A different kind of pirate

Disney's out there giving pirates a good name, making 'em appear all lovable and funny.

Well, I'm here crafting an entirely different tale of pirates, maidens, and really really bad villians. I consider my tale to be a story of loss, love, and redemption.

I've been batting it around for, oh, something like ten years now. At first it was a story about fate pulling together two diametric opposites into a conflict of good versus evil. I didn't want to tell a story about Bruce Willis being awesome and spanking evil yet again. Instead I pitted a vulnerable, naive, pure woman against a monster of a pirate lord. How's that for an apparently losing battle? See, I wanted to tell a tale of how emotional strength, purity, goodness, and fortitude can conquer any kind of physical strength or external show of violence.

What's more, I wanted to make my tale epic through making the conflict bigger than two characters. I wanted them to be mortal, fallible beings sitting in for Gods that couldn't put on mortal form, yet still needed to resolve their differences--in a sense anyway.

However, there's a really fine line between unbelievable coincidence (that my audience won't buy into) and a tale of mythical proportions and execution (which they will). I discovered that the more I thought about it, I was afraid that merely pitting good versus evil seemed shallow. Sure, it's a decent enough idea. But it really lacked a really deep emotional response. I couldn't imagine watching it and really being torn up about what might (or would) happen. I'd give the idea as it stood an 8/10.

Then I considered another possibility, one which I'm afraid has its own flaw. What if my good character and my evil character were friends from childhood who, as they grew, changed into these characters who have a shared past and friendship...but inherent conflict in the present. In some ways it's more poetic, and in others, less. On the one hand, anything nasty that one does to the other will squeeze our hearts all that much more; on the other, the premise may seem all that much more far-fetched. I get the sense that people (myself included) are tired of the "oh, you'll never guess...Bob and Sally, who're so perfect/imperfect for each other, actually know each other from a long time ago. Imagine that!" It gets old. LOST is rapidly reducing the public's tolerance for this type of thing.

But I do love the idea of telling a tale of how two people who apparently loved each other as kids grow into diametric opposites. One bad/emotionally screwed up, and the other good/pure. It's the ultimate character arc--180 degrees.

If I tell that tale, though, then I have a much more emotional movie, at the expense of the epic quality. Hmmm....

It's all I want to do...

All I really want to do is write! I don't want to program solutions to problems which I see the writing world having--or problems of any other sort either. I work at an FBO (a private air terminal) and see numerous ways that software and technology could be useful in increasing efficiency, and avoiding mistakes. While thinking about those solutions is entertaining, I don't actually want to invest years of my life into creating those solutions...even if saying so is equivalent to tearing up a winning lottery ticket.

What I want to do is write. I don't want to spend the time I could've spent writing on dreaming up solutions to what's blocking me. Yet, I also feel blocked--like I haven't found the right tools which I need to keep me from being overwhelmed by details; tools which, I hope, would conform to my thought process.

I suppose I feel like I do best when I focus. I'm not sure I'm that great at straddling widely divergent subjects, investing in both, and reaping appropriate rewards. What ends up happening is that I feel torn, dissatisfied, and paralyzed.

Is one of these a distraction from the other one? Is my "dream" of writing a mere excuse not to face the hardship of doing what I really love (i.e., potentially programming?), or is programming and thinking up solutions to problems an excuse not to write?

To some extent I think I'd have an easier time writing back when there were very limited tools available to the writer--at much greater cost, and inconvenience. Think about the days when the tools of writing had to be virtually handcrafted. Think about the days when you were lucky to have a pen, ink, a paper to write on. The ideas, then, were cheap. It was the tools which were rare. Today, ideas continue to be cheap, but the tools are plentiful. Because of this, writers can spend all their writing time evaluating possible solutions to areas in which their writing is hamstrung.

I've tried whiteboards, my Treo, index cards, virtual index cards (i.e., Mindola SuperNotecard), mindmapping, OneNote, Word, Storyview, Final Draft, and so on. I've even tried beating the story out of my skull with rocks. Nothing works. If anyone who reads this knows of something truly revolutionary I haven't tried yet, let me know.

I don't need a scriptwriting or word processing program, I need a tool which helps me outline, organize thoughts, and especially structure the whole mess. I love timeline/card functionality, but it has to be really intuitive, flexible, and useful.

As an idea of what I'm looking for, I'm pretty impressed by Scrivener (for Mac, unfortunately, I have a PC) and I've been impressed by Liquid Story Binder (though some of its functionality is rough).