A person by the name of CartoonLover16 had posted on DeviantArt this week. Seems he's writing a Helga-centric fanfiction with a lot of focus on Helga's interaction with her family. He asked for any advice from the "die-hard fans" to make sure a "casual" fan such as himself didn't miss anything in canon. I then sent him a dissertation about my biggest Hey Arnold! fanfiction pet peeve - Helga's parents portrayed as physically abusive monsters that couldn't care less about their daughter. This is far from true if you pay attention to the show. I didn't mean for my response to him to be so long-winded but... well... check back on last week's post and.... yeah.... On the bright side, he seemed to find it helpful, and a couple people commented that they agreed with my agitation over the falsely pigeon-holing Bob and Miriam as "flat, Disney-like, evil villains". Another bright side is that I might write an essay on the subject and post it on DA, but it's unlikely that I'll do so in the near future.
Downside? CL16 now wants me to help beta for him as well. So I used his story to further procrastinate the writing of my own.
As for the writing of my own story. I had every intension of working on it Thursday. I even opened the document - an accomplishment in and of itself - and read back through the first half of the chapter I already had written. I did some tweaks and some edits to polish it up a touch. And then promptly stopped to go play Doodle God...
I am mildly comforted about my procrastination after reading an article I also sent to the self-doubting DarkAngel1326 as well as my fledgling Mekonraiba. Just in case you are also a writer, I'll leave this riiiiiiiight here....
Eight Secrets Which Writers Won't Tell You by Ali Luke. Part of her blog Aliventures. She also has another one of her blog posts linked in this one. I also found it reassuring.
Oh heck! Just go ahead and read everything she has on her blog. I know I'm now following her. It is all inspirational and reassuring and has helpful tips. So if you're a writer I strongly suggest checking out Aliventures.
There HAS been a side task that I've been working on - plot conception wise. Those who have been following me - or at least my FanFiction writing - might recall my month-long hiatus throughout April last year. It was so I could participate in National Novel Writing Month's sister-event: Script Frenzy.
A review on last year's premier attempt at Script Frenzy:
I greatly enjoy the fanfiction writer Rachel Cabbit - from whom I got this writing-update blog idea - and read on her blog that she was participating in NaNoWriMo. After seeing a few more people on FF and Facebook comment about participating, I looked in to maybe doing the same. While on the NaNoWriMo's website I discovered that there was a sister program that occurs every April. Instead of attempting to write a 50,000 word novel between November 1st and November 30th, Script Frenzy's goal is a 100 page script between April 1st and April 30th. The real draw for me was that while NaNoWriMo tries to encourage writers to go solo, Script Frenzy was alright with collaborations. I had written easily two-dozen scripts in college as well as scripts while working at a production company for three years. At the time, I was actually more comfortable writing script than I was writing prose. Also, the next NaNoWriMo would be the month after my wedding - and we all know how crazy that month turned out. Writing a script, with a partner, long before my wedding and move all seemed like winning arguments, and so I signed up. Not knowing what to script, I decided on writing a fan-version of what I believed The Jungle Movie would have been like if Nickelodeon had greenlighted the second Hey Arnold! movie. Based on hints the show's creator Craig Barlett "leaked" over the years, I set forth to ask the fandom what they thought, as well as if anyone wanted to help collab with me. That's how I met my darling ChibiSunnie! The movie was epic, and overwhelming. We got past the half-way point in our page count, even if we only barely got in to the second act of the movie. Finished with 63 out of the 100 pages, and not even half-way through the plotline. Boy, do I need to go back and edit that thing! I kept meaning to last year, but never had the time to work on it further.
Well, it's that time of year again. At first I wasn't going to participate again this year, simply because I haven't done much work on my fanfic since LAST Frenzy. But then Cyhyr's boyfriend told me he wanted to try Script Frenzy for the first time this year. I wanted to be sort of moral-support for him by also working on a script right along side him. We could then talk about how far we have gotten, if we were ahead or behind on our page counts, whether or not we ran in to a wall with the plot, etc. Cyhyr herself might even participate. Since I would actually have a writing group this year I just couldn't resist. Again, I signed up.
Now the issue was figuring out before April 1st what it was I wanted to script. I worked on TJM last year, and so I couldn't really work on that again this year - as much as I'd like to. I've been obsessively watching the English dubbing of an anime called Ouran High School Host Club lately. I loved the show when I watched it in Japanese a few years back, and I'm remembering how great the show is now that I'm re-watching it in my native tongue. I briefly considered writing a movie continuation of the series, since where it concludes leaves quite a few loose ends. I soon dropped the idea since I haven't read the manga the series is based off of, and so I don't know if there is a more satisfying finish to the written version of the series. Then the leading idea was to take the Hey Arnold! A Midsummer Night's Dream crossover plot bunny, and write it as a play instead of prose. However, I really wanted to write something original this year - as much as I love fanfiction.
While I muddled over what to spend next month writing about, my hubby dug out his old Heroscape game. As much fun as it was to play the game as it was intended, being the Dungeons&Dragons-obsessed group that we are we try to convert EVERY game in to a form of LARP or D&D. So, Hubby wrote up loose rules and we're beta-running a campaign he created using a merger of D&D and Heroscape play mechanics. It's quite enjoyable!
Well, one morning it hit me! I could TOTALLY script out the Heroscape campaign. Hubby came up with a very loose introductory story to explain why the characters are where they are and doing what they're doing. He never really mentioned what could happen or what the end-goal is, so I could easily create one. There is also a subtle feel of a manga Hubby and I have been reading lately - Psyren - and so I could pull in elements from that manga. The recent ads for the movie adaptation of the book The Hunger Games has me looking at elements from that, the Japanese story Battle Royale it supposedly "ripped off", as well as re-reading Steven King's story The Long Walk - which both stories could have easily been inspired from.
So now I have a basic idea of what I'd like to do for the script, but I'm still a little iffy on what the actual DRIVE of the story is. Thankfully, my beta reading this week has helped me there too. As I said above, Mekonraiba does have an interesting story concept, and so some elements from his story may creep in to the script as well. Thankfully, he doesn't seem to mind at all. Yay! I might be all set for Script Frenzy. Now, to actually WRITE MY FANFICTION before I use Script Frenzy to procrastinate further.
Before I leave, I want to comment on a weird happening that I noticed this week. My Update Day is Sunday. Granted, a few times I've been late and I've updated on Monday or Tuesday. And there was that one time I posted on Friday to comment on my Valentine's Day story. However, for the most part I try to keep my update days on Sunday.
And yet, on Tuesday at 2pm my time and again at 9pm, and then one last time at 1am Friday, I had eight hits on my blog. It's so weird that my blog was hit up eight times on multiple occasions, on non-update days! XD Who are these people!? They are awesome-sauce and I wish to glomp them!
OK... NOW I'm off to write.
P.S. - I forgot to mention I have a new link on my side bar. Actually, it's replacing the deceased "Arnold Forums" link - since there IS a forum attached. The new Operation Ruthless website opened this Friday! It is a site dedicated to educating the Hey Arnold! fans of The Jungle Movie as well as informing everyone how they can help convince Nickelodeon to revive the project. It is just such a cool place to hang out and we're all like one big happy family! YAY! So check it out! Even if you don't want to help revive TJM it's still cool to see what we do and talk about the show we all love!
Well, technically I have TWO new links since I also added Aliventures... Seriously, check it out if you write AT ALL!
OK, for realsies... I'm leaving now!
I find your layout hard to read.
ReplyDeleteWhite background on a different type style might help your readers. Check other blogs for
what they do with their layouts.
Best Wishes
Hey Lyco! I don't know if you look back at your older posts, but I'm just going through your blog and commenting on certain posts (mainly because I'm bored. XD )
ReplyDeleteLooks like this was the first post you made that mentions me and my story. Like I said before, when I first read your comment on my journal entry announcing that I was writing my own HEY ARNOLD story, I was both surprised and scared at the same time. I was relatively new to the fandom at the time, and at first, the story was going to be VERY dark and would barely resemble the show at all. But when I saw your comment and everyone else's on my journal, I went back and removed all the dark and depressing bits. I think it's turning out much better than what I was going to go with. And I have you to thank. :)
Anyways, I thought I would turn out a decent story with you helping me. Then I see this post and when I got to the part mentioning me, I felt I was an annoyance, and I was afraid to strike up a conversation (I'm kinda of a worry-wart on the net. My biggest fear is that I'm annoying the people I befriend on places like Deviantart.). But when I saw your comment on your 50th post, I felt relieved that I wasn't being a burden and that you were intrigued to see how my story would turn out. So I think it was that post/comment that sorta broke the ice.
Man, I typed out a lot! Well, that's all I have to say here. :)
:/ Yeah, I am always afraid that when I comment about beta reading that I come across a lot harsher than I mean to... to clarify, by "downside" I meant that "unfortunate for my readers I didn't work on my own writing".... :P
DeleteI'm glad I finally broke the ice with you and that we talk so frequently now. <3