How to Write Your Viking Script

I'd seen the cardboard standee in the hall of the Reading Cinemas Courtenay, the multiplex in downtown Wellington, and given it no further thought. Then, a phone call from a friend came in, and he, knowing that I'm "mad" about Vikings, revealed that How to Train Your Dragon is about Vikings. Well.

We checked the times, there was a showing in 90 minutes, enough to eat dinner beforehand, and off we went.

I can't say I was expecting much. This was an animated film aimed at children (and perhaps also those adults accompanying them) and the ostensible concept, high though it might be, stated emphatically that the story would be a fantasy.

And it was. However, it was also the most exhilarating and, dare I say, touching feature I've seen in a long time. There's always a magic to seeing a film of which you've had no prior knowledge, no expectation--and when such a film delivers the goods the experience is all the richer. (The music and animation are also superb.)

What's more, How to Train Your Dragon is the best Viking film to date. As a friend of mine (also a screenwriter) likes to put it, Hollywood has been intent on finding and exploiting all the various ways of getting Viking films wrong. This movie found one way to do it well.

Sure, the Vikings speak with Scottish accents, wear their crazy horned helmets, and swing preposterously oversized battle axes. Normally, this would drive me nuts. But in this telling there's also a respect, at a most basic level, for the ethos of the North: of the toughness and sinew forged in an unforgiving environment, the fatalistic humor borne of unremitting hardship, the elegance of the design and craft. Mel Gibson, are you listening?

Here, the adventures of a cerebrotonic Viking lad with a knack for scientific method provide a splendid source of entertainment as well as entry into a realm that's been willfully misunderstood for a thousand years. See it.

Clearing Out: A Meditation on Method

I am magnetic. Those who know me well will understand the truth of this statement and how it works on so very many levels. For instance, just as my Marketing Padawan has a newfound penchant for attracting rogue staplers into his cubicle, so do I draw various and sundry articles into my house. By which I mean, principally, paper. Stacks and stacks of paper.

The epicenter of this storm is the home office, which wouldn’t matter except that it doubles as the dining room table. At some point during the course of my current project, for reasons that remain unknown to me, I became unable to work in the second-floor room designated for the purpose of writing, and so I relocated to the downstairs. My work, and my piles, moved with me. New ones sprang up.

There are writers who take to these newfangled “software programs” that outline and measure and monitor and chart. No. I am a writer who needs to see what’s in my head from time to time, see something tangible in space, and that means notes; and notes mean print-outs, scraps, notebooks, envelopes, receipts, ticket stubs, and any other reasonably flat surfaces across which I can drag a rollerball pen. For a time I would work on the backs of large desk-calendar sheets I’d bring home from the office once the month had passed. These have their piles, too.

In addition, living with a house rabbit for 10 years teaches you certain lessons about clutter, nonattachment, and the ultimate futility of maintaining the hygienic standards of polite society. (To this day I cannot allow myself to place scripts, books, magazines, or other potentially valuable chewables on the lowest shelves of a bookcase; Mr. J worked his way through, among other things, Latin, organic chemistry, the Riverside Shakespeare, and pathological diseases, as well as the Star Wars Soundtrack Anthology box set. You learn.)

Jenifer claims that I have a fondness for piles and, moreover (my mother’s protests notwithstanding), that I was raised this way. I deny this, of course (that I like piles, not that I produce them industriously), but I do admit to an offhand comment I made about a ramshackle building we passed on a recent country walk. This may have strengthened her position.

You see, I am drawn to the weird places in between residences; the run-down sheds, barns, springhouses, and other auxiliary buildings whose purpose or ownership has long been forgotten; the mysterious and quite possibly toxic industrial sites; the overgrown service stations; in short, the forlorn brickyards of the soul.

And yet, lest you get entirely the wrong idea about me, I also have a penchant for a very particular and exacting kind of order, the kind that insists upon storing a complete set of original (1978–1985) Star Wars action figures in paper-towel-lined cigar boxes. (I am sure you can imagine the horror, the horror when Jenifer took it upon herself to shake the box until the lid burst open and the action figures tumbled forth and the blasters and lightsabers and gimer sticks scattered to the Four Winds and . . . it was horrible.)

Which brings us to my Terrible Purpose of late: cleaning up the house. This news won’t come as a surprise to most, as it is a reasonable thing to do with a Baby on the way. And while the effort won’t quite match the scale of the Great Purge of ’06, it can nonetheless be quite a task for someone with a Bento box for a brain.

Cleaning up folks can understand, get behind. You need to make room for The Baby. And this means nursery and crib and all the other Baby Accoutrement one could ever hope for.

However.

There will be no crib, no nursery, no stroller, no plastic toys, precious few (cloth) diapers (the better to practice elimination communication), and instead only the finest in organic, Fair Trade, shade-grown, carbon-negative, biodynamic objets d’art animated only by wind, sun, and imagination. You can imagine how even the most innocent of conversations quickly becomes a tricky rhetorical situation. It’s easy enough to answer the How’s the New Job Going line of questioning, but the Are You Getting Ready for Baby version is an altogether different challenge question. I daren’t make mention of the aforementioned desirable qualities, or answer inquiries directly and honestly, unless I wish to subject myself to social outlawry. Occasionally, of course, I am caught in a moment of weakness, at which point the conversant exhibits a dramatic facial spasm, tries to stifle it, fails, smiles, sputters, and then peruses with Terminator-like precision the palette of available reactions, which are usually limited to eyerolling, backpedaling, and general flabbergastering. At least that’s been the process so far.

Thus, when it comes to clearing out my stuff, my papers, I am taking an old Icelandic perspective, that character does not determine fate, that traversing the poles of Order and Chaos has less to do with individual ability than with simply What Is. You could say that getting rid of my papers is not for the acquisition of stuff but to better invite the further disorder with which the Baby will bless us. Some sacrifices are required, after all.

But you didn’t it hear it from me. I’m just going through my papers, my endless reams of papers, and that’s not likely to change, I fear, until the day Gullinkambi calls.

Intermission

I'm supposed to be packing. Again. The better portion of last week I was at the Austin Film Festival, and tomorrow I head to the Poconos for Jenifer's autumn yoga retreat. I'm told that Odin himself will be present (pics to come!), which is especially auspicious considering that I spent the past few weeks completing, refining, polishing the treatment for my Viking screenplay. In fact, I finished it just in time for the dash to Tom's mother's house, our traditional night-before-and-close-to-the-airport staging area. (Okay, so Yours Truly driving in the rain in the dark in New Jersey in a Prius is not, technically, a “dash.” We also stopped at Bertucci’s.) I’m pleased with the treatment and look forward to writing the next draft, but I’m also happy to pause for a few moments and catch my breath.

Austin is a place where you can discuss the nuts and bolts of screenwriting with folks like John Milius and Terry Rossio. Austin is where you can see other writers and, more important, be seen as a writer. Austin is fertile ground, where a friend’s offhand comment at a party can instantly lodge in your mind and blossom into a premise for a high-concept comedy. Tom said he would attend the conference just for the plane ride home, when, inevitably, the backlog of promising concepts grows ever longer.

Austin is also where friends new and old gather in the Driskill lounge to catch up on each other’s doings: Julie, a panelist this year, has a movie in post-production; Deb has a beautiful new book and promotional tour hitting stores this fall; and Brett is flying high as one of 10 finalists for the Nicholl Fellowships. You could do worse than this conference.

Alas, the suitcase beckons. Soon tomorrow will rise, and Jenifer and I will celebrate our five-year anniversary.

Weathering the Storm

What a month it's been. I don't mean to overstate the case, but things happened, events were experienced, and people were involved. Here's a rundown for those keeping score:

1. We got a new car. Last month, Jenifer's 1998 Taurus gave out at around 176,000 miles. Pretty good. But that left us with my 1996 Cavalier. A couple weeks ago it decided to stop running while Jenifer was driving, and we decided it was time to move on. At 179,402 miles it owed us nothing, and so, after considerable but quick deliberation, we picked up a shiny new Toyota Prius. In one fell swoop, we are now officially a One Car Family, reducing our carbon footprint, and one step closer to our dream of becoming wind barons on the Faroe Islands.

2. We were Tayafied. Our friend and force of nature Taya dropped by Philadelphia for a couple weeks between projects. She stayed with us for a bit before heading back to New Zealand to work on the upcoming Asian western Laundry Warrior. Taya threw into sharp relief my own orderly patterns, the reigning stillness and stability of our house. (Hey, I'm a writer.) Jenifer and I are quiet people. We have a quiet car. Even our pet doesn't bark, but murmurs. Taya's the kind of girl you expect to find success as a sword-swallower or fire-eater, and indeed, when questioned, she admitted to having considered running off with the circus. And we love her for it.

3. Progress on the Viking script continued. New story, new treatment. It rocks.

4. October J Rabbit decided hopping is for sissies. About a week ago he simply stopped hopping. He’d been having a little difficulty with his hind legs, but the vet didn’t know the cause. I’m slowly learning not to say too much about his condition at the office, because invariably the conversation then goes like this:

Q : How old is he? A: Ten. Q: How long do rabbits live? A: The usual range given is five to ten years.

At which point my fellow conversationalist wrenches his/her face into the Grimace. Thing is, October J is completely happy, present, and spirited (read: willful), and so we aren’t overly worried. And now that he’s toodling around in the Prius with his yoga-teaching mama to his twice-a-week acupuncture sessions, he’s even fancier than before. We like that.

5. I got this fortune from a cookie: “Soon you will encounter a whole new world of opportunity.”

Now the Fun Begins

To date, I have not actually admitted, within these pages, to writing a Viking screenplay, and now I’ve written one. Sure, it’s a first draft, the beginningest of beginnings, but it’s something, and it’s done.

And it feels gooooood.

Yesterday was the first actual, honest-to-God weekend day I’ve had in the 29 days since I began drafting, and I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. Did you know that there are parks and people in them, and little children flying things rumored to be called “kites”? It was fabulous.

It also feels good to know that while I’m living underground, eating from a can, Holy Embers continues to provide value-added content. No blog can be all things to all people, but I’d like to think Holy Embers comes darn close. If you need to Google something urgent like “meatcake recipe norway,” you can rest assured that I got you covered.

But back to the Viking script. I’ve never written a draft so fast. I can’t tell you what’s in it, of course, but I do feel quite confident in revealing my methodology. I now wholeheartedly vouch for (1) researching, (2) outlining, (3) treating (treatmenting?), and (4) packing off your significant other to where the water goes the wrong way down the drain.

Incidentally, Jenifer is doing quite well in New Zealand, thank you, and I shall join her on Sunday (to recuperate, not teach yoga). The next edition will probably come from Nelson, on the South Island; so until then, have fun Googling “europa repetition OCD.”