Time to Write

Questions to ask your novel or screenplay characters

If you want to get to know the characters in your screenplay or novel, try interviewing them. Here are a few key questions that will reveal a lot:

What make them mad?

What makes them cry?

What do they do well?

What do they look forward to?

Who broke their heart?

What did they want to be when they grew up?

What happened instead?

If they had only one day left to live, how would they spend it?

If you find there’s not enough conflict in your story, check whether the opposing characters have different enough answers.

And if you're brave you may want to ask yourself these questions, too!

(For friendly, supportive advice on writing your project from idea through to publication or produciton, see Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

Writers, "fair use" is in the eyes of the beholders (and their lawyers)

In copyright law,“Fair use” means that you can use excerpts of articles, books, and other creative works in the course of reviewing them, or in educational materials, or in a transformative way, meaning you change the nature of the final product. However, you are limited in how much of the original work you can use, and also by whether or not your use of the excerpt might take away from the creator’s ability to benefit financially from his or her work.

There are no hard and fast rules about how much of the original you can quote or use, it’s down to common sense (and sometimes the courts). For instance, if you quote 100 words of an article that’s only 150 words long, that would be an abuse of fair use. If you quote 100 words of a novel that’s 75,000 words long, you’d probably be fine.

Song publishing companies are especially touchy and quick to sue. Quoting even one line of lyrics in a novel has led some of them to demand what I think are outrageous payments, with the threat of a lawsuit if you don’t pay.

Another example is a tumblr blog called “This Charming Charlie,” where the author, graphic designer Lauren LoPrete, matches images from the Peanuts comic strip with lyrics from songs by the Smiths. One example: Charlie Brown in bed in the dark bedroom, saying “Last night I dreamt that somebody loves me.” The strips aren’t that different from what Charles Schultz wrote; Charlie Brown (or the late Charles Schulz, who drew the strip) and Morrissey seem to be soul mates.

The blog took off very quickly, now boasting more than 24,000 followers. Of course the fact that it was mentioned in Rolling Stone, Gawker, Time magazine, Huffington Post, Slate, and others didn’t hurt.

It’s not a profit-making venture, it came about because LoPrete loves both the music of the Smiths and Peanuts. 

However, Universal Music Publishing Group (which owns the rights to the music and lyrics) has served LoPrete with notices alleging copyright infringement. Although she is claiming fair use, she also has written on the blog, “I know it’s over.” 

It’s not quite on the order of the time Disney lawyers went after a pre-school that had painted some Disney characters on their wall, but from a public relations standpoint it’s a disaster. 

How was this hurting them? With all that coverage it’s more likely that it reminded some people that they liked the Smiths. 

Instead, people who may have been on the fence about music piracy or those already into it can point to this as another example of how the big corporations don’t care about anything but squeezing every last penny out of their products. 

For writers, the message is beware of music publishers and their lawyers.

PS: Here's my version. To be on the safe side, I'm quoting Kafka, who isn't that far from Peanuts and The Smiths...

Does your novel or screenplay plot look like this?

I’ve never seen anybody try to illustrate the basic components of story, but an artist using the name Appylon, real name Scott Pellico, has done it very colorfully (the link is below).

As you will see, different settings and different colors represent beginning, rising action, climax, falling action and conclusion.  In my mind if it ends in snow it's not a happy ending (I'd prefer a version with a beach at the end) but see what you think. 

If you like it, you can download it for no charge and print it on your own printer. print of it framed could be a nice present for a writer in your life.

You can see it HERE.

Non-fiction writers, don't insult my Mom!

Generally writers of both fiction and non-fiction have learned to avoid stereotypes, but there’s one group that still gets patronized and stereotyped a lot: the elderly (in some cases, meaning anybody over 40 or so).

The other day I spotted an article at Entrepreneur.com, a site with lots of useful content, that had this title:

“A Social-Media Marketing Primer Even Your Mom Can Handle.”

Wait a minute, Jim Joseph (the author of the article and the title)...

OK, my own mother can’t handle a social media primer because she’s no longer alive. But there are lots of mothers around, woman from 20 to 90, and a lot of them can handle just about anything. The ones who take an interest in social media don’t need to be condescended to.

Of course it’s not motherhood he’s really referring to, it’s age and gender. A few people called him on it in the comments, and his reply was: “Sorry, meant to be cute, but I understand it doesn’t read that way...going to fix it.”

So far it’s not fixed, but at least the feedback was clear enough that even a middle-aged columnist could understand it.

A fun screenplay log line contest (hurry!)

What words appear most often in log lines for movie scripts? The blog, Go Into the Story, features a word cloud made up of the words used in loglines for scripts that have sold so far this year. 

Which of the following do you think appeared most often?

• discovers
• young
• events

The unsurprising answer: young. Other high scorers include school, must, man, single, two, home, life, run, mysterious, mother, and love. And, more mysteriously, amber.

The site is running a contest to see who can come up with the most entertaining log line using any of the words in the word cloud, and a special category of best six-word log line. As an example of the latter, they say the log line for K9 could have been: Renegade cop. New partner. Police dog.

You don’t have long--until midnight, Sept. 27, 2013, and the winners get a free course. More information is here.

I won’t be entering the contest but let’s see if I can come up with one...

A young cop discovers his mother is in love with a mysterious criminal.  

No, kind of boring.

A mysterious young criminal discovers his mother is in love with a cop.

Still not right...

A young cop discovers he’s in love with his mysterious criminal mother...

 Yes! 

 "Oedipus Blue"!

Habits of the world's most intelligent people (thinking, drinking and...)

If you’d like to get more done--whether that’s more writing, more reading, more administrative tasks--it might be good to imitate (some of) the habits of the most intelligent people.

Below is a link to a fun infographic from Entrepreneur.com that reveals some of these habits, including:

• Having written goals that you share with friends. 

A group of students was given four weeks to accomplish a task. 76% of students who had a written goal they shared with friends accomplished the gaol, as did 65% who had written goals but didn’t share them. Only 43% of those who didn’t have written goals succeeded.

DRUGS AND DRINK

It’s not all sunshine and light for brainiacs, however. As the infographic reveals, they are more likely to drink and use drugs.

SEX

Compared with the percentage of all undergrads who have had sex, 87%, only 59% of those attending Harvard, 56% of those attending Princeton, and 51% of those at MIT have had sex. Hmm, are they too busy studying, or are they nerds? (Not that nerdhood is a bad thing...). 

See the complete infographic HERE.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/dbimages/article/habits-worlds-smartest-people.jpg

 

Writers' groups: the last 3 members to watch out for!!

This is the last (for now) in a series of portraits of people who sometimes dominate writing groups. Come on in and meet...

THE CHAOTIC

This writer hasn’t quite mastered numbering pages in order or actually bringing all of them to the meeting, so the reading will include phrases like, “Oh wait---that part comes before the bit I just read,” “Just a second, I can’t read my writing,” and “Oh no, this is from my other book.” It can be entertaining if you consider it as performance art.

THE JEKYLL AND HYDE

This writer is the most pleasant person you can imagine. He’s happy to share stories with you about how unfair agents and publishers are to writers like you and him, who surely deserve to get published. No, put that money away, he’s getting the drinks…until you get something published. Then he’ll turn on you in an instant. If he still buys you a drink it’ll be only because he’s slipped a little cyanide in it. 

THE KNOWS BETTER

This writer will listen very carefully when you read. It’s kind of gratifying the way he concentrates…until it’s time for feedback. Then he’ll give you a comprehensive account of how he’d make your story better. Nothing too drastic, just change the protagonist, the setting, the historical period, the style, the punctuation, the beginning, the ending, and the middle. Other than that, it’s fine.

(If you'd care to nominate any others, please leave a descirption in the comments and I'll add them to a future post.)

 

 

 

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Writers' groups: watch out for these types of writers

Ricky Gervais on what to write about

In the video I've linked to below, Ricky Gervais talks (after a few giggles) about the moment he came to understand what to write about.

http://www.fastcocreate.com/3016916/creation-stories/ricky-gervais-tells-a-story-about-how-he-learned-to-write?partner=newsletter

There's a bit of contradiction there, in that his experience with the old lady's flat was not something he found particularly interesting, it wasn't something he was passionate about; however, it seems that perhaps writing about it is what made it interesting.

It's an approach reflected in his most successful show to date, The Office, which mined the day to day pretensions and conflicts in a very ordinary setting. 

The Murakami Method of novel writing

Do you plan your novel or screenplay in detail before you start writing, or do you make it up as you go along?

In researching for another blog post the other day I re-read Haruki Murakami's interview in the Paris Review (Summer 2004) and was fascinated again by his approach:

"When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come. I don’t choose what kind of story it is or what’s going to happen. I just wait. Norwegian Wood is a different thing, because I decided to write in a realistic style. But basically, I cannot choose.

I myself, as I’m writing, don’t know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don’t know the conclusion at all and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don’t know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there’s no purpose to writing the story."

So how does that work? He goes into a little more detail: "I get some images and I connect one piece to another. That’s the story line. Then I explain the story line to the reader."

He has an unusual attitude to endings: he doesn't really care for any kind of conclusion. The journey is more important than the destination. 

That fits ithe surreal nature of most of his books. He says, "The good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake. If it’s a real dream, you cannot control it. When writing the book, you are awake; you can choose the time, the length, everything. I write for four or five hours in the morning and when the time comes, I stop. I can continue the next day. If it’s a real dream, you can’t do that."

Of course there's a price for not planning, as he admits: "The first draft is messy; I have to revise and revise." He spends six months writing the first draft and then seven or eight months rewriting, and he's extremely disciplined, basically going into kind of a trance, going to bed at 4am, getting up at 9am, and running or swimming every day. Other than the fitness routine, which he considers essential to developing the stamina for writing a novel, he says he doesn't do anything but write his fiction when he writes.

With tne new writers I've met who say they prefer the "just make it up as you go along" approach, I often find they're less enthusiastic about revising and revising, or giving up their social lives. Maybe it's worth the loss of a little spontaneity to start with at least a broad outline but just as Murakami found his method, we each have to find our own.

 

Sometimes imagination is a drawback (illustrated)

For writers, there is no try, only do! Wait, maybe there's a little of each.

Western culture tends to focus on an all or nothing-at-all attitude whether you're talking about sports, business, even relationships. I remember at a conference I attended a motivational speaker stood up and told how he visited schools and told the kids, "There is no 'try', there is only do and win! Everything else is losing!"

He got a round of applause.

Not from me. I thought about the kids, 99% of whom would, by definition, feel like losers if they bought into his message. 

I was reminded of this by reading a blog post by Cassie Sheets, who calls herself an undisciplined writer and who decided to try to write like Haruki Murakami--that is, to follow his writing (and life) routines, not to write in his style.

In researching my book, Your Creative Writing Masterclass, I learned about the writing process of many writers, so I knew that Cassie was starting at the tough end of the spectrum.

Murakami described his routine to Paris Review: "When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long—six months to a year—requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity."

OK! He lost me at get up at 4am...and the daily 10k run...no, I go more for the Truman Capote mode which entails getting up late, working a bit, having a nap, working a bit and knocking off at 5 for a martini. I don't actually do all that, but it definitely sounds more appealing.

Anyway, Cassie Sheets fell pretty far short and yet--and this is the important bit--she ended up with a couple of better habits than she started with.

By the same token, if you set out to write 2000 words but you only do 500, you still have 500 more than you had a few hours before.

That's a lot better than considering yourself a failure and giving up, no matter what that motivational speaker said. In fact, I think having only a win/lose orientation is for losers.

(You will find writing advice from the top writers of all time, including Austen, Dickens, Twain as well as more current masters, in Your Creative Writing Masterclass, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

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Haruki Murakami emerges as Nobel prize for literature favourite

The key to writing an antagonist who comes alive on the page

Lots of studies have shown that when we dislike someone, often it's because on some level we fear we have the same traits as they do. Our conscious mind denies this, of course.

This fact also gives us the key to writing three-dimensional antagonists. I don't remember where I read this phrase, but somebody defined the antagonist as the person the protagonist might have become if one or two things had happened differently.

Another related point is that the Enneagram, a system of defining personality, says that under stress we often become the opposite of our normal self. For instance, one of the types, the Achiever, whose basic drive is to feel valuable, has the virtue of truthfulness and authenticity, but under enough stress will be deceitful. (I know I'm oversimplifying this--if you want to find out about it in detail, and how to apply it to writing, check out The Literary Enneagram: Characters from the Inside Out, by Judith Searle.)

If we put all this together, it suggests that a good way to craft a strong antagonist is to look at the basic traits of your protagonist, think about how stress or negative circumstances could twist those and drive him or her to the opposite end of the scale. That will give you a back story for the antagonist.

A good example of this is a character I created for a post warning about the kinds of people who can make a writing group a less than perfect experience. This is how I portrayed him (they also come in a female version):

JEKYLL AND HYDE

This writer is the most pleasant person you can imagine. He’s happy to share stories with you about how unfair agents and publishers are to writers like you and him, who surely deserve to get published. No, put that money away, he’s getting the drinks…until you get something published. Then he’ll turn on you in an instant. If he still buys you a drink it’ll be only because he’s slipped a little cyanide in it. 

What causes this characters to turn is that he thinks he has everything in common with you but when you get published he feels almost like you've betrayed him. Misery demands company!

What makes him a good character--at least for readers who are also writers--is the fact that most of us wonder whether we could become bitter and malicious if we had enough rejections. That makes it hard to think of him as totally an "other", a person whom we can dismiss because he's so different from us.

Of course this works with non-writer characters, too, because it's not really about writing, it's about jealousy, fear of rejection, anger at rejection, feelings of abandonment, all things  anybody can relate to to some degree.

If the antagonist in your book or screenplay doesn't have enough depth, take some time to think about what he or she has in common with your protagonist and figure out how and why things went sour and turned the antagonist to the opposite, to the dark side. You don't have to reveal all that information but knowing it will help you craft a worhty opponent for your protagonist.

(More writing tips in Your Writing Coach and Your Creative Writing Masterclass, both published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

Writing Groups: Five more people to watch out for

Recenty I shared with you a few types of writers who can make being part of a writing group an ordeal. Here are a few more to avoid if possble:

THE GRANNY

Her grandchildren love the stories she makes up for them, so this nice lady is convinced she can be a great children’s book author. Of course her very talented grandson, age 5, should illustrate the books. ("He's brilliant and I'm not just saying that becasue I'm his grandmother!"--Yes, you are.) She has a whole series in mind, so get ready for the story of How Bunny Wunny Loses His Mittens, His Keys, His Favorite Shirt, and His Mind. No, wait, that's what we'll lose if we hear one more of these.

THE PARANOID ONE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This writer is convinced everybody is out to steal his ideas. Who can blame him, when he’s working on a thriller set in the tense world of stamp collecting? I can see it now: "Daniel Craig IS Franklin McGillicuddy in STAMP!" This writer’s title pages have a skull and crossbones on them and a warning about the severe penalties for plagiarism. There are copyright symbols on every page, and every night he locks the manuscript in his safe. Don’t look too interested when he reads, it makes you a suspect.

 

THE SEEKER 

Forget Dan Brown, this is the writer whose book is going to reveal it ALL:  Stonehenge, the illuminati, Area 51, who really killed Kennedy, what Hitler is up to these days (he runs a small dry-cleaning establishment and ironically owes his longevity to eating a portion of gefilte fish every day). This writer's book also will reveal the date of the end of the world. Yes, 12/12 was a false alarm, this man knows the real date--but he’s not telling. Here’s a hint: he says he has to finish his book by next Tuesday.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHER

This gentleman is convinced his life story will be a best seller and he’s determined not to leave out one minute of his career as an accountant for a paper clip company. Thrill to the day in 1955 when, while still a young trainee accountant, he discovered an error that saved the company $78! Sit on the edge of your chair wondering whether he could, against all odds, complete the company’s 1973 tax return before the deadline! And that doesn’t even take into account the inherent glamour of the paper clip trade. If no publisher takes this book, at least it will be something he can leave behind to torture his grandchildren. 

 

THE REVENGER

This lady doesn't actually want to make a career of writing but there's one book inside of her, boiling to get out. It's an novel about a no-good scumbag of a husband who leaves his wife for a much younger woman and how both of them end up suffering a well-deserved agonizing death. Recently divorced, this writer has plenty of time to work on her book. When it's her turn to read she does sometimes hyperventilate, especially at the part where Alan, er, she means "Adam" runs off with that little bitch Leah, oops, she means "Lara."

As I advised last time, if you're organizing a writing group, show prospective members this post. If they laugh, they're in. If they turn defensive...

Another good test is whether they have bought and read "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," which contains writing advice from the best classic and modern writers, including Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway and many more. It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller. It has been read by writers of taste and discernment who make wonderful additions to any writing group.

Write it right: Incredulous or incredible?

According to the Daily Telegraph, a public figure who was arrested said afterwards: "I have today answered bail following complaints I said were incredulous."

Was that a right or wrong use of incredulous?

The Oxford Dictionaries definition is "unwilling or unable to believe something" (an adjective, applied to a person or their manner).

Preliminary verdict: wrong, since complaints can't be unwilling or unable to believe something. It would be the public figure who was incredulous.

However, Merriam-Webster says it can also mean incredible: [this usage] "was revived in the 20th century after a couple of centuries of disuse. Although it is a sense with good literary precedent--among others Shakespeare used it--many people think it is a result of confusion with incredible, which is still the usual word in this sense."

The verdict: technically acceptable, but not the best choice. However, when you've just been arrested on serious charges, lapses of grammar are not your highest priority.

Also, incredible has its own problems. While the main definition is "impossible or difficult to believe," the meaning Oxford Dictionaries call informal ("very good, wonderful") is much more common these days and I'd wager the traditional meaning will have almost disappeared in another decade or so. 

This Celebrity Author Needs Your Help!

Alexa Chung, who Wikipedia tells me is an English TV presenter, model and contributing editor of British Vogue, has written a book. So far, so what?--which TV presenter or model hasn't dashed off a novel or an autobiography or two in between strolls down the catwalk or interviewing the latest nonentity to be booted off Big Brother? But Ms Chung harbours a dark secret. Before I reveal it, let's get to know her a bit better.

WHY SHE WRITES

She revealed, "I wrote it because I was bored and wanted to create something alongside hosting television shows."

EVEN YOU AND I WILL BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE BOOK

She told Vogue that her book "isn't complicated or dense, it's almost a stream of consciousness about several topics."

The Daily Mail reveals that she provides witty advice on how to party at music festivals, get dressed for the gym, and what music to listen to after a break-up. I must confess that even just having browsed this book has helped me enormously--I've stopped wearing my tuxedo to the gym. 

RAVE REVIEW!

Fellow model Rosie Huntington-Whitely Instagrammed a photo of herself in bed with the book, and wrote, "Spent the morning devouring every last page and learning to be as cool as Alexa Chung." 

HER ASTONISHING MODESTY

Ms Chung rivals Leonardo da Vinci in her range of accomplishments yet she is amazingly modest. She said, "It's so lovely that people think I'm a hair icon, but they must be mad!" 

She reveals, "When I go through immigration in America, I just say I'm a model--it seems easier than running them through the list." 

I, for one, would find it hard not to blurt out to the immigration officer that I was a hair icon and gym clothing coach to the masses.

HER SECRET SHAME

But amidst all this glamour, she let slip one fact about the book that suggests her life is not quite as rosy as it may look from the outside:  "I composed it all in emails to my editor because I don't have Microsoft Word."

WE MUST ALL HELP!

I'm heading up a charity effort to collect enough to buy Ms Chung a used copy of Microsoft Word.

Tomorrow you may be approached on the street by charity collectors wearing bright vests and high heels asking you to make a small sacrifice--perhaps missing a meal or two, or raiding your chldren's piggy bank--to help out this poor celebrity so her next stream of consciousness effort can be delivered with less stress.

I don't know whether Ms Chung will thank you, but i'm pretty sure her editor will.

--Jurgen Wolff, Director, the Alexa Chung Charity Appeal