All Eyes on Me

Today's piece is also part of "Disgraced," my idea for a series about an upperclass English girl in 1914 who is forced to move with relatives in Newport, Rhode Island to escape the shame of a scandal and build a new life.

Elise has a fraught history with Marcus Loring, a scion of the Loring family that first appears in The Tailor at Loring's End. He is cousin and something of a rival to Rowan Loring, who in 1917 will be Alice's father and eventual hero in WWI. I've always really liked the Rowan character and wanted to include him in more than just the backstory of Tailor, so I thought it might be fun to include him in Disgraced. I think he's interesting because he's a really decent guy who lives very strictly by principle, but has lived such a privileged life he hasn't yet been challenged to uphold them under serious circumstances. Around this point he just married Elizabeth, the protagonist of Mrs. Loring, and I think both characters could reasonably be in Newport to factor into Elise's story.

Here we enter right after Marcus has done something that upsets Elise.

( Day #17 - "No One's Cad" )

Today's piece is also part of "Disgraced," my idea for a series about an upperclass English girl in 1914 who is forced to move with relatives in Newport, Rhode Island to escape the shame of a scandal and build a new life.

This is slightly spoilery for my larp Brockhurst, as this references an incident in the past of one of the PCs, Marcus Loring, who is one of the characters herein. He would definitely be a recurring character in the Disgraced story. This piece takes place after "#3 Companion", "#6 No One Knows You Here," and "#7 Repute."

( Day #10 - "Humiliated" )

Because I was finishing the Adonis script right up to the contest submission deadline at the end of July, I never really got to lead up to 31 Plays in 31 Days here on the blog. I just had to jump in! But thing are going strong— REALLY strong. Despite feeling somewhat burnt from the intense focus and creative demands of finishing Adonis, that script weirdly energized me. I am IMMENSELY proud of it. Bernie and I collaborated so well on it, and we impressed ourselves by how fully we realized the very particular vision we had for it. Not only am I proud to have it as another significant work to add to my portfolio, I think it may be one of the best things I’ve ever written. I do think we have a real shot in the contest we submitted it to, but regardless of how it does, we wrote a movie I would want to see.

But as I said, had to leap into 31 Plays in 31 Days pretty much immediately after finishing. 31P31D is pretty low-stakes—things have to be complete, not good, so as long as you bag out a page a day, you’ve nailed it. That’s one of the great things about doing it, it just encourages generation and experimentation. But I’m still riding the wave of creative enthusiasm Adonis gave me, which feels great, as well as keeping up the excellent work habits I needed to enforce to get the screenplay done on time. I started the month tired and with my extended family in Pittsburgh, so I was concerned I wasn’t going to have time and get behind only three days into August, but I’ve been gangbusters. In fact, I’m a whopping FOUR days ahead, I’ve been so able to keep up my productive mode. Sam even suggested I just see how many scenes I can write in a month and forget about limiting myself to thirty-one. I doubt I’ll be able to maintain that level of output— I’m sure I’ll get busy, or stuck for ideas, and get behind again the way I did in the two previous years. But so far I’m proud of my productivity.

As I mentioned, I’m aiming more for pieces of projects that have yet to be fully drafted or developed rather than standalone shorts. I’ve already started making progress in that direction, and I intend to continue developing Base Instruments, the third in the Mrs. Hawking series, and Disgraced, my idea for a series about a young English heiress in 1914 who is sent away to America to escape a scandal that ruined her reputation back home. I’m also going to depict moments from my newest larp Brockhurst—of which Disgraced’s plot is an offshot —and I find myself particularly inspired to finally work out that Cabin Pressure fan fic I’ve had in my head. Fan fic probably shouldn’t be my priority when I have so much of my own original work yet unwritten, but since I need to fill out the piece a month thing, why not?

I have so many ideas. There’s so much that still needs realizing. But I’m really pleased and proud I have so many cool things in my head.

To those of you who have seen Downtown Abbey, you may remember the time Mary was considering going to America with her lady's maid Anna to escape a scandal back home. She didn't do it, but I always thought that would make an excellent TV show. Someday I'd like to write it.

Today's scene is brainstorming for that. Elise Charnmore, the sister of Melinda Charnmore the PC in Brockhurst, would be my girl going to Newport to get away. Here's a bit of thought of what it's like when she gets there.

( Day #3 - "Companion" )