Friday, February 20, 2009

Two Reboot Finalists

This is part of my blog reboot process. For the origin of the thought of the motivation of the why and the why now, please click back here.

I've said before that there are a handful of reasons why I'm rebooting and refocusing this blog:

Increase Exposure
Creative Challenge
Showcase My Writing
More Fun for Me, More Entertaining for You

I freely admit that this is all about furthering my career as a professional writer. I would very much like for there to be dollars at the end of this rainbow. It feels important for me to say this up front, as I don't want to be the guy who pretends he's doing something strictly for the art. The art is very important, but I've come to learn that money is also very important too.

Hopefully, art and commerce can co-exist in some meaningful way for me. I know that is a lot to ask of myself, but if you don't ask a lot of yourself then odds are you won't receive a lot from yourself.

Don't you think?

So, with no further ado...

OPTION ONE

A hybrid of the Fiction Writer and the Confessional angles. Here I would fictionalize the present and future of my life in journal form. The journal would begin on March 1, 2009 using my actual, or true past as the backstory.

In other words, I would use the actual raw material of my life to date as the jumping-off point for the adventures of Fictional David Rielly. The changes would be subtle at first; I wouldn't win the lottery on the first day or anything like that. But, over the course of the next year, I would add fictional wrinkles to my real life as a way to... see what I would do.

This option would be a study in wish fulfillment and worst-case scenarios. I would make my relatively uneventful life... eventful. Here I could experiment in meta creative visualization, as the purpose of fictionalizing my life would primarily be to make changes in my real life.

There's something here, methinks, but it might take some digging to find it.

I've always loved this tagline

OPTION TWO

This one falls under the Stunt category. What I propose is to pitch you an original movie idea every day for a year. Each post will include three parts: 1) a title, 2) a logline, and 3) a publicity tagline. Here's an example using an existing film:

1) ALIEN

2) When Ellen Ripley and the crew of the deep space mining ship Nostromo answer a distress call on a distant world, they must do battle with the murderous alien life-form they unwittingly bring back to their ship.

3) "In space, no one can hear you scream."

This option revolves around several areas where I have a great deal of history and interest. I've written thousands of loglines for scripts I covered as a reader. I've brainstormed plenty of movie premises (though nowhere near 365). Perhaps most importantly, I know that there are copywriters out there who are paid to write taglines for the theatrical release of feature films and I'd love nothing more to join their ranks.

What better portfolio piece could there be for that job than this?

I'm going to think about this for a week or so, do some preparatory work and then relaunch The Word Player on March 1, 2009 with the first installment of the new concept.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and responses. I'll see you on the 1st.

3 comments:

Matthew Hennessey said...

Don't like the first one. Kind of really like the second one.

Are we voting on this? Or is this just for you to decide?

Anyway, good luck. I'm rooting for you.

Mr. Word Player said...

There should be a place to vote at the top of the page, in the right hand column next to the current post. Thanks for participating!

Anonymous said...

Like the first one. It may be a self-fulfilling prophecy at the end, though. Watch what you write!