Time to Write

Creativity Examples: JDK Design

Fast Company has an interesting article about brand design company JDK, a small firm that's won huge accounts and plaudits for work that's so far out of the box that it's in a totally different room. Among the points it illustrates:

* the power of analogy. In pitching for the X-Box account, JDK principal Michael Jager suggested changing its image from The Incredible Hulk (pure power) to Bruce Lee (powerful but also sleek and elegant). It worked. My example: my new book, I use the the coaching metaphor to distinguish it from writing books that take a teaching approach. My point is that it offers emotional support, not only intellectual support.

* the power of leaving the rules behind. Their first business was a skateboard company run by Jake Burton Carpenter. He says, "There were no traditions. There was no religion to our logo or word mark. We felt free to do whatever looked good and whatever seemed to work." My example: I'm working on an ad for the book that's not a standard book ad--you'll see it first, here.

* the power of making people feel like insiders. For the X-Box campaign, JDK developed a graphic code that looked like just a cool design to most people, but also sent secret messages to those who make the time and effort to decode them. My example: people who buy the book find in it secret words that unlock bonus features on the website (live in 48 hours).

There's quite a bit of psycho-design-jargon and maybe a bit of ENC (Emperor's New Clothes), but there's also some good content in the article.

UNRELATED BONUS RANT, NO EXTRA CHARGE:
Why do some people on panels or giving talks think it's a badge of honor to start by saying, "Uh, I haven't actually thought about what I was going to say..." Maybe to them, the message they're sending is, "I'm so brilliant that I can just make stuff up as I go along and you'll be fascinated." To me, the message is, "I don't care enough about this event or you to spend any time preparing for it." Now, if they really ARE so brilliant that they can make it up and keep us fascinated, that's fine. But 9 out of 10 times, they're not. The next time I encounter this, I hope I have to guts to say, during the Q & A, "Just a suggestion: next time DO think about what you're going to say." I'll have to be positioned near the door...

Writing: Dare to Be Yourself

In the April issue of Fast Company magazine, brothers Dan and Chip Heath (authors of the book, Made to Stick) use the example of personals ads to point out how boring a lot of marketing messages are. One example: an ad that had the headline, “Hey.” (Not even, “Hey!!”).  They said at least two-thirds of the headlines were boring. Why do these headlines suck so much, they ask, and give the answer:

“Fear. Fear of saying too much. Fear of saying something clever that someone might think is stupid. Fear of saying something revealing that might turn someone off. …The headlines try desperately not to exclude anyone. In doing so, they succeed at boring everyone.”

They say the same problem afflicts a lot of ailing brands, like the Gap and Ford. I think there’s a message in there for us writers, too. Today’s marketplace is tough. Our only hope is to stand out. That will turn some people off. And that’s OK, as long as we find the ones it turns on.

(I have a half-day workshop on this topic coming up in London on Saturday, May 5—it’s about how writers can create their own brand and succeed in today’s tough marketplace, and it costs only £29, including a copy of my book—if you want to register or get more information, please email [email protected].)

A Writer's Life

Scriptwriter and book author Lee Goldberg has an entertaining blog called "A Writer's Life." In one of his posts, he recounts some of the more amusing (and sometimes maddening) encounters he's had with people he's met at conferences and workshops. Here's a little taste (there are a few more on his post):

Another person came up to me and asked me if I wrote for television. I said yes.  She then asked, "How do you do that?"
"You mean, how do I write for television?"
"Yes," she said.
"I write screenplays," I said.
"Which is what, exactly?"
"The story, the action, the words that the characters say," I replied.
She stared at me. "Somebody writes that?"
"Yes," I said, resisting the urge to strangle her. "It's like a writing a play, only for the camera instead of a theatre audience."
She shook her head.  "No, it's not."

* * * * * *
"I've written  a book but everyone tells me it's a TV series," the man said.  "How do I make it into a TV series."
"You can't, " I said, and gave my standard speech about how ideas are cheap and execution is everything, how networks go to people with TV experience, or who have written hit movies, or who have written bestselling novels, blah blah blah.  And when I got done, he stared at me. I got stared at a lot today.
He said:  "How can I get around that?"
"You can't," I said.
"Why not?"
"Because you haven't established yourself  as a writer in any field," I said. "Why would a network, studio or producer buy a TV series idea from you?"
"Because I'm smarter and more talented than they are," he said.
"It's not going to happen," I said.
"Is it because I'm black?" he said. "That's it, isn't it. It's because I'm black."

* * * * * *
"Did you have to sleep with a lot of people to get into TV?" a woman asked me.
"Just my wife," I said.
"You were lucky it wasn't someone else," she said and walked away.

**********

One of my own stories is from a talk I gave at a scriptwriters' conference in Boulder. I'd spent about an hour going into characters, structure, conflict, etc. and then it was time for questions. One man stood up and said, "Bottom line: how much money can I make writing scripts? Because I'm making good money selling real estate, and unless I can make more money writing scripts, I don't want to bother."

I told him not to bother.

Storytelling: Lessons from a Master

Master storyteller Ira Glass, whose "This American Life" has come to Showtime from National Public Radio, has several mini-lessons in storytelling on YouTube. Here are the links:

1. The basic building blocks of storytelling: anecdotes, "bait" questions, and moments of reflection. Click here.

2. Finding a great story: it takes time, and "the importance of abandoning crap." Click here.

3. On good taste: the sometimes disheartening gap between our ambition and our level of skill--including a tale of his own long journey to mastering his art. Click here.

4. Two pitfalls: too much you, not enough you. Click here.

The talk is for people who aspire to making video documentaries, but most of his points apply just as much to all kinds of storytelling. Enjoy!

Writers Beware: Check References

Here's a news item I found of interest, for several reasons:

Agent Tony Cowell is to launch a new Dragon's Den-style show on ITV London which will seek out new author talent for publication. The series of six 30-minute programmes will air at 6pm on Sundays starting 1st July on ITV London, sponsored by Borders and produced by independent production company Prospect Pictures. It will be repeated on one of Sky's digital channels.

This is the same Tony Cowell who used to advertise himself as a publicist and who closed down his business a few years ago, owing me a small claims court-ordered payment of £3000 (about $5000). What a shame he's not honored his old debts now that he's making money.

The moral of the story for writers is: always check out the references of anybody you are considering hiring. Cowell had on his website the names of several writers he had 'helped.' Unfortunately, I learned this lesson the hard way and phoned these authors only after I started wondering why he wasn't returning my calls even though he'd received payment. Two of them told me sad stories of promises unfulfilled.

The most disturbing part of the story is that when I finally got through to someone who sounded a lot like Tony, he said, "Oh, no, this is not Tony, this is his brother. He was in New York on 9/11 and was traumatized, and that's why he's not doing the work he promised you--we'll be in touch!" If, as I suspect, that was a bogus excuse, it's shameful. Needless to say, nobody got in touch, and when the bailiffs arrived at his office, it had been cleared out.

Writing an Opening

Yesterday I quoted some of film-maker Christine Vachon's thoughts about writing and films. In her book, "A Killer Life," she gives an excellent example of a simple change that can transform the experience of a film by changing the opening. The movie in question was "One Hour Photo":

"Originally, the story was told in linear fashion. We meet the Yorkins. They take birthday pictures. They bring the film in to the mall. We meet Sy Parrish (Rob Williams) at the photo counter of the Sav-Mart, etc. What I didn’t anticipate was that the studio’s marketing would fill the audience in on the basic premise of the film (as it should). This rendered the first act a bit draggy, so all this setup seemed a little belabored to them. At the test screening, the audience knew they were going to see a dark “thriller” (a term I was loath to have the studio use in the recruiting of an audience), so they were a step ahead of the story, which causes unrest (of the bad kind). So now I had a first act that seemed interesting and necessary but somehow useless at the same time. A conundrum.” 

She asked Francis Ford Coppola for advice.

“He suggested something that would get the thriller aspect of the film going from the very start… We bookended the film with Sy already having been arrested for having done something awful and criminal. The audience doesn’t know what he’s done, exactly. This one change suddenly rendered the first act more compelling. The first act played out almost as before, but now the audience is paying closer attention. They’re now put in the position of trying to discover clues as to what Sy might’ve done. They’ve gone from passive viewers to detectives of a sort. And the first act came alive again."

You'll see the same technique in a lot of thriller novels as well. At the moment, I'm reading Michael Ridpath's "The Predator." The book starts off with a shocking murder, then we flash back and get to know the main characters for some 60 pages or so. Then Ridpath very cleverly introduces another shocking scene you don't see coming and revs up your curiosity again. (There will be an interview with him on my new website, coming soon!).

Rewriting: The Rule of Three

A book I read some time ago, “A Killer Life,” by film-maker Christine Vachon, contained some interesting observations about writing that I thought I’d pass along today. The first is about writing and rewriting—and it’s a good one to jot on an index card and keep nearby if you tend to panic when your first and second drafts aren’t as good as you’d like them to be:

“I think it usually takes three drafts for a script to get there. The first draft of a screenplay has energy. The second draft, by trying to fix all the problems of the first draft, tends to be a muddle. The third draft corrects the overcorrection and hopefully improves what works in the first place."

Her second point is about how long a script (or a book) is. She writes: “We have a saying at Killer [Films]: it’s not the length that’s the problem, it’s the perception of length. A short film can feel long when motivations aren’t clear, transitions don’t match, or the proportions of the story are off. It doesn’t matter if your movie is ninety minutes. If people feel like it’s two hours, then you’ve got to fix something.”

Her book, by the way, never feels too long--it's a zippy and entertaining read about the ups and downs of independent film-making that I think you might enjoy.

Getting Things Done: Blockbusting Day

If there's something you've put off doing and you're ready to take action, creativity coach John Williams is hosting a Block Busting Day on Tuesday, March 27.

The idea is that you pick a task you've been procrastinating about, clear the day, and do it. John will be available on the phone line and an online chat line for support. You can find our more and register for the next one at www.blockbustingday.com. There's no charge for taking part.

I've advocated a similar strategy that you can follow on your own--my title for it is MAD (Massive Action Day). If you can't participate on March 27, you can still have a MAD if you follow a few simple guidelines. Here are my six MAD tips:

1) Block out the day and honor that commitment even if other things come up; 2) Have all your necessary tools and resources ready at the the start of the day so you don't waste any time; 3) Break the task into chunks and check each one off as you accomplish it; 4) Build at least a fifteen-minute break into each 90-minutes of work time, and during your break get up and move around, drink plenty of water, and have healthy snacks ready; 5) If you encounter a block, rather than give up, try to work around it and don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it; 6) At the end of the day, celebrate your achievements and, if necessary, block out another MAD to progress or finish the task.

If a full MAD is too much of a commitment for you, you can start with a half-MAD.

Writing Prompt to Get You Started

Some people find that it helps them to have a writing prompt to start a flow of ideas, so I thought I'd share one that I've found useful:

Get a newspaper and leaf through it until you find a headline you find intriguing.

Do not read the story!

Instead, make you your own story: the who, what, when, why, where, and how that's not there in the headline. Obviously, the best headlines for this exercise are the ones that don't give too many details. And if you suddenly have a great idea that doesn't fit the headline, go with it, the whole point of this is to get your imagination fired up.

Query Letters: What Not to Do

A query letter--the one you write to entice a publisher or agent or producer to request to see your manuscript or script, or to commission you to write an article--usually is your first point of contact. If it turns off the recipient, you're done.

Recently an agent pointed out one of the big mistakes people make in query letters. She said: "Do not ever mention any kind of rejection in your query letter. Ever. This is a hard and fast rule."

So even if you received a rejection from a publisher that said, "We really like the writing, but this is too close to something we are already publishing," don't mention it. Don't write, "This manuscript was nearly accepted by Publisher XYZ, but turned down only because they had something similar in the works."

Why? Because sometimes publishers lie. (I'll pause here to allow time for your gasps of astonishment.) They do it to spare your feelings, but even more to spare them from the wrath of rejected writers.

If they wrote, "We are rejecting your manuscript because the protagonist is unrealistic," there are certain writers who would write back, "Listen here, that protagonist is based on my Uncle Dexter, how dare you say he's unrealistic! I am enclosing six pictures and a letter from Uncle Dexter himself, attesting to the fact that he's real."

Of course, sometimes it IS true that they're rejecting the work only because it's too close to something they're already doing, or because they don't handle that particular genre, etc. but even so, it's not a good idea to mention prior rejections. The exception is that if an agent offers to represent a project, it's only fair to let him or her know where it has already been seen.

Writing for Animation

John Kricfalusi, the mad genius behind the animated "Ren and Stimpy" series, (whose blog is here), recently found a supposed animation expert advising people that animation scripts should be twice as long as live-action scripts because you have to describe every little action and background description and camera angle.

Wrong! says JK: "Animation writing should be short, because you have artists to fill out the visual details. Animation scripts are always too long and storyboard artists have to draw hundreds of extra scenes just to have them all cut out by the studio when they figure out that the show is too long."

The "expert" also advised writers that they should go wild in terms of the number of characters and the background animation because, after all, it's easy for artists to draw just about anything. Wrong again, JK advises: "The responsible way to write for animation is to keep the average amount of characters down to 2 per scene. Especially in TV animation. More characters per scene equals less time to animate each character. This results in cheaper faster crappier animation and no personality animation at all."

Even though I think JK tends to be unduly harsh about animation writers who are not also artists (a favorite rant of his), his blog is well worth following if animation is one of your interests. And there's a lot of merit in his suggestion that if you want to write for animation, it's a good idea to have at least basic drawing skills.

Two London Workshops for Writers

I'm happy to announce that I'm going to be teaching two writing-related workshops in Central London on Saturday, May 5. Would either of these help you reach your writing goals:

9.30am - 12.30pm : TIME MANAGEMENT FOR WRITERS AND OTHER CREATIVE PEOPLE. If traditional time-management techniques have let you down, I'm not surprised. They were created by and for left-brain people and they're all about efficiency. Over the past decade I have researched and developed a set of powerful right-brain time management tools that can give you more time and less stress. In this intensive workshop, you will take away a set of techniques you can apply immediately--and a copy of my new book, "Your Writing Coach." The price is only £29. For full information or to sign up, contact: [email protected]

1.30pm - 5pm: DO YOU WANT TO BE DISTINCT...OR EXTINCT? In today's highly-competitive marketplace, you have to stand out, and you do that by developing your personal brand. In this intense and interactive workshop, I'll help you find out how to get a marketing mindset, how to develop the right image, how to come up with a marketing plan, and how to use blogs, websites, podcasts, and other tools to make people aware of who you are and what you offer. The workshop includes a copy of my new book, "Your Writing Coach" and costs only £29 (or £25 if you do both sessions). For full information or to sign up, contact: [email protected]

If you have questions about the content of either of these, you can also email me directly at [email protected]. I look forward to meeting some of you on May 5--and if you have friends or colleagues who could benefit from either of these sessions, please be kind enough to pass this information along to them. Thanks!

Publicity for Writers: Ready for Their Close-Ups

As the need for authors to promote themselves grows, Powell's Books, one of the last great independents, has come up with a new approach: a series of short films featuring authors. The films will have movie-style premieres in bookstores and later will be on the Powell's website and in snippets on YouTube.

First up is Ian McEwan, in a film that will run 23 minutes and is "meant to be entertaining," according to Dave Weich, marketing director at Powell's. He adds, "The last thing we're shooting for is two talking heads sitting there talking about literature." (Side note: If what the talking heads are saying is interesting enough, I find it quite entertaining...) The film will have bits of an interview with McEwan but also commentary from peers, fans, and critics.

McEwan has declined to do a typical book tour in support of his new novel, "On Chesil Beach," so the film will be expected to take the place of those types of appearances. If this effort is successful, more authors may opt for a film rather than the exhausting and sometimes humilating (if nobody shows up) book-signing sessions.

The McEwan film will debut on June 1 during BookExpo America, in Manhattan, then play in more than 50 bookstores across the country from June 13 to June 17, and then go onto the website.

A New Approach to Sharing in the Profits

Top writer-producer John Wells and writers Tom Schulman and Nick Kazan have come up with a promising idea that may change the the role of scriptwriters in the film industry (and eventually in TV and other media as well).

They have assembled 19 major writers into a Writers Co-op who will write at least 18 scripts over the next four years. Instead of taking their usual large writing fees up front, they will go for a small fee plus first-dollar gross (meaning they get a percentage of every dollar the picture takes in, not just of "profits" defined by the studios), the right to participate as producers, and the guarantee that their work will not be rewritten without their permission.

These are benefits writers have been lusting for, but the studios have never had enough incentive to give them. Under this plan, Warner Brothers, the studio that hosts the co-op, gets scripts from some of the biggest name writers for a relative pittance and, if a script is never made or it is, but flops at the box office, WB is not out much money.

I met John Wells a few times when we were both talking at the "Pilots" workshops in Spain, and found him to be incredibly intelligent and a really decent and nice guy. I'm sure that he's motivated more by wanting to improve the creative standing of writers than by making a killing through profit participation himself.

A longer article about this plan is found in Variety, here.

How to be a Writer (Hint: It Involves Writing)

At the interesting creativity site cecilvortex.com there is an interview with master clown Jeff Raz about his approaches to creativity. I found one part of what he said particularly interesting, maybe because I meet so many people who tell me they have a "great idea for a novel" or a "great idea for a screenplay" but they're not sure how to go forward:

"90% of my students tell me at some point or another, 'I have all these great ideas. I just don't know quite how to do them.' I say, great, you and everybody else has great ideas. That's not what makes an artist or what makes art. What makes art is doing the damn thing. The craft part of art is what gets it done.

"We all have wonderful inspirations. Everybody dreams--your dreams are thoese brilliant Fellini movies, but you aren't Fellini because you haven't made it into a movie. So if you want to be Fellini, start making the damn movies. Figure out how to use the camera. Get your shot. Then you'll start to find the artistic challenges within that. And if you can keep your craft going and have your art flow into that, then you can become an artist, if anyone cares to watch it."

When are you starting to turn your great idea into a great something real? Today would be good. :-)