Scriptshadow may be on a break til the new year. But that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of you! Is anyone doing the 10-Day Writing Challenge? How are you holding up? Don’t think, just write. That’s the key to defeating WR (Writing Resistance).
I’ve used this time to relax and catch up on some entertainment. I saw Bumblebee. It was surprisingly good, even if it took the screenplay for E.T. and copy-replaced every instance of “E.T.” with “Bumblebee.” Oh stop. I kid because I love. It was nice to have a director who actually cared about character this time around. A huge upgrade over the original Transformers movies for sure. Another movie I saw was Predator. Oh boy, that was a rough one. For the first 30 minutes, I was convinced I was watching the worst movie of 2018. I mean we have the autistic genius child trope, the Tourette Syndrome trope, the wise-cracking comedy relief trope. If there’s a trope that didn’t get used in this movie, I’m not aware of it. To the film’s credit, it gets better as it goes on. But not by much.
As for Netflix viewing, I tried to watch that John Grisham True Crime series, The Innocent Man. It’s pretty good. If good means boring. An episode and a half in and I know two women were murdered and confessions were made. I knew these things before the show started. Move faster please. I tried to watch that Black Mirror choose-your-own-adventure episode but pressing play informed me that my technology wasn’t up-to-date enough to watch it. Figuring this was part of the fun, I pressed play again. Same message. And again. Same message. Eventually I realized this wasn’t part of the show and that I really did have old technology. I guess no Black Mirror for me.
This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it led me to check out Escape at Dannemora, the Showtime show that Ben Stiller directed. Ben Stiller is one of the most underrated directors in the business. He’s really really good. And this show doesn’t even utilize his keen directing eye. It’s all about character, acting, and story. I’ve only watched one episode but this may be the best TV show I’ve seen all year. I may do an article on it in the future. So check out the show!
Finally, someone told me about this writing program called Hemingway Editor. It operates within your browser so you don’t have to download anything. The program’s hook is that it assesses your writing on the fly, showing you what’s weak via various highlights. It also tells you (in real time) what level your writing is. I copy and pasted some of my writing on there for fun, and found that the majority of it hovers between 3rd and 4th grade level, lol. Um, can someone say, ego boost? Here I was this whole time aiming for kindergarten. Convinced it was faulty, I copy and pasted some famous works in there, such as a page of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and her writing is at a 12th grade level!
I’m trying to figure out how it assesses this grade. I suspect big vocabulary words (which Shelley likes to use) may be contributing to the number. Maybe you guys can play with it and help find out. It’s kind of like a video game. What do you do to get your score up? Let me know what you come up with in the Comments Section!
