I sat down with my laptop and checked my email. I downloaded a song from Napster that I had stuck in my head all last night. Added it to a mix CD I was making for my next road trip, whenever that would be. Looked up some new about upcoming movies, watched a trailer, checked movie times.
Ugh. Okay, fine. I opened up Word, started a new document, and typed 'A' with a space after it. Needed a noun next. Guy? He's got guns, another guy is shooting at him, he slows down time, the bullets whiz by him. Cool! The good guy forces his way through chronal friction, speeding up and sidekicking the killer through the wall.
I was on a roll. I just thought about what scenes I saw in my head and detailed them out in words. What other cool shit did I want to see? Leaping from a moving hotrod as it plows into a truck and both explode excessively loud and slow as the hero prepares to duck into a roll and skid to a halt.
Gun in hand, he stalks towards the wreckage, the blaze bashing in the dull whites of his eyes. He scans for movement as he steps forward, feeling the flames licking him up and pushing him back. His hair shifted sideways in the wind, eyes narrowed, his hand shot up and fired.
He blasted round after round into the carnage, debris shifting and smashing as he tugged on the trigger. The enemy stood up, brushed itself off, and strode towards us. Bullets flicked off his chest like fruitflies, barely acknowledging them even as they struck his face.
Great an invincible baddie. Now what? I got a dude who's cool and shoots two guns while flipping, and then this fucker who can't get hurt. Alright, so really, I just need someone he can hit and while it might not hurt him, some combination of brawn-and-brainy way to apply them is needed.
It was kind of fun spending a Saturday indoors creating a story for myself. I don't need to really think about life, and when I just can't watch another movie I can at least tell myself a story. Pretend that part of my consciousness is somewhere else and in the end, I've got a final product.
A few pages worth of words that, when read, gives you information, sets a scene, let's you get in someone else's head, see their motivation, but be unable to alter it. You're surrendering yourself to the story, seeing it through to its conclusion regardless of what you may want.
I read it to myself and it's really cool. Offbeat and cliche in parts, but word choices, turns of phrase, ideas brought up, they spark something in me. I try to think about myself as I wrote those words, where my mind was, how I chose them. It doesn't feel like I wrote them, more like I thought about what would be cool, and my brain made my fingers press keys.
Years of schooling taught me to process things, ideas, concepts, break them down into words, told me that shapes were representations of sound. Every letter was chosen in a millisecond, knowing each word that was necessary to paint a picture, to give me an idea of what was in store for my future.
A chick! That's what the story is missing. There's gotta be someone he needs to protect, to make sure there's something worth fighting for, because otherwise he just really likes hitting other guys. Especially ones that are tougher than he is. Crap, is he a masochist? He wants to take a beating? Hmmm...
Whatever, she's got a leather jacket and rides a motorcycle, carries a sword on her back, and studied with the same kung fu master as our hero. He's done with his life of killing, wants her to give up hers too, ride off into the sunset, clinging to his back as they disappear together.
But he won't let them. He hates everything about the hero; his sense of honor or natural ability at kicking ass maybe. He loves chaos, knows that his only skill is at causing mayhem, at reigning destruction down upon whomsoever crosses his path. It's not a fight he's looking for, it's whoever can beat him, stop his rampage, tell him he's wrong, discipline him.
A strong, noble, moral badass that doesn't give a fuck, who falls for a shitkicking babe with a mohawk, and together they fight the psychopathic madman. The worse the depravity of this indestructible villain, the more just and honest our vulnerable hero must be. She holds the other half of his masculinity and watches his back, as he uses her femininity to defeat him.
Yin-yang, the forces are equal and in harmony. Yeah, cool, he should totally have a yin-yang tattoo across his whole back, long hair, and a sleeveless leather jacket. Maybe a shoulder pad, just one, and a dog beside him, a snarling mutt with a bad eye. An eyepatch?
I wish I could draw, then I'd have an image to go off of. I guess I could just write it out, but sometimes, well I guess a picture is worth a thousand words. But let's see pictures keep up with this pace. I just keep writing and writing, reminding myself that if I stop, then it'll be for good.
I won't come back to this story. I'll never decide where to take it, if I am even good enough to write anything, to figure out what ingenuity a hero would need to turn the tables on someone stronger than them. What were the motivations of any of them, did he really just hate him or did he love him in his own way? Was she even capable of loving a man like him?
I mean he was perfect. You're supposed to be loved for your flaws, and no one's perfect anyway, so what're the chances that there's two perfect people? Twice as unlikely. You couldn't love them, you didn't love yourself, you were fucked up and probably more the frightened villain of this story.
Shit. I left it off after what looked like a decent sized paragraph which sat atop page 6 of a Word document. Couldn't even end it at the end of the damn page. I changed the font to American Typewriter, then Helvetica, then back to Times New Roman. Lowered the spacing between lines, and it jumped back to a mere 5 pages.
At least it was nearly one coherent scene, or so it seemed immediately upon puking it out of my fingertips. I'd have to read it later and marvel at my genius then. Now, I hit FILE, scrolled to SAVE AS, typed in the title ACTION-SCENE-69 and let it rest in the folder in MY DOCUMENTS named WRITING.
68 other scenes, all opening up some epic story, sit, taking up nearly no space in that oft-looked over digital creative side of my life.
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