The Shadow Prince and such other things

I’m still trying to figure out the story details for my next original screenplay, The Shadow Prince, but I’m fairly sure the main concept will not change at this point: A young prince awaits to be crowned king when mysterious murders begin to plague the kingdom by a killer who calls himself The Shadow Prince.

Bum bum bum!!

I don’t think I will keep the identity of The Shadow Prince a mystery though; I plan on revealing his (or her?) identity fairly early on so that the fun of the story can come from a sort of cat-and-mouse game, along with the other issues of why exactly he’s on a killing spree. (Fine… I don’t think there’s any harm in revealing that it will be a male character.)

Anyway, there are still plenty of details to be worked out in my outlines before I can begin actually writing the screenplay. And while I’m really excited about the story, I’m not sure anything will ever come of it because it will probably require a big budget to shoot. Especially since I hope to put a dragon in it… you know, for good measure. Ahhh, it would be such an awesome movie… daydream daydream daydream… especially with some exciting fantasy music.

Hmmm… anything else? I’m currently reading William Goldman’s Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade which just makes me want to be part of the film industry like crazy. Which I hate, because there are so many wannabes already, and who really wants to be a yet another wannabe? Anyway, it’s a fun book. At one point, I think Goldman says that an original spec is the hardest to write because you’re starting from nothing. I can’t truly agree, mostly because I’ve only written one screenplay so far and have nothing to compare the experience to. But I think I would agree, and I’d further speculate that writing your first screenplays, with no guarantee that anybody anywhere will be interested in them, is perhaps the hardest of all, because while you’re writing you know that all your work might come to nothing. At all. No paycheck. Perhaps not even very many readers. Then again, maybe that makes it easier, because there’s no pressure, no deadlines. I don’t know; even if a screenplay I wrote never got produced, I sure wouldn’t mind a paycheck. But deadlines? Blagh! But if it was my one and only job… I probably wouldn’t mind so much.

But I’m probably just daydreaming. Even if I ever do make money off this, it probably never gets easier.

And it’s so much fun at the same time anyway.

I probably will buy a professional camcorder at some point, but I’ll hold off for now and focus on The Shadow Prince. Maybe I’ll buy one when I actually start trying to market The Melody Box to entertain myself while I wait for the dismal rejections and non-responses.