but mainly because Twitter is such a vibrant and interesting place to be.

It’s happening, right now, right there in the timeline. A lot of people I follow announce their latest blog posts into the timeline as well, so the need for feedreaders diminishes further. And with apps like Twhirl it’s there all the time on my desktop. I don’t have to go surfing around to see all the comments sections of peoples blogs to have conversations.

I’m not saying we should stop blogging, but I suspect that if more of us tweeted, the overall quality of the Scribosphere would go up.

So this is a call to all the screenwriters I know, jump in – the waters warm. And when you’re in, you can follow me here.

In fact, if you’re already on Twitter, or after you’ve joined, post your details in the comments section here so we can find each other…

Useful Links:

Twitter – the big daddy and the place where most people are.  Yes, it’s had its problems over the past few weeks, and the Fail Whale has been making regular appearances, but last weekends upgrades appear to be doing the job.

Jaiku, Pownce, Identi.ca, Plurk – Pretenders to Twitter’s throne, each with their own subtle twist (I like Plurk’s timeline, I’m not worried about file sharing).  If you’re unsure which to pick, stick with Twitter.

Twhirl – A great desktop app.  Also works with your Friendfeed account, posts to Jaiku and Pownce as well,  and they’re just introducing Seesmic integration (more on that in another post soon).

Tip:

Don’t follow too many people to start with – there is a tendency for people to be a bit gung-ho and follow the world and his wife, then drown under the weight of Tweets coming in.  Try to keep the number of people you follow less than your number of followers (difficult to start with, easier the more useful tweets you post and interesting people you follow and talk to).

Futher Reading:

Michael Leis at New Media Buzz has an excellent post on Microblogging and Screenwriting which elaborates on a lot of my points above.

Image via Wikipedia

Looks like I’m through to the quarter finals of the BlueCat screenwriting competition, with my slightly (well, very) dodgy first draft of The Trimes. Not sure how it’ll fare against the remaining 536, but it’s good to have got this far.

On another note, in an astounding display of procrastination, I’ve been working on a little side project for the past few evenings which, if I could be so bold, I’d like to ask your help with.

It’s a little web site mashup type thing which you can find over at http://waydig.com and I’d be ever so grateful if you could test it out.

My main concerns are:

• Does it make sense?
• Is it too difficult to understand?
• Does it work?

Any feedback will be gratefully received (e-mail andy@waydig.com)