Time to Write

The Power of Perception

In his blog, Sanders Says, Tim Sanders makes an interesting observation about marketing films. He points out that "An Inconvenient Truth," which is mostly a talking head-Powerpoint format, and "The Secret," which is also mostly talking heads (as well as some cheesy 'historical re-enactments') were both sold as movies, not direct-to-DVD productions, and this raised their status.

In the case of "An Inconvenient Truth," it actually had a cinema release.

"The Secret," which "reveals" the secret of the ages: namely that you get what you think about most, was initially distributed as a download, and later as a DVD, but the people who made it and marketed it always referred to it as a movie. It benefited from the hype that the secret was supposedly supressed by some kind of powerful cabal, which feeds into the conspiracy theory mindset even though its nonsense. In fact, The Secret re-treads ideas that were hugely popular in the first big personal-development movements of America in the 1920s but went out of fashion when hard times hit (even though lots of people were thinking positive, the Stock Market crashed--or maybe it was partly because people where thinking too positive, at least about the price of stocks).

The genius of the The Secret is not its content, but the way it was marketed: the makers interviewed many of the top self-development gurus and then got them to market it for them to their huge mailing lists and popular websites. The gurus get more exposure (and a commission?), the producers sell a lot of downloads/DVDs and, now, spin-offs.

Anyway, for students of marketing, both films hold some useful lessons.

Putting Reviews into Perspective

Here's an excerpt from a movie review: "A masterpiece of humanist cinema, forming a magnificant diptych."

Here's another excerpt from a movie review: "A sprawling, shapeless film...doesn't hold back on cliched characters."

The people behind the first movie must be celebrating and the ones behind the second must be depressed, right?

No, because these are reviews for the same film ("Letters from Iwo Jima"). The rave was from the Observer, the knock from the Independent on Sunday.

Here's another one, this time reviews for a performance by Nelly Furtado: "She packs a mighty and beautifully accurate live vocal punch," says the Daily Telegraph; "A unimaginative yawnfest," says the Guardian.

A good lesson for us: good or bad, it's only an opinion.

Winning Despite the Script

"The Departed" won the Oscar for best picture and I confess I found watching it an engrossing couple of hours. Jack Nicholson free to ham it up (in the best possible sense), good performances from Leo and Matt, suspenseful moments, and the ambiguous world that Scorsese loves to explore. Just don't use it as a model for how to write a script.

In case you haven't seen it yet, I won't go into details at this point, but the ending suggests a state of panic as far as the script goes: how can we tie up all the loose ends? I know! Let's have a couple of the characters do something for which there was no set-up at all! It'll be a surprise when X shoots Y...

It proves that if enough other elements are in place, a film can overcome a script with some faults--especially since most audience members aren't as picky as we writers are.

Short story contest, impro & discipline

There's an interesting short short story (under 1000 words) contest going on. The deadline is March 16, 2007, and you'll find details at bebo.com.

The contest promotes the publication of a book of short stories, "Nanotales," written by Ziv Navoth. On the site he describes how he overcame a crippling inner critic by taking part in an improvisation class taught by Keith Johnstone, author of the wonderful book, "Impro." (By the way, if you need to overcome a harsh inner critic, you'll find a downloadable trance for that purpose on my website, www.timetowrite.com.)

He then committed to writing one short story a day and made sure he stuck to his plan by asking a friend to monitor his actions. You can adapt this excellent strategy to your situation: your promise could be 250 words a day of your novel or memoir, or 1000 words a week, or whatever you find challenging but doable.

ps: When you get to the Bebo page about the contest, it triggers a video of Ziv Navoth talking about writing stories. But it's down the page, so you may wonder at first who's talking and where it's coming from.

The Power of Asking

Hard to believe, but this is the first anniversary of this blog. Thanks to those of you who have taken the time to comment and to check out my website, www.timetowrite.com. In April I will be adding a podcast, and you'll hear about it here first.

One of the themes I will be exploring in one of the first podcasts is the power of asking, as it relates to writers. There is a very simple saying about this: "Don't ask, don't get!" It's strange that most of us don't mind doing a favor for someone, or cooperating when they approach us with a proposition that will result in some gain for both sides--yet we hesitate to ask. Our fear of rejection usually is stronger than the attraction of the possible benefit. For free-lance writers, especially, this is a fear we have to overcome.

I suffer from this as much as anyone else, but when I remember to overcome it, sometimes good things happen. Example 1: recently I read about a blogging and podcasting event that's scheduled for Las Vegas in early November. I'm looking for opportunities to get some attention for my forthcoming book and I thought this event would be a natural. I emailed the organizers, offering to give a talk on writing for bloggers/podcasters. I had an enthusiastic response saying that's exactly the kind of topic they're looking for. We're still working out the details, but it looks like that's going to work out.

Example 2: I noticed that there is a school of public relations here that has a new session starting soon. I wrote to them, offering to have them use my book as a case study. Their students could practice their new skills by getting some PR for my book--real world experience for them, possible media attention for me. Win-win. They never answered my letter.

The moral of the stories: you win some, you lose some. But if you don't ask, you lose all.

Blog Writer Makes Good

Another story of a blogger who has moved to mainstream publishing: Viking has paid £70,000 ($130,000) to Judith O'Reilly for a book based on her blog, "Wife of the North." It's an amusing account of her move to Northumberland, and having to cope with life in the country with her children while her husband spends most of his time working in London.

The confessional tone is fresh and funny, the situations somewhat reminiscent of "A Year in Provence." Viking's publishing director, Venetia Butterfield, says Reilly "writes wittily, movingly, with admirable honesty and occasional darkness." Butterfield approached Reilly about doing the book, which will come out next year.

Possibly The Worst Writing Advice I've Ever Read

Last month, the Guardian featured an article on how to write 'chick lit'--novels about and maybe for single young women. Of course it's not a fair label; Kathy Lette points out in a sidebar quote, "When it comes to women's fiction, critics have a condescension chromosome." But the same sidebar features what may be the worst writing advice I've ever read, from novelist Freya North:

"I never bother to structure a book. And the worst thing you can do is to concentrate on plot at the expense of the characters. As long as the characters live and breathe, not an awful lot need happen. Don't get too complex."

Now, I think I know what she's saying, and she's right that plot demands shouldn't drive the characters to do things not in keeping with who they are. But I'm sure more than one editor groaned when reading this quote; they've all seen more than enough unstructured manuscripts in which nothing happens.

I've never ready any of Freya North's books, maybe she's such a good intuitive writer than not bothering to structure her book doesn't hinder the result. For those of us who are not such geniuses, giving some thought to structure beforehand is the way to go.

If you're at all a fan of animation and want to see a remarkable application of it, go here.

It's a short film called Ryan, by Chris Landreth, about animator Ryan Larkin, who passed away last week. It's the lower of the two films featured; the top one is a film he made many years ago, before he fried his brain with cocaine and later booze.

"Ryan" won an Academy Aware in 2005. As was noted in the programme of the Melbourne Film Festival, "3D animation is used to create the figures of Landreth (reflecting on the nature of his film and its concerns), as well as Larkin and several people close to him. The figures are both realistic and fantastic - animation is brilliantly and movingly employed to evoke physical damage and emotional scars, to illuminate moments of anxiety, tenderness and rage."

Diaryof a Non-Fiction Book: Endorsements

I've reached the point with my new book, "Your Writing Coach," that I now need to get quotes for the back cover. I've sent out PDFs of the proof and hinted that the recipients should not stifle any impulse they might feel to gush about how great the book is.

This process is slightly embarrassing, of course, but this is no time for modesty. We know that generally browsers proceed in this order: cover of book; back cover of book; first page of text if it's a novel, table of contents if it's a non-fiction book; and then open to random page and skim a sentence or two. I'm pretty happy with the cover, so I'm hoping that people interested in the topic will advance to the back cover.

With a couple of the quotes that have come back, I've had to suggest some edits, generally because there's not a lot of space and there may be some key words one wants to avoid. Xavier Koller, an Academy Award winning director ("Journey of Hope") mentioned the need to embrace failure and mistakes and how this book could get people back on the right track. However, I was worried that the words "failure" and "mistakes" might not be the best choice for readers who probably will skim these quotes for all of one micro-second. He very kindly allowed me to suggest a less insightful but quicker quote.

That's Advertainment!

"Donovan Life" is an interesting experiment in low-key advertising mixed with high-concept entertainment. At the website donovanlife.com you'll find twenty-something Anya, her gay best friend, Dougal, and a handsome new neighbor named Jack. Anya and Dougal can't tell which one of them Jack is more likely to find romantically interesting.

So far, so sitcom. But the series is actually five short webisodes designed to show visitors the attractions of a building called Donovan, a high-rise in the hip Yaletown district of Vancouver.  Following in the footsteps of BMW's Hire series of short films, Cressey Developers decided that a funny and trendy mini-series might be the best way to generate buzz.

It worked. It attracted lots of media attention and then visitors--more than 20,000 a day when the weekly series started. Working in its favor is that it looks good, the acting is professional, and there are quite a few laughs along the way. Best of all, it's not heavy-handed--if you didn't know that it had a marketing function you wouldn't necessarily have guessed it.

The films were made by Roger Larry, who wrote the scripts with his wife, Sandra Tomc. Although the budget has not been revealed, costs were kept down by the fact that Larry was able to piggyback the production with shooting a film called "Crossing," which features the same actors.

This could be the start of a popular format for advertisers who want to keep a light touch--and if they're all done this well, it'll be a painless alternative to the kinds of ads we're used to (as well as an interesting new market for writers, of course).

 

Advice on Writing Violence

In his blog, publishingspot.com, Jason Boog interviewed novelist Vikram Chandra, author of "Sacred Games." Chandra made an interesting point about writing about violence:

"...often the most effective thing is not to deal with the physical aspect of it—don’t focus on which part gets injured and how. That kind of mechanical experience doesn’t work at all.

The emotional impact [of violence] for your character is what matters. If you can get that, then you are a long way towards helping the reader experience it. To paraphrase Hemmingway: “Find the one diamond sharp detail that carries the emotion of the whole scene."

One little sound or something that will make you shudder. That’s the trick."

Want to Write for Games?

I don't usually post job opportunities, but it's unusual to find someone advertising so openly for people who might be interested in writing for games. Here's the info:

Writing for play.tm

Help! I need somebody...

13 february 2007

article by Luke Guttridge

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• comments

Are you a cunning linguist with an eye for a bloody good game when you see one? If so, you could be the latest addition to the play.tm team. Our current writing force encompasses people from many walks of life, from folks who earn a living in the games industry to those that spend their weekends engrossed in the latest console hits, or indeed their Saturday evenings waggling incessantly on their Wii controller.

We're after writers with a flair for words and a passion for gaming, to indulge in game reviewing, previewing, reporting and opinion-expressing. If you think you'd enjoy the challenge of contributing to one of Europe's most admired gaming tomes (wherever you are personally located), then please get in touch with me, via [email protected].

***

If you apply, let me know what happens!

What Makes Comedy Writing Work?

Michael Arndt (left) has won the Writers Guild of America award for best original screenplay for "Little Miss Sunshine." It took six years between the writing and the production of the script and he was living in his mother's basement while writing it. In a panel sponsored by the Guild, he made an interesting comment about his comedy and comedies in general:

"The problem with comedy is that it's not serious enough," he said. "There have to be problems the audience can't see a solution to, so it comes as an epiphany. As you watch the film, it feels like a comedy because you're laughing, but the characters feel like this is the worst weekend of their lives."

Something to keep in mind if you're writing comedy!

How NOT to Write

I had to share with you a great example of how NOT to write when you're trying to communicate. In the Travel section of the (London) Sunday Times, a reader wrote in to complain about the service on a Swiss flight. The flight attendants handed out candy bars and bread rolls to passengers and gave them to the reader's 3-year-old child because his seat had been paid for, but refused to give them to her 19-month-old son, who was traveling on her lap.

The paper passed along the complaint to Swiss and here is the airline's answer: "The complete satisfaction of our highly valued customers is our utmost goal."

So far, a bit cliched, but OK. I feel a groveling apology coming on, right? Wrong.

It goes on: "We have forwarded your reader's comment to the responsible department. We cannot promise immediate improvement, however, since changes in common processes sometimes require detailed planning."

Huh? In plain English, "We will continue to make small children cry until we have had many meetings, so don't expect anything to change anytime soon."

If I had stock in Swiss, I'd sell it now. If I ran the place, I'd fire the person who wrote this answer and hire somebody who knows how to write in plain English. Then I'd  fire the PR department. Then I'd fire myself.

What Are People Reading?

On the site of the Daily Telegraph, Amy Iggulden writes an article headlined, "In diet-mad Britain the serious reader is left on the shelf." She points out that ten years ago, Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" was on top of the best-seller charts, whereas now it's diet books and TV spin-offs. These include "You Are What You Eat," by "nutritionist" Gillian McKeith (her credentials are questionable), and Jamie Oliver's cookbook, as well as hypnotist Paul McKenna's book promising to change your life in seven days.

Of course, nobody knows how many people who bought Hawking's book ever actually read it, and diet and self-help books have been big a long time. But the charts' domination by TV tie-ins and celebrity authors (or at least celebrities who put their names on books, even if they are ghost-written) has definitely accelerated. The autobiographies of show business types and sports people are also an ever-growing segment of book sales, and must be destined to grow even further since many of these people are writing their first volumes while still in their 20's.

In fiction, the trend has moved away from the comfortable romance novels of Catherine Cookson to gruesome crime novels and global thrillers.

It's always useful to understand what people are buying but you can't let it sway you--you have to write what you really believe in. And now I have to get back to writing my next book: The Serial Killer's Guide to Easy Weight Loss and Instant Riches.