July 8, 2013

  • 7 days: The Drama Series

    So as we wind down to the potential last seven days of Xanga, I'm going to make it a point to blog each day until the last. It'll be semi-relevant to past posts things but mostly ramblings, I think.

    Its' 1AM and I'm pretty pooped. The last few days I've spent doing nothing but look through and work on this old series that I worked on forever ago. I haven't touched it in 6 years. Way back when I called it a "drama series" and it really is. I used to blog about it back in the day (you can find some entires if you look). I have to admit that I've brought down the comedy a couple of notches and darkened it a little bit to keep it as dramatic as I had intended when I was 13. I also adjusted some backstories and beliefs in order to make the characters more realistic. Here's an example using one of the female characters: 1. At 13, I wrote her to have zombie slayer parents with the ability to talk to the dead and use magic; 2. At 14 I changed it so that she used magic; 3. Now, I changed it so that she has a heavy belief that spirits are everywhere, she doesn't do magic but it's sort of her religion. All of the characters are still built the same — their emotional states and mannerisms are still the same. Their foundations haven't changed at all. 

    This was the part that I found interesting. As I started to write the character profiles based on the scripts and rough drafts (and one final draft) of character profiles I wrote, I started to notice some interesting parallels to the characters I had written and some of the people I know now. At 13, I loosely based all of the characters on the people who I wanted to play them — their interests and how they talk. Other than that, there is almost no resemblance to the characters and the people who I wrote them for. I created their emotional states and mannerisms mostly from scratch, except for the character who is based off of me. As I started to read through the scripts, I started to see conversations that had actually happened in real life or similar conversations. As I finished up each character profile, I would stare at the screen and instantly thought of someone who it reminded me of. It was completely uncanny, especially since I didn't know these people 6 years ago. I wrote a character for someone who is my best friend now. Her character is nothing like her but we weren't very good friends at the time and I thought she'd make a great antagonist. As I started to write the character profiles, I gave her a call because I found that she had some striking similarities to one of the main characters. 

    As we spoke more about the similarities to the characters and the people I am close to now, she responded with "psychology". "You wrote those characters as people you would be attracted to [platonically and romantically] so years later [when I'd have forgotten all about them] of course you'd see similar characteristics of someone you wrote and someone you're close to," she said. I paraphrased a bit. However, the message is just the same. I was just fascinated, though. I couldn't help but be amazed that I basically wrote the people I would care most about into my life. As I continue to work on the stories of and mature and shape these characters I wonder what this means for my friends and I. I wonder what that means for me and whether or not I'll find any more people to fill or take over the roles. I wonder if this is it for us and if we're basically stuck with each other. I wonder how relevant the stories I wrote will be in five years. Fascinating, isn't it?

    I figure that I won't do anything with these for quite a number of years. Maybe I'll store them forever and keep them close to my heart as my little secrets. I'm actually really glad that we never got around to creating the series. Once I'm done writing the stories and the scripts, I don't ever want to touch them again (rewriting them), though. I feel like after this, there will be a lot less meaning to the story and it will lose itself. I don't want that. The stories, especially with the rewrites, make statements and are very thought provoking. They might not make everyone reflect on themselves but that's what I aim to do with these. I'd like to change some things with this story and I think they're pretty great. It's more than a reflection of what is but is also a proposal of what should be. And that's just sort of what it turned into.

    What was once a story of five teenagers who were going through normal and abnormal teen things, turned into a story of five teenagers growing and maturing the way that they should while they were going through normal and abnormal teen things. The stories are all the same, I haven't changed the story lines and how the teenagers grew but the growth is a lot more intense and prominent and gradual, rather than a slap in the face that doesn't stick the next episode. The teens figure things out at 15 that I hadn't figured out at 18. Though seemingly unrealistic at this point in time, it's because throughout each situation, the teens take a step back and assess what is going on — something that we've all needed to do at some point in time. I created abnormal teenagers. I only hope that they don't stay within the perimeters of the screen.

    -- ZelleZ