Writer's Block Un-Blocked

I sometimes feel like I'm not writing material. Sure, I could tell a story, but can I write it well enough?

I currently have two projects on the go:

1) A spec script for Dexter.

2) The first act of an original feature film.

I am pretty confident in my Dexter episode, but then again, it's easy to take characters and relationships that someone else thought up and put them in different situations. Especially in Dexter's case where I have seen almost four seasons of it and am well acquainted with the characters and their habits and behaviors.

Dexter, now a baby daddy, is in his fourth season of television on Showtime.

No, I have no problem writing for Dexter. What gives me that uncomfortable feeling that I am perhaps not good enough for what I want to do is when I settle into something that was born in my own head. An idea. It always starts with an idea. The idea is not the problem, it's the development of that idea that I have trouble with.

So, in an eleventh hour plea for inspiration, I popped in The Devil's Advocate, since my story has to do with the Devil.

Problem: this did not cure my writer's block.

My main issue here is how to draw inspiration from other films but not plagiarize them. I feel that all of the ideas that came after watching The Devil's Advocate were a direct consequence of me watching the film. I felt that even though the ideas were unique to my own premise, they were still too much like the film.

Al Pacino is one terrifying Devil.

And this put questions in my head:

Are the two ideas actually similar or does it just seem like it to me because I just watched the film?

How do I draw inspiration from a film, novel, or television show without using their ideas?

In the end, I decided not to drastically change my story idea therefore making my watching of The Devil's Advocate was rendered useless*.

I found the best cure of writer's block to be talking to someone else about my ideas. Scratch that, not talking to someone, talking at someone. Once I talked through my ideas with a friend, my story practically wrote itself!

How do you handle writer's block? Can you give me advice on better ways to handle it?

*When I say useless, I only mean useless to my own writing. I had never seen the movie and I'm really glad I did because it was a different take on the Devil and how he works. Plus, it was a great film!

United States of Zombieland

Do you ever want to do a thousand things but you never get around to doing them? I find that that problem haunts me more than any other problem I have. I have 4-5 personal project ideas that I really want to develop but for some reason, I just never get around to doing it.

Could it be the heavy work load brought on by my seemingly endless education and time consuming job? Could be, now that I think about it, collectively I've got about one hundred written pages due, a thousand pages in readings, and five major events to run... all in the remaining two weeks of November!

My head in 3...2...1

On top of that, I'm keeping up with my favorite Television shows and trying to stay fresh with what's new out of Hollywood.

Surely, with all of this on my plate, something has to be pushed back.

Unfortunately, that something was my TV shows and Movies. I have a back-up of episodes to watch from V, Fringe, Flashforward, Dexter, and Californication. Also, season 9 of Scrubs starts up on December 1st and a slew of good movies has hit theaters. The one I let slip the most, and I regret this deeply, was Zombieland.

Despite being released on October 2nd, I didn't get to see Zombieland until two nights ago.

What. A. Movie. Not only was it action packed and gory, it was hilarious! Woody Harrelson stole the show with his badass, zombie-killing character Tallahassee. I suddenly have a new found respect for Woody Harrelson and a burning desire to see every movie he's ever made (including all of his episodes on Cheers).

The film follows Columbus, a college student, as he tries to make his way home from his dorm room in Texas in the deserted United States of America--err, scratch that--United States of Zombieland. The lonely Columbus seems to be dying for company which is probably why he so gladly brings the audience along for his adventure, explaining on the way, his seemingly endless list of rules on how to survive the zombie apocalypse. Once he finds friends in Tallahassee and a team of untrustworthy sisters, Wichita and Little Rock, Columbus discovers that his home town is a ghost town, and this unlikely foursome travel the country together.

The team of survivors in Zombieland (from left to right): Columbus, Wichita, Little Rock, and Tallahassee.

This movie had me laughing so hard I was in tears. And each character had their story which was nice and helped the audience connect with each character individually and understand how they came to be where they are.

Seeing this film inspired me. Remember those 4-5 personal projects I mentioned earlier? One of them has to do with zombies. It's just been an idea that's been boiling over in my head for weeks and weeks. After seeing this film, I'm eager to explore this idea more. But first, I need to do research.

Since I was never bit by the zombie craze (get it? bit?), I don't know much about them except that every film or novel has a different interpretation.

Can you suggest any zombie material that you know of to help me with my research?

I'm a Nick who Won a Computer!

I don't know if you guys remember me posting about this but a few months ago I entered a YouTube contest put on by HP that was called "You On You". Basically, the objective was to describe who you are in sixty seconds without showing your face.

So I threw a little something together, uploaded it, and started a massive facebook campaign to get votes so I could win something. Well.. guess what? I won something! I am blogging now from my brand new HP Pavilion Artist's Edition Notebook!

My entry in the HP You on You contest. It's titled I'm a Nick.

First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who voted. I didn't win any of the huge prizes but I got into the Top 100. The Top 100 entries were the entries that got the most votes. So thank you everyone who voted for me to get me into the Top 100. I really, really appreciate it!

I received the laptop yesterday in this packaging:

I opened it up...

and lifted the lid...

This is a limited edition laptop by HP and it came loaded with free video, photo, and sound editing software. At first I wasn't crazy about the designs that came along with it but they're starting to grow on me. I don't mind them as much anymore.

The designs on either side of the keyboard for the HP Artist's Edition Notebook.

It's a pretty powerful computer. It came with a 500GB hard drive and 4.00GB of RAM (Sorry to bore you all with technical specifications but that's REALLY GOOD). It also has a graphics card that, unlike my old computer, will actually let me play games.

FINALLY.

I've got a slew of games lined up starting with LOST: Via Domus and followed by Left For Dead and then Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

This computer will not only be good for games. With more memory, I will have an easier time running video editing software meaning I could edit videos with more ease and comfort.

Stay tuned for some more of my projects!

V is for Visitors

Amidst the candy eating, constant school work, and late night/early morning fire alarms, I seem to have once again neglected to blog. But I am back, and what has brought me back is ironically the thing that eats up most of my time: TV.

I just watched the pilot episode for ABC's new...ish series about visitors from another planet, V.



Now I say new-ish because the show is actually a remake of a 1984 TV series of the same name. I haven't seen the original - yet - so I can't make a comparison with its remake - yet.

The show is about an alien population, who call themselves the Visitors or Vs, coming to Earth and asking humans for water and food in exchange for technological information that they say will benefit the human population. They have several ships hovering over all of the world's major cities (think District 9 but not just in Johannesburg) and their leader, who goes by the name of Anna, comes down to Earth to meet with the world's leaders.

As the episode progresses, we learn that these aliens are not what they seem to be and that they cannot be trusted. A determined FBI Agent, Erica Evans, is tracking a terrorist cell when she finds intel about a secret meeting. She goes to the meeting location and discovers that it is not a terrorist cell at all: it is a group of civilians teaming up to begin a resistance against the aliens. Erica learns that there are Visitors living amongst humans, in disguise. Suddenly, the meeting is interrupted by a group of the Visitors, one of them being Erica's partner at the FBI.

A Visitor's spaceship hovering over one of the world's major cities.

So far, the show has made an impression on me. A good one. Despite it being slow in the beginning, it really gained momentum near the end. The last half hour had me glued to the TV. That being said, it could have definitely used a two hour season premiere as opposed to just one. It would have hooked the audience more and made more of a first impression on them.

I say this because the pilot episode did not give the audience enough character development to make them care. In order to tune in to a show every week, an audience needs to care about the characters and what happens to them. I found Erica to be very bland. She reminds me of a less aggressive Olivia Dunham. Although I do have to say that Elizabeth Mitchell plays a much better Erica than she does Juliette. Logan Huffman plays Erica's son Tyler, an angsty teen who lashes out at his mother because of her absence in his life. He decides it's a smart idea to become a "Peace Ambassador" for the Visitors, mostly because his mother is not comfortable with them.

Erica Evas > Juliet Burke

Joel Gretsch plays a cynical priest who is only trying to do the right thing. The writers did well creating conflict in this character who, in the beginning is doubting the existence of God because of this extraterrestrial life. Soon enough, he is dragged into the resistance, kicks some Visitor ass, and decides that he will fight to defeat the Visitors.

We then have Georgie and Ryan, played by David Richmond-Peck and Morris Chestnut respectively, two old friends who seem to have lived through something similar before. Ryan is engaged and working a decent job, and wants nothing to do with Georgie. However, this is complicated by the fact that Ryan is in fact a Visitor who is helping the humans.

Finally, we have Chad Decker, an ambitious reporter played by Scott Wolf. Chad is handpicked by Anna to do a one-on-one interview with her so she could communicate with people all around the world. However, right before the interview starts, in a scene that is arguably the best scene in the entire episode, Anna tells him that he cannot ask her any questions that would portray the visitors in a negative light. He tries to resist but she threatens to cancel the interview. Chad had two options here: accept this rule and be seen by billions of people worldwide or stay true to his own beliefs and turn down the exposure. He chooses the exposure.

Chad Decker, ambitious reporter

Chad is, in my opinion, the most interesting character in the show so far and I'm hoping that as the season progresses, we get to see that all of the characters are like Chad is, conflicted and pushing for more. I'm just not getting my hopes up because network television has let me down on so many levels. V is certainly better than ABC's other new drama, FlashForward. I will tune back in next week to see just how many of these Visitors are already on Earth.

I'm still trying to decide whether I watch the old series now or if I should wait until this one ends. What do you guys think?

"We come in peace" - Anna