Remembering The Quest: Powerpoints, Bullet Points, and Pocket Notebooks. #WBW

WAY, WAY, WAY BACK in 2013, I was selected to participate in THE QUEST - a 24 week screenwriting workshop adventure traveling from story conception to typing "The End". Part of this process was weekly blogging on our realtime feelings and experiences. On #Way Back Wednesdays, I will share one of my weekly QUEST blog posts.

Special thanks to our fearless QUEST leader, Scott Myers, and I strongly recommend his screenwriting site - GO INTO THE STORY.

This blog was posted on October 11, 2013 - the original link is HERE...

Do you ever have one of those weeks where you just have so much to do that you don’t do any of it and just play SimCity on your Mac until two in the morning every night? WOW! Me too!

2016 Update: Somethings never change.

When one has been a member of the corporate world for fifteen plus years, one will learn to think and speak in power-point-ese (also know as bullet-point-itis). I could go off on a tangent regarding beginning, middles, and end in power-point-ese, but this dispatch is about how it can also help you to perfect short bursts and sprints of stream of consciences thoughts and that the best outlet for this is a small notebook that can fit in your back pocket.

Over the last 3 months, my back pocket notebook has become a treasure trove of fun, random thoughts both for my story as well as grocery and to-do lists. This notebook is also my go to for information and ideas related to my weekly quest assignments.

2016 Update: Still carrying my notebook. It now contains blog post ideas too. :-)

This week’s assignment was to continue our outlining process by examining how our themeline traverses for the story opening to the thrilling ending. I once again pulled from the chicken scratch in my handy, dandy notebook to type up my assignment, and some sort of witchcraft also once again happened. Seeing the scribbling’s of a mad man presented in twelve-point “Cambria” font across an open MS Word document, actually revealed something cohesive and consistent. A real theme was already there, and the flow of themes from Act 1 through Act 3 was really, really on point with my character’s hero journey. Yay me!

So moral of the story, seeing the smudged pencil ramblings from my notebook categorized together on one sheet answered questions that were starting to drive me bananas.

Back to “Titan Moon Valley”. I’m thinking about building a town that specialized in garbage and churches. Wonder if my notebook has a thought on that.

#WBW #TheQuest #screenwriting #writing