We’ve made it to the third week of NaNoWriMo‘s writerly trek. How are we feeling today?

I’ve been told I’m a visual writer. While I don’t have the Tolkien or Martin level of describing all the minutae, writing partners, group critiques, and the like, have said that they can see the story unfolding in their minds, that my stories have a cinematic feel to them. I appreciate the high praise and use it to motivate myself through the various hurdles that come with writing projects.

This week, my insomnia led me to some catch-up binge watching opportunities. I’m now up to date on Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard. To keep my space odysseys balanced out, I’ve got Season Two of The Mandalorian queued up. I also plan on re-watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars in the suggested viewing order, before watching the final season.

It got me thinking about screenwriting as a novel writing exercise. I’ve drafted a couple screenplays before. It’s a different beast to tackle as the entire approach to getting my ideas onto the screen have to be formatted in a completely different way. There is a learning curve to it, but that’s not where the challenge lies, (for me, at least).

Because of my supposed ability to paint a picture with words, how does that translate to a screenplay? Any scene information is kept to the bare bones of placing a character in a particular venue. I mean, just in the research portion of the journey, I can go into a deep dive of background details that may never end up on the final page, but are necessary for my process. Challenges abound, for sure. If anything, it’s forced me to focus on the dialogue, another aspect of my writing that’s been well received in my writing circles.

I decided to take some scenes from the short stories I’m drafting and write them out in a screenplay format. While I can definitely see these stories on the small or big screen, my intention was to see if I could pare down my words and still convey the story to the reader in the way I intended. Yes, paring down words is counter-intuitive during any WriMo challenge, but hey, whatever keeps things fresh has got to be a good thing, right?

Just like in my previous post on trying different tricks and techniques in my writing routine, I found this different approach to breaking down my story scenes to be quite enlightening. It helped me focus on using my words economically. And using the Freewrite Traveler, I didn’t have the ability to meander through the vast landscape that is Google, so writing sessions were more purposeful and had better output.

What’s your third week been like? What are you doing to stay motivated? Also, do you have any shows or films you’d like to recommend? Sound off below.

Keep going! We’re near the finish line. You got this and I’m right there with ya!

Stay creative, stay weird, be kind to yourself and others.

Until next time,

T out.