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I had an interesting thing happen today. A kid from my class asked when I was going to write the next chapter for The Trials Of Bobsy McMilko. They are actually keen to see what happens next. I have the pages stuck up right outside my door and it is nice to see kids going out to breaks actually stopping to check it out, but then staying there to read the whole thing.

I wrote the next chapter today. I like the stilted form of just writing a short chapter and putting it up. Each chapter is one page of printed A4 text, though I have had to adjust the margins to make it all fit, I get a little verbose at times. I have a rough plan of what will happen in the story, and there are certain beats that I want to hit, but overall I just sit down and see what comes in this chapter. This time it involved Bobsy daydreaming about the birth of one of his enemies Mack MacGarnickle. He fantasises about Mack issuing forth from a dusty old egg. I am trying to marry the styles of Roald Dahl with a bit of my own stuff. I want it to be over the top enough to grab the kids, but well written enough to hold anyone else who stumbles by.
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Tonight I have written 5 pages of my purloined idea. It is slowly ticking along in script form and I am pleased with the pages tonight. In the beginning I am kind of married to a certain structure, but still trying to breathe my own life into it and let the characters have some reign over how they do it all. It feels good and the characters are all already standing out to me and speaking in their own voices.
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I am still thinking about Southland Tales, which I watched the other night. I still don’t know exactly what to say. I get the feeling that the movie was too smart for its own good. It may also have tried to do too much, and so been stretched because of this. I like the general idea of it all with the temporal rift, but the act of getting there seemed uneven, which was kind of a let down. The acting was good in parts, though the first half Dwayne Johnson seems to be channelling William Shatner in a hard way, and that’s not a compliment. But I loved his shifty fingers when he got nervous. I liked the musical scene with Justin Timberlake, especially when a Watchmen smiley cameos in the background on the photo booth.

It’s a movie I’ll probably see again, just to watch it with some knowledge of what is actually happening, but I don’t think it’s quite Donnie Darko, sadly.

Posted on May 13th, 2008 by ryan
Filed under: Writing, movies