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[Supermikhail]

@Katsuun: About media - once again, try Script->AdaptTo-> whichever you want. Of course, more fun option is alway retyping it all in a different format.

@Dasleah: I've composed some review of your script, but I've let it lie for some time unfortunately , and now it seems to sound too harsh. So

Spoiler: At your discretion (click to show/hide)

 I hated it a little, really. The bits where you break the fourth wall, so to say. I may be prejudiced by the fact that you are the guy who was supposed to be the boss and the guru in this thread. Anyway, these nods, trail-offs are very distracting from the real content. I, again, am not too big on comics. Maybe they do it this way. Also, trying to read it all, but you describe every panel in detail, even if nothing is really happening, it's just a transition. Maybe you could somehow condense Yoko's thoughts for those of us with tl;dr?
Also, Yoko sure feels like breaking the fourth wall. If it's her thoughts we read, then she's got surprisingly few, and well structured; if it's what she says, it sounds off.

Edit: @Katsuun: About gods' banter - see the Principle of Boring Your Audience.

[Katsuun]

Edit: @Katsuun: About gods' banter - see the Principle of Boring Your Audience.

We'll see what I can do when I get around to editing it.

[mendonca]

14 pages down.

I might have a page break after every scene, and that includes the title page, but I'm still claiming that as 14 pages.

12 pages tonight, 86 to go ... now if I can just do another 7 or 8 nights like tonight we should be good to start shooting!

[Dasleah]

I hated it a little, really. The bits where you break the fourth wall, so to say. I may be prejudiced by the fact that you are the guy who was supposed to be the boss and the guru in this thread. Anyway, these nods, trail-offs are very distracting from the real content. I, again, am not too big on comics. Maybe they do it this way. Also, trying to read it all, but you describe every panel in detail, even if nothing is really happening, it's just a transition. Maybe you could somehow condense Yoko's thoughts for those of us with tl;dr?
Also, Yoko sure feels like breaking the fourth wall. If it's her thoughts we read, then she's got surprisingly few, and well structured; if it's what she says, it sounds off.

Thanks for reading it, at least, even if you did hate it. The main reason why I do describe things a lot / break the fourth wall is because you primarily write a comic script for an artist, so you have to describe what you want to be drawn in a panel. It isn't like a movie script when you can just say 'there is a tree here' because damnit, I want a particular tree, and it's there for this reason, etcetera. If I don't tell somebody that something is in this panel, then there's a chance it may not exist or be drawn at all. There's no mandate for perpetual reality between panels in comics.

And breaking the fourth wall in the descriptions is just a way to make it feel more like a conversation than a list of instructions - I want to work with that artist, rather than just fire off "DRAW X WITH Y THAT IS COLOUR Z" instructions to them. Ideally you just want to be able to say to your artist 'She's there and she's unhappy' and they know you well enough and are talented enough to just draw what you want from the get-go, but seeing as how I don't have an artist at this point, I just want to have everything possible in the script. And at the end of the day, the only person who's really going to read my script is the artist, and all the reader is going to see is the art and dialogue, so it doesn't phase me too much if I go a little overboard. It helps me write faster if I talk a little to myself, anyway.

And man, this ain't anything. Alan Moore's script for Watchmen? A 22 page comic? That was 90 pages long. And he had been friends with his artist for years at that point.

But hey, thanks for reading it anyway! I'm about to hit the end of the first act and lurch into the first major plot point with a few pages of heavy dialogue, so hopefully things will pick up a bit from there. And looking back on it now, I really do think I'm a little too much a fan of decompression but hey, that's for post-SF and the editor's pen.

[Katsuun]

Wow. Reformatted it to a screenplay so that special effects actually made sense- and the thing jumped up to 35 pages. I'm at 40 now:

http://drop.io/ylu9yig

[Supermikhail]

@Dasleah: So, I guess you'd like to have an artist, and you need to interest him, so he wants to draw the comic. And instead of being inspired, having images in his head, getting immersed in the story, the artist constantly gets distracted by your comments. See the flip-side of the coin I'm getting at here?
And really, if you aren't friends with the artist, why do you feel comfortable with these friendly (and, you know, full of personality) comments?

On a different note, I've just realized, that comic is a much cheaper medium than film. While graphically it is capable of almost the same... thing. On the other hand, it lacks sound. Another drawback is that I almost never read comics and don't know anything about them.

[mendonca]

Can I just say wow; I have had a little read through the scripts on show.

I'm entirely too uneducated to criticise in any meaningful way, and far too polite to even dare suggest a better way for anyone here, so a few meager words of encouragement:

Geti: I'm interested to see where this one will go. I figure Blake is the Heroine, I wonder why, and where the story will take us?

Katsuun: My god. I'm astounded by your output. Also I like the relentlessness of it all. I'll probably have to re-read it to properly get my head round it though!

Dasleah: I for one genuinely like it, and I must admit I have never considered what a comic book would look like before it was drawn. Loved the panel about Ayano (?) being none-too-happy about the contents of the boxes, raised a smile.

In the spirit of open-ness:

www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/writing/The Silk Dolls.pdf

Happy to recieve critique if anyone is happy to give it, but whether or not I will pay attention prior to the 1st May is severely in doubt, as my quality filter is definitely not in place for this month.

Also - 22 pages.

[LASD]

Good news, my writing partner started writing after all and I got cool new characters from him to use. Like the daughter of the Grim Reaper. I thought it appropriate to give her a sickle to use as a weapon.

Also, the Reaper himself tied nicely into the story and made it easy to send the main character to action. The point is now that Death is pissed off at the undead for making his work worthless as everyone he kills comes back as living dead. And having only the power to kill the living, he needs help to defeat the dead.

I'm actually surprised how planned out this is starting to sound as the point was just to ramble and stumble blindly ahead to 100 pages.


Then to slightly bad news, the script is only 16 pages long. But there's 2 people writing again, so it will happen! Also, I just blasted past my daily quota without even noticing. Writing was actually easy, fun and fast.

And finally, the great news! This project is doing amazing things to the problem I've always had with writing: I think of every word and sentence too much and keep editing them again and again and again, even if they're just fine already. Now I've just kept writing, not going back to fix anything else then the most blatant mistakes. The time for refinement is when the whole thing is done, otherwise it will just slow down the project until it ceases to a halt.

[Dasleah]

@Dasleah: So, I guess you'd like to have an artist, and you need to interest him, so he wants to draw the comic. And instead of being inspired, having images in his head, getting immersed in the story, the artist constantly gets distracted by your comments. See the flip-side of the coin I'm getting at here?
And really, if you aren't friends with the artist, why do you feel comfortable with these friendly (and, you know, full of personality) comments?

On a different note, I've just realized, that comic is a much cheaper medium than film. While graphically it is capable of almost the same... thing. On the other hand, it lacks sound. Another drawback is that I almost never read comics and don't know anything about them.

Oh, I can certainly see where you're coming from. It's one of those fine balances - you want the artist to feel they have enough room to explore themselves creatively, but on the other hand, you don't want your vision as a writer to be clouded by an artist who just doesn't get what you've put down on paper. At the end of the day, I'd rather over-describe and over-explain. And it's not like these things are set in stone - there's a big divide between what I see happening in my head and what best works on paper. If I had an artist, then I'd fire these pages in draft to them, they'd bitch and complain about what doesn't work and what would be better, and then I'd see where they were coming from, etcetera.

Comics are extremely collaborative. While I don't think a few casual comments between panels is going to 'distract' anyone, if they can think of a better way to achieve the effect I want in a panel, then you're damn sure I'm going to use that instead. I've seen comic scripts that are written as clinical and precise as a medical manual, and I've seen the script to Alan Moore's Watchmen (which, if you haven't read comics, is arguably the Citizen Kane of sequential art) - 90 pages long, full of ideas and asides, little mentions and snippets of conversation. I guess this is just my style, as it certainly makes me feel the most comfortable to write it like this. If it were a screenplay, sure, I'd leave all the personal asides and conversation out.

Budget is one of the great things about comics. I can just write 'Godzilla is attacked by the Autobots while orbiting around Saturn (that is one fire) while Galactus dances' and I don't have the special effects budget destroyed by that one shot. Sound you lose a bit, but so long as you put in the subtle sounds, then most readers will fill in the blanks by themselves.

Dasleah: I for one genuinely like it, and I must admit I have never considered what a comic book would look like before it was drawn. Loved the panel about Ayano (?) being none-too-happy about the contents of the boxes, raised a smile.

have i ever told you i like you more than Supermikhail 

Anyway, no firm plans for today, so it's write write write! Once I've updated your page totals in the OP, that is.

[Geti]

woo, editing and some sort of intro. still needs work but whatever, just hit 16 pages (so it's really 15.5ish)
http://drop.io/GetiScriptFrenzy

Will definitely try to get another 2-3 pages done tonight, most of the last while was getting the characters a little more thought out in my head and tweaking this and that, I'll get to the actual plot and hopefully introducing Damien soon.
need to break 20 pages by this weekend or I'll kill someone. What time zone is the deadline on btw?

@mendonca: if I get time I'll read it, but Re: wanting to see where this goes, me too There's no clear plan as of yet, but it'll probably involve some treasure hunting and moving around, I chose brooklyn so they wouldn't feel too bad pissing off every now and again. Not dropping it and leaving, but you know, bolting the house up, leaving the closed sign there and going caving or some shit.
it's all vague at the moment, would love some opinions on the new scene, I wanted their relationship to be a bit more open to you guys, they should be like a mix of the kind of friends that can sit down and have a laugh (she's been working for charlie for 3ish months, but probably known him longer.) and wierd circle of relationships. He cares for her in a paternal way, but there's some grey area too, and she thinks of him mostly platonically, but possibly with a bit of a crush in there. As such, she's awkward and thankful, he's fairly confident with a bit of unsure thrown in for fun.
That and I'm just blaowing out these in my spare time

EDIT: hey man, 8 pages? I doubt it

[Supermikhail]

Can't read all the amazing stuff that's been put here now. However, is Watchmen script available freely, and if so, where? (Citizen Kane comparison hit the right strings, even if I haven't had the pleasure to watch the movie...)
P.S. Neither girls, nor script writers like me anymore.
Oh, P.P.S.  The deadline is on the time zone you started in, iirc.

[Os Q]

I started, possibly the biggest step

I might I am going to get up to six pages tonight, got some catching up to do

[Grakelin]

Working on this right now, at page 23.

I feel like this almost has to be a screenplay. I've never seen a stage script cap 100 pages. My copy of Hamlet is only 88 pages long (44 pages with double column text). The type is small, but it's still brutal to try to match that. I rarely see a 100 page stage play, unless the type is large and the book's vertical length is short.

[Geti]

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF wont be able to get anything done till likely tuesday <_<
goddamnit, I have a friend up from down south and I can't just leave for an hour each day to write, so I'll have to have an epic catch-up soon. rawr.

[mendonca]

44 pages now ... productive weekend ...