Tidbit Tuesday: Fluffies and Heavies

Those who know me well know I have to work on multiple projects at the same time--or I will go nuts or poke my eyes out with a spoon, whichever is handiest at that time.

The interesting thing about working on several projects at a time is that I tend to work on both a "fluffy" project and a "heavy" project simultaneously, so that I don't spend all my time one way or another.  For some reason, my brain also has an unspoken rule that both the fluffy and the heavy project have to compliment each other. How, I really have no idea. But they do, or I can't get them written.

So this time around my "fluffy" is my Soap Satire SIMPATICO--which goes up every Saturday, and my "heavy" is--well I've got several, so here's a quick update on the others.

Dark Lightning, OR My Attempt at Steampunk
Three entries on this so far, and no script. I know, I know.  It's called an attempt for a reason. And it certainly got my brothers excited when I said I was going to try it. Try, what a lovely word.

Progress report: Drafts composed over Christmas Break 2014; now stewing until my brain clears up--or I find a "fluffy project" that goes well with this one. no complementary fluffy as yet. Will keep my eyes open.

Changeling OR My ShakespeareMash
So this is something that's been bouncing around in my head for almost a year now. I've posted exactly one tidbit about it here due to the fact that I can't decide if it's a screenplay or not. Which may or may not drive me crazy, as screenwriting format drives me up the wall(and Blogger hates that more than the stageplay format).

 Progress thus far: Treatment written, now gathering dust and about every excuse not to be written. But maybe it will be. Eventually. See progress report for DARK LIGHTNING above.

Banned, OR The Working Title of My Attempt at Dark Fantasy
You know, if I had to pick, this one is probably the best heavy to compliment my current fluffy. This is one I've been off and on for--I don't even know how long. There are no tidbits about this on the blog, which probably means that this will probably be the next thing to go up(right, creative brain, right?). So I'd keep my eyes peeled for this one.

Progress Report: Script written, done stewing, revised and ready to be put up on blog--as soon as time permits. Yea!!!!

In closing:

My creative process is like this cake--light and fluffy complimenting dark and heavy. There's your metaphor. You're welcome!

More Development on Modern Shakespeare Mash Front

Yes. That's what I've decided to call this thing even though it has a title(which I will tell you later in this post). It's pretty sick. I've been thinking about this off and on for about a month, and while I still haven't begun writing, I have got to the point where I have a specific playlist on my iPhone that I listen to at least once a day, and tons of ideas in my head every time I listen to it--AND I stayed up til 3 am writing the beginnings of the treatment. And to make it even more entertaining--this is probably turning into a tv series. So that's something. And I figured out the best way to describe it--it's Once Upon A Time meets Star Crossed  meets Firefly.  Which I am totally ok with.

 See, as I said before, I've always had this fascination with bits of Shakespeare stories that aren't told in full, but are essential to the plot. Example: Oberon and Titania's fight over the Changeling Boy. So we know that this kid is the son of one of Titania's close friends, all well and good, and we know that she eventually gives him to Oberon, but what happens after this? So here's a thought--Oberon isn't a proud arrogant something-or-other who wants what he can't have. What if both he and Titania are protecting this kid from the same thing, they just have different ways of doing it. AND what if this quarrel thing also has ties to the great Tempest conjured up by Pospero and Ariel AND what if all the goodies and the badies are not the goodies and the badies we think they are? The answer to this question was AWESOME!

Picture this: instead of  fantasy airy-fairy world, it's set in an Anywhere, USA in 20something(still vague on deets, see?)  post-apocalypse/steampunk kind of world, with dark alleys, and shadows, and lots of potential night shoots(which has very little to do with the fact that I was in a production with the concept fairly recently...ok, I'm a terrible liar, it  totally does! Because, yes. Thank you Cherie and Hailey and Echo for this one.). And what if this changeling kid was the cause of the apocalypse, only he is totally unaware of it(as all heroes inevitably are), and is now being tracked by both the goodies and the badies. And yes, there will be several salutes to the original work--such as names, and the love potion(poison!!!) and stuff.

First tidbit worth sharing--the names. I took a leaf out of BBC's Shakespeare Retold so far as the names went. Below, for your reading pleasure are the main cast, recurring cast(marked with a #) and the guest star cast(so far; marked with *) with the Shakespare name first and the name I've given him/her after that, as follows:

Theseus/Changeling Boy=Ethan
Demetrius=Deacon
Hippolyta=Piper
Puck/Robin Goodfellow=Rob
Caliban=Cal/Caliban
Ariel=Ariel
Oberon/Theseus=Brock#
Titania=Anya#
Helena=Lena#
Lysander=Xander#
Cobweb=Connor#
Peaseblossom= Sola#
Hermia=Mia*
Moth=Moth*
Mustardseed=Moira*
Ceres=Ceres*


Cool, right? So, next tidbit is the actual character and plot bits:

The Hero is the Changeling Boy--Ethan--and the villain is....PUCK!!!! I know, right? Ok, fine, so Caliban from Tempest is there there too, but yeah, Puck is on the dark side. He double crossed Oberon and is after the kid, and Oberon and Titania are back on the same side, and working with Demetrius, Helena, Hermia, Lysander, and Ariel(from Tempest fame) to keep Caliban and Puck away from the kid--who's name is Ethan and who also has a chip thing inside him that is actually a piece of the witch Sycorax's soul(again, a character from Tempest), and the only thing preventing her from rising again. Also, that love potion business? It wasn't just a love potion. It was hallucinogenic poison(aka small doses cause hallucinations--like the love spell in the original story--leading to death; large doses cause death...in like six hours.)--which will be all kinds of juicy since Puck and Caliban can trigger this at will and Lysander was "cured" and Demetrius wasn't. And Demetrius has a-complicated-dark-shadowy-past-Hawkeye/Joss Whedon/Spike-thing going on. And Ariel and Puck have a thing for each other. And the fairies from both plays(Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed, Ceres, Juno, and the other one whatshername) are creepy demon-y things that Puck and Caliban control and can morph from human to demon-y creeps and attack things--and people--and Cobweb/Connor is the lead assassin-thing(and also posing as Ethan's best friend!).

Third tidbit: Visuals--as I have always done and will probably do for the rest of my life, I need visuals to draw my characters out--at least in the early drafts--and to spur myself on in case this gets producer somewhere, sometime, in some place(a girl can dream, right?).

 Here's my thought so far: Caliban and Puck will have the steampunk thing going on vs say, Demetrius and Xander and Ethan(the Changeling Boy), who will have a more post apocalyptic style(see photos below). Oh yes, and there will probably be cameos from Prospero, and Miranda, and Ferdinand and Antonio and other characters from this plays along the way. Yes, still having much to much fun developing the thing. And yes, it's now a tv series. Or just a forty-five minute pilot/short film whatever.

Top Row, Left to Right: Visual Ideas for Xander, Demetrius, Mia/Anya, Oberon(Brock), and Ethan
Bottom Row, Left to Right: Visual Ideas for Connor, Rob, Caliban, Lena, and Ariel/Piper

Finally, the fourth tidbit: like every writing project, you have to have a title, right? Or at least a working one. So here's the WT I have settled on, and I'm rather excited about it.  Obvious, yes. Cliche, possibly. But it certainly coveys the idea of the story I want to tell least for now. And it'll be nice to give rather than explain the whole thing and then say I don't now what to call it, don't you think? So the title I have come up with is this:

Changeling

And if/when it ever gets to the screen, that's how I want the title card to look. Pretty good, right? Can you say possible pipe dream and I don't care? Cause I can! Am I excited about this newest piece of bubble gum writing? Oh yes. A little bit. 

Newest Writing Project

Puck, or Robin Goodfellow; only in my version, he'd be a teenager

As I am in the throes of summer boredom(already) and am in a show, I have been thinking.  Every summer in addition to all of the other things I've got going on, I like to have a writing project--as I am first and foremost, a writer. Also, I read. A lot. And in the course of my reading this past year(or two) I have been reading adaptions of Shakespeare's stories--And it occurred to me that one of the current popular things to do in this day and age is to adapt classic stories with a twist--and I love it. It's been done by authors like Lisa Klien, Shannon Hale, and AJ Hartley.

I have read ALL of these--they're sick! Except Hamlet. I'm waiting on tinderhooks for that one!

BUT, so far as I can see, no one has written a book of the supernatural characters(Titania, Oberon, Sycorax, Caliban, Puck and Ariel)--ok, so maybe there is one about Puck that was written in the late nineteenth century, and there was a book written from Ariel's point of view recently--but what if there was a book, or play, or something where all of these people knew each other. And there's always been little juicy tidbits--like the aftermath of Titania and Oberon's quarrel over the Changeling Boy, and Caliban's backstory, and other things like that--that have always been intriguing to me. And there is so much room for peitc licence, that it's really hard to resist the temptation to tie characters of the same caliber, or in the same area, together.

Lisa Fiedler did that when she wrote Romeo's Ex(see photo above). Since the story is set in Italy, and several of Shakespeare's characters are Italian, the story has Petruchio, Sebastian, Viola, and Katerina as side characters--and very interesting ones.

So I am going to do the same thing.

Oberon--as I see him in my head(thank you Google Search Engine!)

Wouldn't it be amazing if they all knew each other? If Oberon, Titania, Puck, Ariel, Theseus, Hippolyta, Demitrius, Helena, Caliban, Sycorax, Prospero and Antonio all knew each other. How sick would that be?

So that's my latest writing project. I don't know if it'll be a play or a novel or a short story or what, but right now, it's rattling around in my head and wants out. I make no promises as to quality(as this is the place where I put the first drafts of all my work!) but I can assure you that it'll be a bubblegum project(tons of fun!)

First challenge: decide what venue to write it for--book, film or stage--outline, and pick title. Oh, and write the thing nee personal computer. No pressure.