As I suspected, Christmas proved to be mad, with very little writing time. And in an effort to restore some sanity to my world, I resisted doing anything for at least a week.
The break proved beneficial as I’m really raring to go. I’ve spent the last evening or two tinkering with Dramatica and my short movie, Secret Thoughts of Angels, as, quite frankly , it’s pants.
The excercise has given me some really useful ideas about the structure, which I’m going to develop over the next couple of days. I’ve got the Story form sussed and I’ve broken the PSR out into StoryView.
As it’s a short I’ve taken the two core conflict elements of each quad and focussed on them. This gives me sixteen pairs of conflicts, one which I’m going to make the main conflict of the scene and the other the subtext.
For example:
MC1 – "recollections" (Memories)
Situation: Order vs. Chaos (Main Conflict)
vs.
Circumstances: Equity vs. Inequity (Subtext)
I’ve been thinking about subtext a lot over the holidays. It’s something I’ve not really gotten my head around until now, mainly because it seems to be quite tricky.
I’m sure a lot of the time people see subtext where it isn’t, and miss it where it is fully intended, but the writers are too lazy to correct the readers. Also I get the feeling it’s generally latent in the writers mind anyway, and to force it perhaps makes for a dishonest text. But I could be completely wrong.
Having said that, what Dramatica is telling me certainly seems to fit with what I want to write, so I’ll give it a go. I’m sure this isn’t the right way to use Dramatica, but as it’s a short I figured I couldn’t go too far wrong…
I’m making it my new years resolution to get this thing finished and shot in the next six months, as I really want to get my head round some more of the production process and how screenplays are actually translated onto the screen. It’ll also prove whether my untested theory/hope/dream that I could well be the next Kubrick is anywhere near true or not!