He's Dead

Well, I did it.

I killed him.

Actually, it wasn't who I thought it would be. After I wrote the last post, I went through four characters, trying to decide who would be the one to die. In the end, the same character got shot as I was expecting, but a second character gave his life to save the first.

It works. I think. (I've never written a death before)

And this means the first draft of the entire play is finished. But now that I know how it ends, I need to back and fix some things.

• I need to rework the character who does the shooting. I need to make her angry enough, and crazy enough, to pull the trigger. This anger/craziness comes through in places, but it's not consistent.
• I need to settle on the main character. I think I know who it should be (the one who dies), but it may be the one who is shot but is saved.
• I need to fix some problems with another one of the characters; his personality is somewhat inconsistent in Act II.

So, I'm going to let this sit for a couple of days. My playwrighting class is tomorrow, so I won't have a chance to write again until Thursday anyway.

My next step will be to read the whole thing from beginning to end, which will help me decide the "main character" question, as well as identify other problems. Then I'll address the problems I've identified one by one.

At some point in the next few weeks, I'll bring it in to class. I brought the first part of Act II a couple of weeks ago, so I was thinking I would just bring in the rest. But now I suspect I'll want to see the whole thing (both acts).

BTW, Act I is 48 pages, Act II is 44, for a total of 92. That's a good overall length It's also good to have the first act be a little longer than the second: if that's not the case, the play will feel unbalanced.

Staying home tonight

On Thursday, I was walking home from work, and had reached an intersection about five minutes from home. I was standing there, waiting for the light to change, when I heard a crunch. I turned around and saw that an SUV had hit a bicyclist. She didn't look too badly injured, and fortunately there's a fire station just down the street, so within five minutes there were professionals on the scene looking after her.

Fast forward to Friday night. I'm heading up to San Francisco to have dinner with my friend J.B. I'm at Cesar Chavez, coming up on Folsom, when I hear a "crunch" and see a bicycle spinning through the air, about ten feet off the ground. Yup, it happened again. This time it looked worse, so I drove through quickly without more than a quick glance.

Tonight I'm staying at home.

Weekend Wrap-Up

Well, my stitches are out: I just got them out this morning. My finger is still somewhat sore, and there's a small numb patch on the outside of the finger (which should recover, mostly, over the course of a few months). But other than that, it's fine.

I had a pretty low-key weekend. Atari_Age was in town for the weekend and on Friday night we got to hang out and bar-hop, which is always fun.

I didn't do much on Saturday and Sunday. Mostly housework, errands, and some writing for my latest play. I also spent time configuring a new Mac Pro I got last week (it's nice to work for a company large enough to hand out year-end bonuses). Getting the contents of my PowerBook to the new computer was easy enough (Apple makes it very easy, of course). But I'm going to use this machine as a replacement for my PC as well as a supplement to my PowerBook, so I was setting things up so that I could run Windows on the Mac (for the few Windows programs I still need to run).

On Sunday I downloaded and watched the first episode of Star Trek New Voyages, a fan-based continuation of the original Star Trek, with a re-cast Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc. It's pretty good for a non-professional production.

Finally, I saw Children of Men on Sunday night. It's an excellent film, though depressing and pretty violent. The cinematography is astounding: there were a number of very complicated scenes that were all edited to look like they were done in a single take (and one long scene that was, apparently, done in a single take). I've never before had an opinion on which film should win the Oscar for best cinematography, but now I'm rooting for Children of Men

Friday Night With My Kitchen Knife

Well, I suppose I should expand on my somewhat cryptic Friday night post.

About 7:00 on Friday evening I was cleaning my big, sharp cook's knife, when I slipped and cut my right index finger. I don't want to get too graphic, but let's just say the cut was both big and deep enough so that I knew I had to get it looked at right away.

So I headed off to the urgent care clinic with my finger wrapped in paper towel. By the time I get there, it's 7:30. I'm thinking "7:30 on a Friday night: I should be in and out in no time".

Ha.

The first clue was that the parking lot was so full that I had trouble finding a spot. Finally I found a spot, parked, and went in, where I discovered a waiting room full of people. I signed in, paid my copayment, and sat down.

I ended up waiting for an hour.

Eventually (after I went through every news magazine they had, including a copy of The Economist from October, 2005), they got me in. It took the doctor about 35 minutes to get the wound numbed, cleaned, and stitched up, and then to give me a tetanus shot. But then they asked me to remain for an additional 20 minutes, to ensure that I didn't have a reaction to the shot. So by the time I was done, it was 9:30.

It was pretty sore that night, and on Saturday, but it doesn't really hurt now (as long as I don't try to grip anything). No nerve or tendon damage, as far as I can tell. I get the stitches out a week from today.

How was your weekend?

Well, I was going to go out tonight...

But one of my kitchen knives had other ideas.

The stitches come out on the 22nd.

The Well

I've been working on the first draft of the second act of my latest full-length play, tentatively entitled Enlightenment. I wrote about twenty pages and then realized that it was all crap. Or, more precisely, I've got enough material for about 10-15 pages, but I've been trying to stretch it into 40 pages.

So I've been trying to figure out what to do. The basic problem is that there aren't enough problems on stage (character goal + obstacle = problem = drama). Why aren't there enough problems on stage? After some thought, I decided it was because my characters are too nice.

There is this theory of character development, called "Tower/Well", that I've been taught. A good character will have both strengths (tower) and weaknesses (well). For example, you could have a character who is the bravest firefighter in the city, but who is also heroin addict who steals to support his habit.

The characters in Enlightenment are too "tower", so if I create some "well", that will improve things. Actually, there's one character who has a lot of "well" in act I, but it wasn't coming through in act II. She's an anti-cult activist, and at the end of act I she meets the head of the cult she's devoted her life to fighting. At the start of act II, she's just standing around, not doing much, so I start to think: how would she act in this situation?

She'd berate him.

I tell myself to think big.

She'd assault him.

Bigger.

She'd try to kill him.

How?

She'd pull a gun.

Remember an old drama rule: if you show a gun, you have to fire it.

So she'd shoot someone.

She'd aim for the cult leader, but she wouldn't hit him, as that would be too obvious.

Which means...

Someone has to die. And I know who.

Damn.

And to my very great surprise, it hurt to make this realization. That was basically the end of my attempts to write last night, as I was too emotionally stunned to continue.

That's right. "Stunned". Over the "death" of a fictional person.

I guess I am a writer.

I Have Nothing Serious to Blog About Right Now

So here's a video of someone keeping their New Year's resolution:

Imported Music

U.K to California transit time: 3 days.

Damn, I love living in the 21st century.

P.S. Yes, I'm a geek.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone! I'd like to wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2007.

(2007? Is it really 2007 already?)

I had a very nice New Year's Eve at Kalvin and J.R.'s party last night, watching KRON and the ARTS channel with a bunch of other folks, some bloggers, some not.

Today I saw Rocky Balboa. Now, I have an admission to make: I saw the original Rocky for the first time earlier this week. I was a little young to see it when it came out originally, and I never got around to renting it before now. But I figured I ought to see it, so I put it at the front my NetFlix queue (in front of Lost season 2, disk 1) and watched it on Friday. Given how much of Rocky Balboa is devoted to nostalgia from the first Rocky, this turned out to be a good choice.