Michelle recently reminded me of The Importance Of Planning. Planning definitely isn’t what I would call one of my talents, or at least it isn’t something I’ve been particularly good at in the past. But that’s something I’m changing. I’ve gotten off of my arse to do a lot of important things recently. One of the most important things has been getting the ball rolling on learning to drive, something I thought I’d done before I went to England but it turns out I booked an appointment to renew the Drivers License I don’t have yet, so a week ago I booked my new appointment.
That’s not what this blog post is about, though. No, this blog post is about my writing. Michelle reminded me of the importance of having a portfolio of writing samples (she and David have been asking me for writing samples for about two weeks now, as there’s a chance I may be writing an episode of ./shutdown at some point), which is something I have always wondered about - do I need to write a bunch of full-length screenplays? What goes into a writing portfolio? My research yielded few results, but Michelle (she’s smart, is Michelle) tells me that a writing portfolio really only needs a handful of scripts maybe 3 or 4 pages in length that act as examples of my writing.
Well, I have a ton of short scenes I’ve written. They’re just not in script format.
Last night I sat down and started adapting some of my ficlets into screenplay format. It’s an interesting process - not everything I’ve put across in the (admittedly minimal) narrative can be just transplanted over, so I have to somehow set the same tone, send the same messages without necessarily using the same words or (in extreme cases) the context. Writing screenplays is, i think, more about writing what you can see than what you can feel.
Or possibly that’s bollocks.
I’m enjoying taking these teeny-tiny stories I wrote and adapting them for a different medium. I’m not doing all of them; mostly I’m focusing on dialogue-driven stories, but I did flesh out Ottoman’s Treasure a little (renaming it “Bard” in an effort to make it sound less like a Nicholas Cage movie). That was interesting, because it focuses more on crushing disappointment than on humour, so it’s very different from my usual shtick.
I was originally planning on only adapting six of these ficlets. I think I may benefit from adapting a few more. It couldn’t hurt, right?
I know a couple of other writer-buddies occasionally read my blog, so any feedback or suggestions you guys could give me about what else should/could go in the portfolio would be great. I’m planning on including the latest version of the Jump Leads pilot script, and possibly the Writers Bible too. I could include some of my ficlets in their original form as well - probably best not to use the ones I’m adapting, though. What do you think?