Play: Looking back on February

So, at the end of PLAY!, here's what's I've done:

Read Mixtape: I did enjoy this script. It's sweet and light, with five or six laugh out loud moments. The structure of having a thirteen year old trying to track down the songs her parents (who have died) loved is excellent and leads to nice character growth. The film feels very much like Freaks and Geeks to me. Here's a link to Scriptshadow's review, and an interview with the author.

The Orphans: continued plotting out my creepy 'kids stuck in a haunted orphanage' movie. Have written another couple of sequences, and am getting to the point where I really need to start thinking about the film's tone: its pretty grim, but is there going to be a happy ending? Or a pyrrhic victory? Or will I embrace nihilism? I think I've realised that I'm writing a Saphhire and Steel story in which Saphhire and Steel never show up. and I'm definitely at the point where I want to find out how it all turns out for them.

Free writing: Spent a little bit of most days just jamming on different story ideas, putting absolutely no pressure on myself. So far I've played around with LARP ideas, status updates for lovebites characters, and a best-selling thriller.

Artificial (the AI story): I said that I was thinking about how to make the Pessimist character interesting. Well I did nothing on this until the very last evening of the last day of PLAY. I was reading this excellent interview with the author of Source Code, and his comment on his focus on character awoke something in me. I saw the moment between the Pessimist and the AI that I needed to work towards, and then came up with a diagram that defines the relationship between the three of them (AI, Pessimist and Optimist). That gives me pretty much all I need to start outlining the movie.

Destinies: I think I'm pushing this back a little - to focus on finishing Bad Family, and then outlining these other ideas. Need to discuss, re-negotiate timeframes with my brain-storming collaborators.


And for extra credit ...

Read The Second Session: INCOMPLETE! In fact, unstarted. My first draft script about musicians trying to record an album is still in my to-read pile.

Made to Stick: I've blogged 1.5 more posts in this series - cued up to publish in March.

The Limit: Still need to assemble a contact list of emails for producers.


I've also decided to shift the time I spend playing and working again. For the next little while I'm going to spend four weeks working and two weeks playing. See how that feels.

Play: January-February 2009

I've just finished a big re-draft of my game about dysfunctional family sitcoms, Bad Family. Which means it's time to kick back and spend another two weeks exploring new projects. Here's what's on my plate at the moment:

Read Mixtape: this coming-of-age script ranked highly on this year's Black List. It's about a thirteen year old who finds a mixtape that belonged to the deceased parents she never knew, accidentally destroys it, and uses the song list to go on a journey to find all the music in an attempt to get to know her parents. Really looking forward to this one.

AI story: Gino and I were talking a couple of weeks ago about how having an AI in a sci-fi story never ends well for the humans. Which got me wondering - what would a 'good' AI story look like? I'm going to have an explore and see if I can find out.

Destinies: it's time to push this web-series project a bit further and have a meeting with some of my brain-storming collaborators.

The Orphans: plotting out my creepy 'kids stuck in a haunted orphanage' movie will continue. Looking forward to seeing what these kids do next, because the situation is getting pretty grim for them.

Free writing: I'll spend a bit of each day just jamming on different story ideas and see where they go. The key will be to put absolutely no pressure on myself.

And for extra credit ...

Read The Second Session: my first draft script about musicians trying to record an album has been in my to-read pile for a while now.

The Limit: next step here is to assemble a contact list of emails for producers.

Made to Stick: I'd like to blog a bit more, and lock this series of posts off.

Play: November 2009

It's time for me to play around with a few ideas, to try and figure out what my next project might be. This time round I'm looking at:

Destinies: a web-series based on a Primetime Adventures game I played a couple of years ago. I want to have a brainstorming session with a few people in the next couple of weeks.

Bad Family: I've been working on an elaborate version of this game for a few months now - a version that fully explains to a new reader what they have to do in order to play. However, with Kapcon coming up, I probably won't get a chance to finish this version to my satisfaction in time. Instead, I'm going to do a massive cut-down of the material and playtest it to see if it works.

Threat Level: I've started fleshing out some ideas for something I'm pitching as "24 the role-playing game". I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out.

The Orphans: I'm having a lot of fun outlining a horror movie for kids, and I'd like to keep working on that.

Play: Tim Brown on 'Serious Play'

Another TED talk, this time at the Serious Play conference in 2008.

In this, Tim Brown talks about how fearing the judgment of our peers represses our creativity and prevents us coming up with wild ideas.

He explains that when adults experience a new situation, they want to CATEGORISE it very quickly. They don't want to play with it or explore, they want to fit it into the world and uses they already know.

On the other hand kids ask: What is it? What can I do with it?

Brown discusses how to create environments where you can play. Play isn't anarchy; it has rules about how to play and when to play. Brainstorming environments, for instance, need rules in order to help us break the rules effectively - the most obvious example of that is the brainstorming principle of defering judgment on ideas until you've finished.

He observes something I'd never thought of before - that sometimes our desire to be original can be a form of editing. We stop ourselves from getting into a groove (or a rut) with something we're enjoying; even though that groove might be fun or playful, we judge it harshly simply because it's not 'original'.

You need trust, says Brown. Create a place where you have the security to take risks and play. At his company, IDEO, all the employees are hired because they are best friends. Friends are a shortcut to trust and playfulness.

The other principles he suggests are:

1. Build something. Create something tangible to comment on, and once you have that prototype, keep refining and challenging it.

2. If you're creating an environment or a situation, role play it - act it out to create empathy with the users, and to see how it'll work.

Be playful and create real stuff.