{"id":643,"date":"2010-02-11T02:55:21","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T01:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/?p=643"},"modified":"2010-02-14T23:11:27","modified_gmt":"2010-02-14T22:11:27","slug":"the-monster-story-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/archives\/643","title":{"rendered":"The Monster Story Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just released a new novella-length piece of science fiction. You can download it for free over here.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Enjoy!<\/p>\n

A bit of background:<\/p>\n

I was going to start editing a novella I wrote last February, called “Monster Story (working title)”. It got good feedback from my first readers, but they knew and I knew that it could be much better. It sat on my hard-drive for months while I worked on other projects. Meanwhile I thought long and hard about it, and realized that to get it to the point where I’d be happy with it as a novella, I’d have to re-write huge chunks of it, rather than just do edits.
\nTo make sure I had everything worked out in my head, I thought I’d write my notes down as a dialogue between three characters. Imagine a director, a producer and a script writer, sitting in a room, trying to work out the details of a new movie project, almost from scratch.<\/p>\n

The format is no accident, as I’ve recently read and reread the Raiders of the Lost Ark Story Conference<\/a>, which is the transcript of the first story meeting between George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan (the script writer) for that film. It’s a great read, especially if you already know and love the Indiana Jones movies. And who doesn’t? They come up with loads of great ideas, and quite a few bad ones too, but you see why the good ones made it into the final movies. <\/p>\n

I was wondering if I could be just as creative as Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan combined. How’s that for setting a lofty goal?<\/p>\n

So I thought, “If this works, it could be a fun creative writing exercise, and if not, at least I’ll have a good set of notes for the Monster Story rewrite.” And to make it more interesting, I gave the different characters different motivations, and story to play out between them over the course of the conference.<\/p>\n

And so I began. It’s now less than four days later, and I finished a 35,000 word manuscript, which is just as long as the original “Monster Story” novella! Yet I think it’s a much better story. And it’s a much more interesting way to tell the story too. <\/p>\n

I decided to edit it and release it online right away. Why not? It’s an experimental piece of fiction, but one I think works. The style of writing, which is nothing but dialogue, but not a script as such, is something I’ve done many, many times in the past. It came very naturally. No wonder I knocked out 10,000 words a day for three days. It has an energy I really enjoy.<\/p>\n

And now that I’ve got the story locked down tight, even if it’s from the point of view of a movie script, I’ll probably write a longer and more traditional novel, the definitive version of “The Monster Story”, before the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just released a new novella-length piece of science fiction. You can download it for free over here. Enjoy! A bit of background: I was going to start editing a novella I wrote last February, called “Monster Story (working title)”. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,12,52],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":645,"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions\/645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeburrage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}