Time to Write

The Most Unexpected Romance

You know how it goes in romance novels or movies: 

They hear about each other and they mock each other.

But then they meet.

They realize they were wrong.

They fall in love! 

Familiar, yet fresh each time because the characters are different--but I never expected them to be THIS different:

At first, they mocked each other..."a mentally deranged dotard" one said of the other. 

"Little rocket man," the other responded.

But then they met and, in a speech in W. Virginia recently, Donald Trump said he "fell in love" with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

Yes, after threatening to "tame the mentally deranged dotard with fire," instead Kim Jong-un did it with love letters:

"He wrote me beautiful letters," President Trump said. "They were great letters. And then we fell in love.”

A story for the ages...as inspiring as Romeo and Juliet...but will it end the same way?

 

 

Need inspiration? Watch this!

If you're a writer, artist, or other creative type and need a little inspiration, click on the link below to see an amazing animation of the middle panel of Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights"--be sure to watch it in full-screen mode.

There's a story in every character. The symbolism probably was obvious in the artist's time but now you get to make your own interpretation.

With this on our screen, who needs psychedelics?

https://vimeo.com/191632804

Writing advice from the amazing Anita Loos

Anita Loos was one of the most successful screenwriters, authors, and playwrights of the 20th century. 

She and husband John Emerson wrote a book called, How to Write Screenplays, published in 1921. It included this advice, which applies equally to any kind of writing:

"Above all things, the scenario writer should keep alive. Just keep yourself with lively, laughing, thinking people, think about things yourself, and cultivate a respect for new ideas of any kind. Take care of these small ideas and the big plots will take care of themselves."

Mainly I wanted to share that quote with you but in the process, I became fascinated by this amazing woman's story (thanks to Wikipedia for most of the following information). 

THE AMAZING, PROLIFIC MS. LOOS

She decided at the age of six that she wanted to be a writer. She started out as a stage actress in San Francisco and sold her first outline for a movie to the Biograph Company, for which she received $25 (not bad for 1911). Her first produced screenplay was The New York Hat, starring Lionel Barrymore and Mary Pickford, directed by D. W. Griffith. 

Over the next three years, she wrote 105 scripts, of which 101 were produced. Of course, these were short silent films, but that's impressive nonetheless.

After an unsuccessful first marriage, she fell for John Emerson. According to Loos, he took credit for her work, appropriated her earnings, and once a week went out with younger women. When directors or studio executives had a hard time communicating with a woman as a peer, it was helpful for Loos to keep up the charade of being half of a happily-married writing team and they stayed married from 1919 until his death in 1956.

Loos' best-known work, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, was a success as a series of magazine sketches, a book, a Broadway play, and a movie starring Marilyn Monroe. She also wrote memoirs, essays, novels, a biography, teleplays and of course many screenplays. 

Loos kept writing until 1980 and died in 1981 at the age of 92. If you want to read about the rest of her fascinating life, check out the Wikipedia account of her life. 

 

A still from D. W. Griffith's Intolerance, for which Anit Loos wrote subtitles.

 

Four mistaken beliefs about writing

There are a few bits of writing advice that I run across a lot that I think are bogus and may be damaging your confidence:

"You must write every day."

It's great if you do write every day, but there are plenty of successful writers who don't. Some have periods during which they research and periods during which they write. Some write a lot for a few days, then take a couple of days off. Whatever works best for you is right.

"You're not a real writer until your work has been published."

Was Charles Dickens a real writer the day before his first book was published? I'd say yes.

It may be fair to say you're not a professional writer until you've been paid for your writing, that's just how we define "professional."

If you're writing, you're a real writer. Anybody who doesn't think so just has a different definition of real.

"Your success as a writer is determined by how many books or scripts you've sold."

You get to set your own definition of success.

Is the best-selling writer automatically a better writer than someone who hasn't sold as many copies? Obviously not. The former may just be a better promoter, or have a more powerful agent, or a big publisher pushing his or her book.

My definition of success for myself as a scriptwriter was (and still is), "Am I making a living from this?" That's because I devote full-time to it.

The first three years I wasn't successful because I didn't make enough from writing to support myself. Ever since, I've been successful--although of course there are many, many scriptwriters who have made more money and had more projects produced. I respect and, in some cases, admire them, but I've never found it helpful to spend much time comparing myself to others.

Another definition of success is, "the things I'm writing these days are generally better than the things I was writing a couple of years ago--by my own standards."

"You're an imposter and will be found out."

This is one a lot of people tell themselves. Not only in the arts, although it's likely that it's more pervasive in the arts than in, say, accounting. The odds are that you're not an imposter and if you are, probably you won't be found out.

A belief of mine that may be more useful: "I'm not as good as I think I am on the days I think I'm really good, and not as bad as I think on the days I think I'm really bad."

A couple of useful questions:

When you find yourself worrying about issues like these, ask, "Says who?"

Literally, who says that?

What makes them the expert?  

They may be an expert on what works for them, but does that makes them an expert on what will work for you?

Might the opposite be true?

If so, which one feels more constructive?

Try operating on the basis of that one.

 

 

 

 

 

Jurgen Wolff's SCRIPT COACH workshop - Nov. 5 in Central London.

I am again teaching my Script Coach workshop for Raindance. the next session is on Monday November 5, and there's one more after that on Monday evenings. The topics:

Nov 5: Gaining confidence and overcoming blocks

Nov 12 5: Guerrilla Warfare for the Writer (marketing yourself and your scripts)

You can get more details and sign up here: The Script Coach Workshop

If you have any questions, email me at [email protected]. I hope to see you at the workshop!

Is your script or novel idea any good?

How can you tell whether your idea for a screenplay or novel will interest anyone?

The other day I taught a 'taster' session for my Script Coach workshop that's running again at Raindance in Central London starting on October 15, on the topic of "How to use loglines to help you write and sell your screenplay.' One of the things we discussed is how to use loglines to test the appeal of your stories.

WHAT'S A LOGLINE?

A logline is a one or two sentence summary of your story (minus the ending), written in a way that piques the curiosity of the person who hears or reads it.

A logline should reveal your protagonist, your antagonist, and the basic conflict. For example, here's a logline for E.T.:

A lonely young boy befriends an alien and has to protect it from the authorities and help it get back home before the conditions on earth kill it.

THE COMPONENTS OF A LOGLINE

A logline should include:

The protagonist - "a lonely young boy"

The antagonist(s)- "the authorities" and "conditions on earth"

The conflict - protecting the alien and getting it back home. Loglines are so short that you don't have time to get into details, but we can imagine that both the authorities and the conditions on earth will create conflict for the boy.

DOES IT PROMPT CURIOSITY?

In this case, if we haven't seen the film, we might be curious about what the alien is like, how an alien can be friends with a boy, what kind of battles there might be between the boy and the authorities, and what he'll have to do to get the alien back home.

Having a logline that arouses curiosity is crucial because usually the goal of sharing a logline is to get an agent or producer to say, "That sounds interesting--tell me more!"

USE THE LOGLINE TO TEST YOUR IDEAS

Loglines are also a great tool for testing your ideas before you start to write, whether you have in mind a screenplay, novel, or children's book. Most writers have more ideas than time, so it's useful to know which one has the most appeal.

You can try out your loglines with friends. You should be able to tell the difference between a polite response and genuine interest. 

HOW TO GET GOOD AT WRITING LOGLINES

You can read lots of loglines at IMDB.com (International Movie Database). Just type in the name of a film and you'll see brief descriptions that you can practice re-shaping into loglines.

For instance, here's their description of E.T.:

"A troubled child summons the courage to help a friendly alien escape Earth and return to his home world."

I the earlier version is better because "a lonely boy" is more specific than "a troubled child." "Summons the courage" is kind of abstract. Also, they don't mention the conflict with the authorities, which is a key part of the plot.

TRY REWRITING THIS LOGLINE

Your turn: here's their description of "Get Out!":

"A young African-American visits his white girlfriend's parents for the weekend, where his simmering uneasiness about their reception of him eventually reaches a boiling point."

"Simmering uneasiness," "their reception of him," and "boiling point" all are vague. If you've seen the movie, how would you rewrite the second half of the description to be more specific but without giving away the ending?

If you haven't seen "Get Out!", do the exercise with the IMBD description of a film you have seen.

MORE TO COME...

You can also use the logline to help guide you in the writing process, but I'll save that for another post.