Elementals - Prologue

I realise that I promised you writing and I have insofar not uploaded a single extract. Consider this a start.

The following is the prologue from a novel I'm beginning to write called 'Elementals'. I'll not give away the plot because that's not cool, but I shall say this: What occurs in the prologue does impact later events, but not directly. All shall become clear later. Trust me. After all, you really have no other choice. Muhahahaha...

*          *          *



It started in the night. It began as a whisper at the back of his mind, increasing in volume until it was a roar that rocked the very core of his being. And then, very suddenly, it stopped. And he opened his eyes.

                 The room was on fire. Everything – the pale wallpaper, the wardrobe, the bookcase and its load of paperbacks – was burning fiercely, flames leaping up from the hardwood floor to lick the painted ceiling. The bedcovers were alight, the fire devouring the soft fabric.

                He reacted instinctively, kicking back the covers and springing out of bed and to the floor. More by accident rather than design, he managed to land in a patch free of flame. The heat was searing and the smoke thick, catching in the back of throat. He had to escape. He glanced at the door. It was succumbing to the inferno, its white paint peeling away. The brass doorknob glowed menacingly. There was no way out.  But wait - the window.

                Moving like lightning, he picked up a lamp and hurled the heavy object at the glass. It smashed through the single pane with a crash. He turned to it and backed up several steps. He killed the seeds of doubt in his mind – he didn’t have time to question the wisdom of what he was about to do. Grimacing with anticipation, he ran to the window and leapt.

                The cool air was both a shock and a relief to him as it rushed past. The cold wind flowed over his loosely-clad body and outstretched arms. Then he made contact with the rough bark of the tree, and his flight ended as abruptly as it had begun.

                Hooking his arms around the thick branch of the old tree, he hauled himself up into the foliage. Leaves still damp from the night’s rain wiped water across his forehead, mingling with the sweat. Twisting around, he looked back at the house. The whole building was lit from the inside by the glow of the fire, shadows dancing on the neatly mowed lawn. The crackle of blazing material and the crash of a collapsing roof filled the air. It was a symphony of destruction: The booming bass drum was the jerry cans in the garage; the xylophone’s tinkle was glass breaking; the trumpet’s fanfare replaced by the wail of sirens.

                When they found him, he was sitting at the base of the tree, fresh burns colouring his skin an angry red. His expression was blank, wiped clean by shock. But it was his eyes that caught the attention; held them rapt. They burned with the infernos of rage.

                The fire fighters may have extinguished the flames, but the fire blazed on.

*           *          *

There is more, but that's better left for another time. There is an actual plot behind this and there's a reason behind everything that just happened above. I just need to find it... Heheh.

Adios muchachos.

Scriptwriting for Novelists

I'm not sure if anyone else has realised this (blatant sarcasm; forgive me), but there's quite a divide between scriptwriting and novel-writing. Where in novels one must write great big long descriptions to satisfy the reader's potentially interested mind, in scripts descriptions must be as concise as possible. The director decides what the set and costumes look like rather than the screenwriter in a script, because the ultimate aim is to sell it on to someone else so that they may produce it as a movie, play or audio play. This is a key difference between the two that I am finding difficult to deal with.

As a novelist and storyteller at heart, I have grown accustomed to describing scenes in subtle and often lengthy fashions. One of my personal rules is to pour as much description in as possible without deterring the reader from reading on, something that is not always easy to achieve. Therefore writing scripts is difficult for me, because I have to cut down an entire paragraph to a few key words and phrases. Where in stories the bulk is description and action, scripts are fleshed out with dialogue and have little action blocks just to tell you where you stand.

Making the transition from noveling to scriptwriting is an unusually turbulent one, and I've found that the way to deal with it is simply to write my scripts as I do novels: pile on the description and intersperse it with dialogue. Then, when it comes to the rewrite, I go back and blitz it. Waging war on one's own work is often difficult, but it tends to work - it cuts down the unnecessary stuff and generally betters the entire experience. And, as I do this more and more, I find myself having to do less and less editing. The moral of the story: if you're a novelist, you're going to write scripts like a novelist, so rethink your entire approach before you start. Still, perhaps some things are better learned firsthand...

If any of you out there are novelists going into scriptwriting, just remember that it's an entirely different ball game. In fact, I think the ball may have changed shape as well as size... Good luck to you, people. I now have a novel to be writing. I bit you adieu!

Pisces

Dead Fish Productions

It was late last night when I decided that I was going to start up a production company. (Not a real, official company, but you know what I mean - it sounds better than 'group'.) Together with my friend Bill, we formed Dead Fish Productions, a group with a single purpose: to create short films, audio plays and animations (perhaps; only 'short films' is confirmed).

So it is that we exist: Professor Pisces as director and scriptwriter, Bill as the one-man camera crew and digital artist and now my own brother, Bod, as an actor, stuntman and continuity editor.

To deal with documenting the process of producing such films, I've set up a new blog - Dead Fish. On the official Dead Fish site, you'll see the production process followed through, bit by bit, from the conception of an idea through to the end credits and evaluation. When we eventually manage to produce something, we'll post it on YouTube over our as-yet nonexistent channel as well as linking it to the Dead Fish blog.

Head over there now and join us for the journey - it's bound to be a good show.