Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Failing Faster

I finished a rewrite of my newest ten-minute play and successfully submitted it this morning. Feedback won't come for a few months so it's on to the next thing. Have to build up the pipeline, as they say, and I figured it'd be a good exercise to have a few submissions under my belt before I tackle the big projects.

Must fail faster so I can improve my chances of success. Or, as they also said at my old job, quicken the feedback loop.

In the past I haven't thought much about structure or how to go about telling a story. I just put pen to paper and was surprised by what came out. Now I think I'll try something new. I bought a stack of 3x5 cards (and a 9V battery for the fire alarm, but this isn't about that) and I'm ready to try storyboarding.

Awhile back I picked up these note card bleachers in dark cherry from Levenger -- the most dangerous store on the internet:

Time to dust them off and see if this method works for me. In my quest to fail as fast as possible, I'm basically holding writing process try-outs ova here. Know any other contenders?

4 comments:

FreeRangeAuthor said...

Have you looked at the free, open source media scripting tool, CELTX??

www.celtx.com

Might be useful for your playwriting?

(Not much use if you're using a Mac.)

-- West Seattle

FreeRangeAuthor said...

Try using/showing tags on your posts.

It's a hassle trying to find your posts about the plays you've been writing - search brings up too many off "play" posts.

Blogs really get powerful when you use tags to group topics. Much nicer for your readers.

-- West Seattle

Folly Blaine said...

Thanks, FreeRangeAuthor. I'll look into tags. I don't know why I've never used them here, but it is silly not to have that search optimization in place.

I use Final Draft for playwriting, which I love. I haven't heard of CELTX; I'll check it out.

Even if you search the blog for legitimately tagged playwriting keywords you won't find much here after December 2004. I had a few plays staged in Santa Barbara, CA, and I've come close to winning a contest or two. Then I stopped.

You could say this blog's focus has shifted to picking up where I left off.

Folly Blaine said...

FreeRangeAuthor, tags are working now. I'll go back and add to the older entries. Thanks again for the feedback.

-Christy