NickCummings.com

You might remember that I attempted and subsequently failed to complete National Novel Writing Month in November of 2009. That’s all right; whatever; I’ve moved on.

But now it’s April, and April means Script Frenzy month! The premise is similar to NaNoWriMo, but instead of being tasked with churning out a 50,000 word novel, writers are instead given 30 days to write a 100-page script.

This is great for people like me because

• Scripts have these huge margins. Have you seen them? It’s just ridiculous.
• You don’t have to deal with all those irritating trappings of novel writing, such as description and flowery language
• 100 pages is, like, a lot less than 250 pages

Want to sign up? Great! You can keep me company and watch first-hand as I fall flat on my face at around page seven.

First, you’ll wanna head over to scriptfrenzy.org and sign up for a free account. If you participated in NaNoWriMo before, your old account information (and all those shameful memories of failure) are preserved and adapted to work with Script Frenzy.

Next, you’ll want to brush up on script formatting guidelines. Don’t let these overwhelm you; they’re there to help give you a head start on the structure of your writing so you can focus on getting that Star Wars/Harry Potter crossover you’ve been having those creepy dreams about nailed down on paper.

And last, you’ll want to add me as a writing buddy. I don’t know if that serves any overt purpose, but hey: strength in numbers, right?

One final note: You can write whatever kind of script you’ve been yearning for. Got an excellent idea for the next soul-wrenching, low-budget indie movie? Eager to plan out that comic book series starring an unemployed writer with a bachelor’s degree in English or journalism? Think you’ve got what it takes to bring a revival of Remington Steele to television? Those are all perfectly acceptable reasons to take up the Script Frenzy gauntlet. (Actually, it might be best if we just leave Remington Steele alone.) Hell, I’m just writing a videogame script — something that has no established format — and even that’s okay.

So if you’re interested, take a look and let me know if you get on board. Besides, April’s just as crappy as November, weather-wise; what better time to flex your latent creativity muscles and get something done?