Welcome back to the Art of Words. This column will be merging with the former Scryptic Projects forum writing activities to become... the Scryptic Dojo.
So, what's the Scryptic Dojo all about?
It's about honing your craft. It's about keeping your skills sharp. It's about trying new things and experimenting. It's about unleashing your creativity.
It's about practice.
How?
Each week, I'll post a new exercise for people to participate in. I'll try to keep them challenging, so you can give that imagination of yours a good workout. You'll have a week to complete a writing assignment that will run from 1 to 4 pages long (depending on the activity). But, there will also be an early bird deadline...
Early bird deadline?
Every Wednesday along with the new exercises, I plan on putting up a new Art of Words article based on the prior exercise. I will use the scripts posted by the early cutoff for this article... mostly as examples to illustrate different points in the articles. And if you include your real name and a link to your personal website with your entry, I'll make sure to point people your way at the end of each article when I quote your work.
This early deadline will be Saturday at 6pm (central time). That's to leave me enough time to read through the scripts (yes, I'll be reading all the scripts submitted by this time) and put together the article for Wednesday. Plus, I figure it gives people some time to finish up and post their entries between the hangover recovery period after Friday night's partying and going out on Saturday night.
Do I have to write comic pages?
Nope. You can write screenplay/teleplay snippets, radio scripts, prose, or any kind of writing you want to complete the exercise. Just keep to the length of the exercise (for prose, use a rough guideline of 250 words per page).
Exercise #1
In a character's life, there's often a defining moment that drives them to do what they do. It makes heroes extra heroic. It makes anti-heroes hyper-violent bastards. It makes villains... well, it gives villains the resolve and determination they need to carry out their plans for revenge/terrorism/world domination. These are moments that push the character out of the realm of the mundane. The death of Uncle Ben. The slaughter of Frank Castle's family. The shooting of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Eel O'Brien being left behind by his fellow thieves after getting shot by a security guard and falling into a vat of chemicals.
It's the moment that changes their lives forever and sets them on a new path in life. It's their origin story, and it can establish the core of the character that can be used to drive the character's actions and conflicts story after story. That's what we're going to do this week... create an origin story and develop the essence of a character that can be used for future Scryptic Dojo exercises.
In four pages or less, create the origin story for a brand new character to use in future Scryptic Dojo exercises. Pulp detective, Golden Age superhero, sinister villain, medieval warlord, rebellious jock hacker goth pop star... whatever character you think will inspire you to write.
Deadline (for article): Saturday, April 9th at 6pm (central)
Deadline (normal): Wednesday, April 13th at Noon (central)
Please post your questions, comments, and entries in the appropriate threads in Scryptic Dojo forum.
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Jeffery Stevenson is one of the Scryptic Studios co-founders. He's generally considered moderately insane by his peers, but he just looks at it as a "fresh and exciting perspective of the world." He drinks lots of caffeine, sleeps very little, and knows cryptic survival skills such as the ability to start a fire in the rain. He also writes (and letters) some weekly webcomic. Oh, and this one too. I think he also does some weekly satire thingy. Check his member page here at Scryptic for more details.
