Time to Write

The amazing, distressing, ultimately triumphant story of a book's journey to film

When your unpublished manuscript is about to be made into a movie, surely publishers will snap it up, right?

 

Not necessarily. On the Huffington Post, Rex Pickett, author of Sideways, tells the entertaining if, for him, harrowing, story of the progress of his novel. It starts:

 

“In my last blog I left you with the following: my Sideways novel had been turned down by the publishing industry through my indefatigable Curtis Brown, LTD agent, on a second round of submissions -- even, shockingly, after Alexander Payne had optioned it and it was major entertainment daily news that Artisan Ent. had greenlit it as a $10 million film.”

I can’t resist quoting one of the first rejection letters Pickett got from a senior editor at a major publishing house: “Sideways is nothing more than a glorified screenplay, and if it was made into a film it would stink to high heaven with the rot of Pickett's writing.”

Unfortunately for Pickett, Payne then decided to do another film, About Schmidt, first. After that, Payne and his writing partner adapted the book and Pickett’s new agent submitted the novel again, to 20 top publishers (bringing the submission total to 100). Instead of the hoped-for bidding war, they got 20 rejections.

The agent persisted and they got an offer: $5000 from St. Martin’s Press…who immediately told Pickett he should hire a line editor to go over the manuscript…

I won’t continue, you really should read Pickett’s fuller version of his adventure, but if there ever as evidence that William Goldman’s line, “Nobody knows anything,” applies to book publishing as much as it does to film production, this is it!

As Pickett points out, the novel was faithfully adapted into a film and won every single screenwriting award that a writer could win, including the Oscar, and is now enshrined in the WGA Theater as one of the 101 Greatest Scripts of All Time.” 

You can read the full story starting here. It continues here.

(Interested in writing screenplays? See my other blog, www.ScreenwritingSuccess.com)

Does your screenplay or novel have the required glue?

A good screenplay or novel needs some glue, by which I mean something that connects and holds together the people whose fates you wish to connect. The less possible it is for them to escape, the more conflicts you can pile on and the more plausible the emotional intensity of their predicament.

The two most-used kinds of glue are family and work. It's not impossible to get away from your family but it's certainly not always easy. The same goes for work--sure, you can quit a job but if you have nothing else lined up or likely and no money saved, that's not easy, either.

There can also be emotional glue between two people in conflict--co-dependency, for instance. Probably the best dramatic example is "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in which George and Martha's love-hate relationship gives them both something to live for.

Recently I saw "Carnage," and while I thought the actors were good (especially Christoph Waltz) and there were some good amusing black comedy moments, it just didn't make sense that the other visiting couple would stay there once things got unpleasant. 

It would have been relatively easy to create a device to keep them there. For instance, the power goes out and there's no way back down to ground level because the elevators aren't working. Instead, the lure was "oh, come back and have a cup of tea." 

It's possible that we are to think that neither couple is willing to leave until they have convinced the other of the correctness of their position, but that certainly doesn't ring true for the Waltz character, who is in the middle of covering up a potential crisis for the pharmaceutical company he represents and is rather bored by this charade of handling things in a civilized manner.  

The film is based on a play ("Gods of Carnage") by Yasmina Reza, which won a Tony. Reza and director Roman Polanski worked on the screenplay together. She also wrote "Art," another story designed to expose the pretentions, hypocrisy and smugness of the upper middle class. With both of these it's hard not to suspect that they are designed to make the audience feel superior without much danger of turning its view inward.

Leaving all that aside, from the perspective of crafstmanship I think the main lesson of the film is not to forget the glue.

(For more tips on plotting and characterization, check out "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available now from Amazon and other booksellers.)

How to find a plot that works--guaranteed!

One way to come up with an interesting plot is to reinterpret something that already has worked. Of course this has been done many times with modern interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays, the works of Jane Austen, and soon a version of Moby Dick in which the whale is a spaceship! And let’s not forget the books that added zombies to Jane Austen’s genteel world (actually, let's forget those).

I'm not talking about plagiarism, I'm talking about finding a structure that has stood the test of time, and a universal situation. I've done this very loosely with something I'm writing in which a patriarch calls together his family because he's dying. Yes, there are elements of King Lear--although of course you don't want to follow Shakespeare's structure too closely, it tends to wander.

Here’s another example (he reveals his source right at the end of this short clip):

 

 

 

Do you make this mistake in the opening pages of your book or script?

An article in the New Yorker (Dec. 5, 2011) quotes writer-director Michel Hazanavicius, whose movie The Artist is a hot prospect for an Oscar for Best Picture. This is what he says about the first part of a movie:

 “You have fifteen minutes to tell the audience, ‘These are the rules.’ Jurassic Park teaches us to expect a T. rex, but if a T. rex comes thirty minutes into When Harry Met Sally you won’t believe it.”

I think this applies equally to novels—you have about fifteen to twenty pages to orient people to the world you are creating. If there’s something about it that is different from what we might expect based on those pages, you should at least foreshadow it.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have surprises—quite the contrary. But they have to be plausible in the context you have established. 

This includes the characters you have created. If they act out of character, we expect to find out what causes the change. In many action pictures, it’s a threat to someone they love. In comedies it might be getting drunk. In horror pictures it could be a demon that takes up residence inside them.  By the way, the argument that many people are inconsistent, while true, isn’t a good defense—we expect people in films to act with more consistency than in life.

This is a good first thing to check when you’re writing your second draft—if something occurred to you as you were writing the later sections that significantly changes the nature of the story or the character go back and adjust.

(There are many more writing tips in the book, "Your Writing Coach," available now from Amazon as a paperback and in the Kindle store.)

Want to get published but have no connections? Here's how to make some.

You've heard it before: in the writing game, it's who you know that counts! That's not entirely true, but it's not entirely false, either. It certainly helps to have an insider on your side. If you don't, however, all is not lost. 

On my scriptwriting blog (http://www.ScreenwritingSuccess.com) I posted about a group of recent USC film school grads and the artist's collective they have formed. Some are writers, some want to he directors, others producers, etc. The idea is that whenever one of them gets a job on a film or TV show, he or she will try to make an opportunity for others in the group as well. 

Doing this as prose writers is a bit different. It could be made up of writers anywhere, using the internet. It would be more about sharing information that can help you open doors. The kinds of information you could share could be about:

* writing contests

* writing conferences, especially ones where you can meet agents and publishers. If one of the members attends, he or she can send the others notes, or record the lectures if that's allowed, etc.

* new literary agencies being set up, or news about an agent moving to a different agency, which is the time when they are likely to be most receptive to taking on additional clients

* publishing opportunities

* publishers to avoid because they don't pay or are in danger of going bust

Members could decide to specialize in any of these, therefore dividing up work that would be difficult for any one writer to to. For instance, one might be the "Agent Information Officer," and do daily or weekly searches for news regarding agents and agencies. Another member might monitor the writing contest scene. The updates can be posted to a private joint blog or website.

Aren't writers competitors, though? In a way, yes, so perhaps I wouldn't have the whole group made up of writers who all work in the same genre. But if one of you writes sci-fi, another writes mysteries, another writes non-fiction, for instance, the overlap in the jobs or even the agencies you would be going for would be minimal. 

The connections can come when one member signs with an agent and after a time asks whether that agent would consider the work of another member. Or when one member finds a publisher for his science fiction novel and mentions to his editor that he knows of a terrific mystery writer and asks whether the editor would pass it along to the colleague in charge of mysteries.

Connections and opportunities--if nobody hands them to you, create them!

(For ideas on how to market yourself and your work without spending a fortune, take inspiration from my book, "Do Somethign Different," published by Virgin Books with a foreword by Sir Richard Branson. Also see the chapters on book marketing in "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey. Both are available from Amazon and other book sellers.)

A unique way for writers to collaborate

 

 

 

 

 

 

Would you like to collaborate on a creative project but you're not sure how and with whom? One interesting option is to participate in hitRECord, the collaboration website and project run by actor and artist Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I wrote a post about it quite a while ago and thought it was time to see what they've been up to.

Here's how Gordon-Levitt describes it:

“In a nutshell: we create and develop art and media collaboratively here on our site; we use my position in the traditional entertainment industry to turn that creativity into money-making productions; and then we share any profits with the contributing artists. In a nutter shell, we just have fun making things together. Videos, writing, photography, music, anything…”

One such collaboration is a book called The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories. There were 8000 submissions, and eventually 65 were used--text combined with artwork. They are putting together another one next year as part of a three book deal with an imprint of Harper Collins. The stories really are tiny--about 25 words each and the book really is tiny--88 pages, about 6 inches by 4 inches. 

They've also produced another book, RECollections, with contributions from almost 500 people and a DVD comprised of short films, animation, music videos and more--some of them starring Gordon-Levitt. 

Anything you submit to the site is available for others to remix and is available for his company to use to create products for sale. 

Whether or not you decide to take part, have a look at www.hitrecord.org. It might also inspire you to take part in, or even organise, a smaller collaboration locally or online, where you know that your contribution will be used.

PS: I think Gordon-Levitt is also an excellent actor--I saw his most recent film, 50/50, recently and thought it was excellent. Don't let the topic--a young man dealing with cancer--scare you away. 

 

Cinemagraphics: little moments from movies

What you see below, from the movie "Brazil," is an example of Cinemagraphics, tiny moments of motion created as gifs (Graphics Information Format). You'll find more of these, as well as some great still photographs, at www.gusmantel.com. Very cool, don't you think?

 

 

If you want to write a screenplay, get this free ebook

I've contributed a chapter on screenwriting to a new ebook that's yours for free. It's called "The Modern Moviemaking Movement," and it's the brainchild of my friend Jason Brubaker.

Jason's site is www.FilmMakingStuff.com, and he's a young, smart, ambitious film-lover/film-maker/film distribution consultant who is on top of the new developments in film-making that have brought what used to be the preserve of the big studios into the realm of possibility for individuals and small groups. 

He's corraled some great people to contribute their expertise on all aspects of the new filmmaking movement: not just writing, but financing, production, and distribution.

Even if you only want to write screenplays, you need to be aware of where filmmaking is going because it's having a major effect on writers as well as everybody else in the field. 

You can get your free copy here: http://www.ModernMovieMaking.com. It has already been downloaded more than 10,000 times, so don't miss the boat!

When you've had a chance to read it, let me know what you thought, either as a comment to this post or directly at jurgenwolff@gmail.com.

 

 

Need ideas for your novel or screenplay plot? Try Consequences Mapping.

You're probably familiar with mind mapping. If you're stuck on a plot, a variation I call Consequences Mapping might be helpful especially during the early stages of developing your story.

You start with one thing you know you want to have happen in your story. For an example, let's say you want to write a story about how losing one's job can lead someone to extreme actions (this could be a short story or part of a novel or screenplay). You know that the character will lose his job, so that goes on the left.

Draw three lines out from that, one upward, one straight out, one downward, and attach one possible response to each of them. These might be: in retaliation he trashes his office/ he takes valuable information with him on a memory stick/ he decides to sue the company.

From each of those, draw a line and jot down at least two possible consequences. 

Trashes his office: he's arrested/ he's blacklisted within his industry

Takes valuable information: blackmails to get his job back/ sells the information to competitor

Sues the company: is offered a payoff to settle/ is counter-sued

You can keep branching out with the further consequences of each development you write down (start with a big piece of paper and write smaller as you go along). It's an excellent way of generating loads of plot points quickly. Of course some won't fit the character you have in mind, and that's fine; ultimately you'll choose only the actions and reactions that make sense. 

Will the worst book ever written become a movie?

Is this great or what? Back in 2005, to prove that some so-called publishers would accept anything, a group of pros came up with the absolute worst book they could, each writing a disjointed chapter full of mistakes, illogical action, unbelievable characters. They sent it in and Publish American accepted it, wanting to "give it the chance it deserves." When they exposed the hoax Publish America decided it was all a mistake but the book was published elsewhere (billing itself as "the worst book ever written"). 

Now there's a movement underway to turn it into a film featuring interviews with the authors and dramatizations from the book, Atlanta Nights. They are aiming to raise $25,000 dollars on kickstarter, the crowfunding site. So far they have about $6100 and there are 34 days left to go. $5000 gives you a walk-on part and makes you a producer. One dollar gets you access to exclusive blogs and behind the scenes footage. 

If you want read the book, it's available on several websites, including: http://critters.critique.org/sting/

Here's a little excerpt: 

    She went to the door, her hips swaying like palm trees in a Hawaiian hurricane.

    Bruce lied there in the bed, trying to recover his memory. All he could remember

was the screeching of tires', like a steam engine gone crazy, and then there was just all

that pain. Hell. Hell on wheels, that’s what it was, yeses.

I hope they make the film--it will help warn aspiring writers that there are charlatans out there trading on their dreams. If you want to chip in make it happen, go here: 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1603898280/atlanta-nights-the-movie