I have been working on the “outline” of my episode of Bob’s Burgers today…. and it’s been awesome.

And hard. Basically, an outline is the TV world’s equivalent of a Hollywood “treatment”. Both are extremely detailed versions of everything that happens in the movie. Like a beat sheet, it is still in the form of a plot breakdown, but an outline is far more detailed.

Here’s just one section :

Int. School Hallway – Day

Louise is hurrying to class when she bumps into a girl she’s never met before and feels compelled to tell said girl how much she likes the girl’s skull and knife motif clothing. The girl thanks her and says her Mom got it for her from the P’tit Mort store online. Louise gets her to spell that for her so she can enter it into her phone and pester her mother to buy her stuff from there when she gets home from school. Louise asks the new girl why she’s not met her before, and the new girl says she just moved into the area and her first day was yesterday. Louise says she was sick that day, but she is glad to have met the new girl now. The bell rings, and Louise says “Crap!” and dashes off toward class, only to immediately dash back and say “By the way, my name is Louise. I’ll see you at lunch. Bye!” before dashing off again. The new girl shouts “Pleased to meet you Louise, I’m Eleanor!” after her.

As a result, it takes way more effort than the beat sheet did… and I am loving it. My mind is all fired up from the constant exercising of my imagination and I feel like it’s glowing like a blade in the forge as a result. I love it. No video game could hope to compete.

And that’s something I have been thinking about lately. I realize that part of the transformation I am trying to achieve is to fully embrace how much I love to create. I keep coming back to the idea of “I’d rather be writing”, and I am making a conscious effort to reinforce that idea every single time it returns so that I can loosen the grip that video games have on me and become more productive.

Video games will always be a part of my life, but in order to go forward, I need to scale it back to “fun hobby I can take or leave” levels. I have realized how much time I have been pouring into Fallout 4 and how deeply addicted I was to the time I spent in that world, where I was competent and deadly and heroic and involved and… well, all the things I am not in the real world.

And while there is nothing inherently wrong with that in the short term, the out of control escapism that is represents is not good for me. Over the last month or two, I have been doing whatever I could to maximize my Fallout 4 time, and measuring my days in how much time I would have to play Fallout 4. And I think that has drained a lot of my energies. And my work has suffered as a result. It dulled my creative edge, and led me to doing my homework as quickly and cheaply as I could so I could get back to the game.

And that’s just plain unhealthy.

Plus I need those energies for my school work. I want to produce top quality stuff and that takes dedication and focus as well as the energy to approach it with the right combination of dedication, playfulness, fun, and determination to show the world just how fucking awesome I am.

So I am going to spend more time writing and less time burning brain calories on things like video games. They’re great fun and a good way to relax, but only in moderation. Too much, and I start to lose my already tenuous connection to the real world, and I don’t have a lot of that to spare.

I have to stay connected to reality. Everything I want is there!

Speaking of video games, started on a new one today. It’s called Bioshock Infinite, and I bought it with the Indigo gift card my sister Catherine got me for my birthday way back in May, along with a couple of books.

It was hard to figure out what to buy (hello, option paralysis) but eventually I picked Bioshock Infinite because it was in my price range the the reviews for it were off da hook, y’all.

I mean seriously. The Metacritic score is 94… out of a hundred. That’s like an A+ game! And the reviewers were heaping it with praise, calling it things like “visionary”, “beautiful”, an “achievement” and so on.

And as I have finally gotten sick of Fallout 4, more or less (the two games are different enough that I may alternate), I figured it was time to give the new game a try.

And so far, it’s a hell of a game. It started off very slow… you walk through the game’s world without a lot to do, just soaking it all in. But things start getting creepy pretty much right away. The cult that runs the flying city that is the setting is super fucking disturbing… every thing I learned about them made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Lots of heavy handed Christian-like talk about the path of righteousness, being purified, heaping fire on “the Sodom below”, aka the USA, revering Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson like they are the Trinity, racism, a land that is like some kind of 1910 conservative’s wet dream where everyone is a gentleman or lady and there’s no minorities and it’s all picnics and the county fair and “wholesome” businesses.

But they really outdid themselves with the dread in one part of the intro : all along your path, you have been seeing propaganda posters about the “false shepherd” who seeks to lead the righteous away from the one true path and cast them into hell and so forth and so on.

Then you come across one that said “You shall know the False Shepherd by his mark!” and it shows a hand with AD stamped on it.

Guess what you have stamped on YOUR hand.

I was like, “oh shit oh shit o shit”. It was an amazingly effective storytelling moment.

Shortly after that, you are (of course) discovered, and the game, which has been quite bucolic up until that point, suddenly turns ULTRA fucking violent. It really caught me off guard. And now it’s a pulse pounding nonstop FPS thrill ride.

Should be a heck of a trip!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.