2018 Zero Draft Thirty September Challenge: Day 24
One month. FADE IN to FADE OUT. Creativity meets Productivity.
One month. FADE IN to FADE OUT. Creativity meets Productivity.
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 24. One week left!
Write an entire draft of a script in September — FADE IN. FADE OUT. Or any sort of creative goal you have in front of you.
Feature length movie screenplay. Original TV pilot. Rewrite a current project. Break a story in prep. Generate a month’s worth of story concepts.
Whatever you feel will ratchet your creative ambitions into overdrive…
DO THAT!
September 1: You type FADE IN / “Once upon a time…”
September 30: You type FADE OUT / “…They all lived happily ever after.”
It’s free! It’s fun! It’s Fade In to Fade Out!
For everything you need to know to join, click here.
On Twitter, use this hashtag: #ZD30SCRIPT.
Zero Draft Thirty Facebook Group: Here. 3,100+ members strong.
Today’s Writing Quote
“My best writing has been on the scripts I wrote as suicide notes to the industry — sort of, ‘Fuck you, guys, I’m outta here.”
— Marc Norman
Today’s Inspirational Video
One of the most memorable moments in baseball’s World Series history. Game 7, Pittsburgh Pirates vs. the mighty New York Yankees, tied 9–9 in the bottom of the 9th inning, Bill Mazeroski steps up to the plate. I saw this as 7 year old boy and can still remember it to this day.
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 1
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 2
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 3
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 4
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 5
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 6
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 7
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 8
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 9
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 10
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 11
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 12
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 13
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 14
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 15
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 16
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 17
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 18
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 19
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 20
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 21
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 22
Zero Draft Thirty: Day 23
Each day this month, I’ll post a Zero Draft Thirty Challenge post here at Go Into The Story. And as I’ve done with every past Challenge, I will hand out an award for a notable Tweet, Facebook post, or comment here on the blog. This cycle, the winner will receive the vaunted Anita Loos Award!
Today’s Anita Loos Award winner: Daniel Flint.
Over at the Zero Draft Thirty Facebook group, Daniel posted this:
I opted not to start a new first draft this September, but I am enjoying seeing you all fight your way through! I do want to share that thanks to Scott showing a clip making sense of using a card based method at LSF, my 20 pages of treatment, rough outline and notes went from a stack of papers to this in less than a week! My usual approach would have been to just start writing. Using cards in final draft, white board, etc. But this time I feel that more prep means a better first draft! Thanks Scott (and Lance Black)
Ps. I’m gonna need a bigger table!
What Daniel is referring to is two things. First, a master class presentation I recently did at the 2018 London Screenwriters’ Festival. It was divided into three parts. Parts One and Two focused on The Protagonist’s Journey and story theory. Part Three took all that theory and transformed it into practice including working with 3 x 5 inch index cards.
The second thing is this video which I featured in my presentation: Dustin Lance Black who won an Oscar for his screenplay for the movie Milk:
I get much more specific about how to use the note cards working with the story’s subplots (relationships) and dividing the cards into various sequences, but as you can from Daniel’s photograph, it’s an approach which works. What you see on his table is his story — scene by scene. Now he can type FADE IN with confidence that he’ll not only get to FADE OUT, but also have a decent first draft.
For this bit of inspiration, the recipient of today’s Anita Loos Award is Daniel Flint!
Congratulations, Daniel!
For more on screenwriter Anita Loos, go here.
My London Screenwriters’ Festival master class was so well received, there’s talk of making the video of the entire 6 hour session available for people. Would you be interested in that? If so, let me know in comments.
For background on how the Zero Draft Challenge came into being and what it is, go here, here, and here.
Now Zeronauts, Scampers, Word Warriors, and Outlaws…
GO WRITE!