Time to Write

The key to great characters is "why"

You always hear about how important it is for your protagonist to have a goal. That's true, but equally important is the "why" behind their goal. You'll create a better-defined and more compelling character if you also spent time coming up with the most powerful motive for their actions. 

Let's say that both Adam and Gary have the goal of completing a marathon.

Adam wants to do it to raise money for a charity. Not a bad reason.  It suggests that Adam is a good guy, willing to go out of his way to benefit others.

Gary wants to do it because his daughter is running and he wants to show her that he can actually follow through doing something together--which he never did when she was growing up. He hopes she'll give him a chance to be a better father.

Which character do you think you would care about more? 

I think it would be Gary because his goal is personal and emotional. If we've ever let anybody down or have ever hoped for a second chance in any relationship, we may identify with him at least a little. 

WHAT'S AT STAKE?

The other difference is that if the charity doesn't get the money one participant hoped to raise it probably won't be a huge blow. But if Gary doesn't finish, or at least make a massive effort, his daughter will feel he hasn't changed and there's no reason to trust him now. We can imagine how painful that would be for both of them.

The more your protagonist has at stake, the more we will care about their goal. What's at stake doesn't have to be objectively huge. Sure, in many stories it's a matter of life and death; however, you can get equal drama from a story in which what's at stake is whether a young girl is able to earn $20 to buy her ailing mother a Mother's Day gift. Her "why" is that she wants to show her mother how much she loves her.

THE "HOW" CAN CHANGE, THE "WHY" USUALLY STAYS THE SAME

Sometimes in the course of the story, the protagonist realizes the "how" they have chosen is not actually going to deliver the result they want. For instance, Adam might start off thinking he can buy his daughter's forgiveness with presents. But then he realizes he will have to give of himself instead, and that's when he signs up for the marathon.

Likewise, maybe the little girl comes to understand that something she makes herself will mean more to her mother than anything she could buy.

Thinking about the different ways that your characters try to fulfill their "why" can be a rich source of incidents and turning points for your plot.

DON'T FORGET THE ANTAGONIST

Antagonists have their own "why" as well--or at least they should. If they don't, they won't seem three-dimensional. An antagonist who does evil things just for the sake of being evil comes across like a cartoon character. An antagonist who does evil things for a reason we can understand is much more realistic. 

REVEALING THE "WHY" IS PART OF THE AUDIENCE ARC

The character arc refers to the transformation your protagonist undergoes as a result of the events of the story. There can also be an audience arc. By that, I mean a change in how the audience sees your character. Let's look at an example:

Recently I saw a reality show in which a restaurant owner was hostile to customers who asked for any minor change in a dish (like 'no onions'). Why? It turned out that when she was a child she was constantly criticized for not being able to do anything right and told she would never amount to anything. When a customer asked for a change in an item, the restaurant owner heard it as another insult and she responded angrily. When that was revealed it changed the way I regarded her.

A movie that has an audience arc is "As Good As It Gets," in which the Jack Nicholson character was mean and seemed to try hard to make sure nobody would like him. As the story goes on, though, we come to understand how he got that way, and it changes how we regard him. He also has a character arc, but our feelings about him change before he does.

The shift in an audience's perceptions is one of many ways of keeping them involved in your story.

HINTS MAY BE ENOUGH

If understanding the 'why" is crucial to your story, you may want to go into some detail and maybe even use flashbacks to reveal it. However, that's not always necessary. Often giving the audience some hints is enough to have them become more invested in your story. 

Is Your Screenplay's Protagonist's Problem Big Enough?

The weakness of a lot of screenplays is that the protagonist's central problem isn't big enough. It has to be something formidable enough to keep them challenged for the entire script.

While many stories are about matters of life and death, the definition of "big" in this case is not objective but rather how important it is to the protagonist. 

You can write a compelling screenplay featuring a character whose goal is objectively small, like winning a school race. The key is making sure it is of huge importance and consequence to the protagonist.

For instance, if the protagonist is a girl who is participating in a contest that is traditionally only for boys and if she's bullied, made fun of, and misunderstood even by the adults in her life we will feel the urgency of her quest and root for her to win. 

IT HAS TO BE RELATABLE

The protagonist's challenge has to be relatable, but not necessarily in its specifics.

For instance, a protagonist may be striving to overcome a challenge with which we don't have any personal experience, but we can all relate to the feeling of having a big goal and having to fight for it.

When you are thinking about the central conflict of your protagonist, consider what makes it relatable for the audience. What is the emotion or goal that's driving the protagonist? For instance, it might be survival against a deadly force, the desire to better themselves, or righting a wrong.

THE PROTAGONIST HAS TO BE RELATABLE, TOO

Going back to the example of the school race, a big part of what makes us care in that example is the underdog nature of the girl. Most of us can relate to being misunderstood, to being made fun of, and to wanting to prove ourselves, just like her. 

In many cases, the protagonist is likable from the start, but that's not essential. As long as they are interesting, we'll stick around, especially if we get the feeling that the story will give them a character arc that transforms them in a positive direction.

THE PROBLEMS HAVE TO ESCALATE

If the problem your protagonist faces seventy minutes in is the same level of difficulty as it was twenty minutes in there's a good chance we'll get bored before we get to minute seventy.

Just as a boxer has to fight opponents of increasing skill levels before taking on the champ, make your protagonist come up against bigger and bigger challenges. Let them have some small wins along the way, too, to keep them motivated, but each step of the way they should be in great danger of failing.

BE MEAN!

A writer I used to know never made it because he was too nice. Even in fiction, he couldn't bring himself to subject somebody to the kind of cruelty you'll have to impose upon your protagonist. In fact, he couldn't even imagine such cruelties in an original way, so his scripts were too derivative, relying on specific plot elements he'd seen in other films. 

Don't be nice--this is one instance when any cruel impulses you may have can be put to good use!

ASK THESE QUESTIONS AT THE IDEA STAGE

It's unfortunate when a writer goes to all the effort of writing a complete screenplay before they discover that one of the above elements is missing.

Actually, often the person who discovers this first is an agent or producer for whom this lack is the reason they reject the script.

You can save yourself a lot of time by making sure at the idea stage that each of these is present. Ask yourself:

• Is the protagonist someone the audience will like or at least find interesting? What is it about them that the audience will find of interest or to which the audience can relate, like being an underdog or being confronted with unfair treatment?
  
  
• Is the challenge one the audience can relate to on a basic level? What is the protagonist's essential drive in facing this challenge, like righting a wrong, protecting their family, etc.?
  
  
• Does the conflict escalate as the story proceeds? What are the major steps of the conflict? (Tip: if you can put them in any different order without affecting the story, they're not escalating.)

If you have a strong answer to each of these questions, the odds are that your story will work.

What is your character's secret?

One thing that makes a character in a screenplay or novel interesting is their secret.

If you need proof of the power of secrets to attract us, notice how often people trying to sell you something use the lure of secrets, especially secrets that some hypothetical "they" supposedly don't want you to know.

SECRETS ARE NOT ALWAYS NEGATIVE

In character terms, we tend to think of secrets as being about negative things, but they can also be positive, neutral, or open to interpretation:

• The person who anonymously pays another person's bill;
• Someone who, even in middle age, still harbors dreams of becoming famous;
• The woman who lets her husband think their child is his, even though she knows it isn't.

HOW SECRETS INFLUENCE PLOTS

While it can be interesting to consider what secrets your characters might harbor, the important secrets are those that influence the story in some way. 

A story typically confronts your protagonist with an internal as well as an external conflict, and a secret can be useful in both.

A dark secret may influence how open a character is about their background, and it can make them take drastic action to preserve the secret.

An embarrassing secret can be especially useful in a comedy.

A secret goal may suddenly set your protagonist on a new path if something happens to make the goal more accessible. 

Sometimes the secret just helps us to understand the character better, other times the entire plot revolves around a secret. Let's look at some examples.

SECRETS IN MOVIES

If you think back to your favorite movies you may find that secrets played a significant role. Here are a few of mine:

Citizen Kane revolves around that secret of the meaning of "rosebud," Charles Foster Kane's last word.

In Sunset Boulevard, the young screenwriter hides his relationship to the old movie star.

In Schindler's List, Schindler has to keep his intentions secret from the Nazis.

In The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard has to keep it a secret that he's just a mortal.

In E.T., the boy has to keep the alien secret from the feds.

In Silence of the Lambs, the FBI cadet tries to keep her fear and her background secret, but Hannibal Lector figures them out.

In Some Like it Hot and Tootsie, characters have to keep it a secret that they are men pretending to be women.

In Romeo and Juliet, the young lovers have to keep their relationship a secret from their families.

In Hamlet, the Prince has to keep it secret that he suspects his uncle poisoned his father.

In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche tries to hide several facts about her past.

The list goes on!

WHAT'S YOUR CHARACTER'S SECRET?

You can start with a secret that could be the center of an interesting plot, or if you already have a plot, you can think about what kind of secret would be useful in making a character more interesting and what useful effect it could have on the plot.

A secret can also be useful when you know you need your protagonist to do something in order to advance the plot, but there's no obvious reason for them to do so. You may be able to plant a  secret early in the story that justifies their later action.

And that's the secret of using secrets in stories!

 

 

Does your screenplay or novel story stand out?

The script pipeline is clogged not only with bad scripts but also with OK scripts.

An OK script is the right length, has a story that hangs together, is populated with mostly believable characters, and has no major formatting problems.

OK is not good enough, despite the fact that there are plenty of just OK movies. Many of those started out as better scripts but gradually changed to just OK under the weight of the demands of the actors, the ego of the director, and/or the fear-based decisions of the producer. 

What you need to do is write an outstanding script--as the adjective says, one that stands out. 

That starts with a fresh idea. Yes, it's true there are no totally new stories, but there certainly are fresh ways of telling the old ones. Recent movies I'd put in that category include Jo Jo Rabbit, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (I"m not making that up, it starred Sam Elliot), Midsommar, Ad Astra, Hustlers, Parasite, Booksmart, Peanut Butter Falcon, Honey Boy, Us, The Lighthouse, Yesterday. I'm not saying these were all the best, but they all had something different about them that made them stand out, and quite a few of them were very good.

What's the difference?

If you analyze the films above, you'll see how they differentiated themselves. That includes:

• Telling the story from an unusual perspective or with an unusual protagonist 
•  Telling a story some might find uncomfortable
• Telling a classic story with a contemporary touch 
• Telling the story of an alternative reality
• Telling a story of emotional extremes

In the best of these films, the level of writing was very good, too. For instance, I thought Booksmart had some of the smartest dialogue I've heard for a while. But it starts with the idea.

Before you commit to your story, take some time to consider whether it stands out from the ordinary. If not, try applying the characteristics above to your core idea. 

An easier way to write your autobiography

Do you want to write an autobiography but you're not sure your life has been eventful enough, or that you want to dedicate the time it would take?

Preparing a course on making short films gave me an idea for how you can tell your story in a different way. A short film typically is about one moment or incident in the life of the protagonist--a moment that changes something. What if you use that as the guiding idea of writing your memoirs?

For instance, last year I wrote a short film that was shot by my friend Kenny Luper about the moment a daughter realizes that her father is starting to suffer from dementia. 

We also shot a black comedy short film about the moment--at a memorial service--that a group of people realize that none of them actually liked the deceased.

And we shot one about the moment a man's relationship with his Alexa-type device changes.

To write your story, instead of the conventional format of starting with your birth and covering your entire life, you could pick out half a dozen or more of the most important turning points in your life.

These could include:

• a major event (for better or worse) in your relationship with your parents
  
  
• a moment or event that made you decide what you wanted to pursue as a career
  
  
• meeting your spouse or partner
  
  
• a key act of friendship
  
  
• what you were doing during a dramatic moment in history
   
• how a particular book or movie influenced your life
  
  
• an incident that made you proud of yourself
  
  
• a moment or action you regret

Taken as a whole, these will give a good idea of who you are and what your life has been like--a great legacy for your children or grandchildren--and they're easy to write one at a time. Much less daunting than thinking you have to cover every year and event of your life. 

You can save this collection on a computer, but be sure to have a couple of print-outs, too--technology changes so fast that there's no guarantee the formats we're using today will still be around in ten or twenty years. Of course, you can also opt to have copies printed. Unless you plan to print a large run, print on demand may be the best way to go.

You could augment these accounts with photos or memorabilia. You could also opt to record it instead of writing it. 

If you decide to do this, let me know how you get on: [email protected].

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.

 

A documentary trick that also works for fiction films and novels

What makes a character (or a real person) interesting?

An article on Ozy.com reveals, "For filmmakers Elizabeth Delaune Warren and Danya Abt, quirk is key. The eccentricities and complexities that drive people also drive their documentary filmmaking.

'You take someone who’s a potato farmer in Idaho, and you expect a certain thing from them,' Abt says. 'How do they subvert those expectations?'

For Abt, the answer is in resisting the instinct to simplify and instead focusing on those very traits that don’t seem to fit the usual narrative. She believes this is the point at which a character starts to have dimension."

This works great in fiction as well.

The trick is not to automatically go for the opposite--for instance, the pro football player who is an opera buff, or the granny who rides a Harley-Davidson.

That's not to say that there aren't football players who love opera or grandmothers who ride Harleys, but it feels a bit by rote. Instead, it might be a football player whose hobby is woodworking, or a grandmother who coaches a kids' baseball team.

For inspiration, think about the quirks of your family members, your friends--or your own. 

"Sure I'm a homemaker, but I also enjoy taxidermy. I've got a moose in the basement right now."

 

 

Do you have to know the ending?

Once in a while I read about a successful writer who cheerfully declares, "I never know what's going to happen next, I just start writing and let the characters lead me."

Please, can you send some of those characters my way? My characters lead me, too, but usually into a dead end or another story altogether. They like going off road.

My hunch is the few writers who claim to write without a map actually do have one in their subconscious mind, and they've been at the writing game so long that their internal alarm system warns them when they're about to head into a dead end.

Either that or they're lying; throwing planning to the wind sounds much more romantic than sweating over an outline.

Christopher Markus, co-writer of "Infinity Wars," told the New York Times, "we're never writing without knowing where the end goes."

By the way, if you feel that movie was too fragmented, the writers probably wouldn't disagree. Co-author Stephen McFeeley noted, "Had we started from scratch, we would not have chosen six damn McGuffins [the infinity stones]. That's not helpful. It was difficult to get all that in." Once they knew that was the end, though, they were locked into that particular journey.

Having a strong ending is important--and difficult. Lawrence Kasdan, writer on "The Empire Strikes Back," in the same NY Times article said, "All the suspense about Act III is, how will this be resolved? People are always disappointed by the third act. 'That's all you can think of?'" 

I've mentioned before that my process is kind of a hybrid. I do know the ending and usually a few key plot points, but I allow myself to write freely for about the first quarter of the project. For a screenplay that would be the first 30 or 40 pages. Then I stop and plan the rest, although not scene by scene, just the key developments. For a feature script that might be roughly a dozen important events or turning points.

I'm not suggesting you use that method, although you might want to give it a try. You have to find what works best for you, what keeps you on track without making you feel too restricted by the plan. But for sure knowing where you want the story to end will make the entire process easier.

 

 

 

Hook me or I'm leaving (writing good openings)

I just started listening to a podcast of spooky stories...and turned to something else after about three minutes. Why? Because the opening was full of general information that didn't feel like it was going anywhere. Neither was there foreshadowing of anything scary or mysterious.

The narrator started with some descriptions of how he had a normal childhood, then told how his father arranged for him to go to college on a scholarship that required him to work for the school. Then he described the jobs he had to do, still in general terms....

Yawn.

Next!

The lesson is that unless you hook us with something specific, we're likely to wander off pretty quickly. 

I don't know what happens in the story after the point at which I left, but let's assume that he encounters a ghost. Here's a quick example of how the author could have grabbed the reader's attention more quickly:

"I guess it was the fact that my childhood was so normal that made it hard for me to comprehend what happened later. I grew up...(Now I'm willing to hear about his normal childhood for a bit, thanks to the promise that it's leading up to whatever happened later that would be outside the realm of "normal.")

Or it could have been something specific about his childhood:

"When I was a kid, my parents taught me and my brothers not to believe in superstitions. If anybody mentioned ghosts, my parents laughed and assured us that there was no such thing." (He doesn't have to say any more, we already expect that later in the story his parents will be proved wrong.)

A small detail or a bit of foreshadowing goes a long way--and keeps us reading.

[For useful information on writing your book, from idea through to publication, get a copy of my book, Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

 

Whatever your writing is, let it be that (a lesson I learned the hard way)

I created a surreal sitcom for which I wrote a spec script not so long ago. A friend got it to a writer/producer who said he thought it was very funny, but he couldn't identify enough with the characters and I should change it to make it more like a current comedy series about the challenges of a working class single parent.

There was a time when I probably would have scrambled to try to do that, but I won't, and here's why:

IT IS WHAT IT IS.

What I mean is that while it's always possible to improve a piece of writing, it's a waste of time to change it to try to make it something that it isn't. Usually, the result is a compromise that won't please anybody. And I have the stories to prove it...

AN EXPERIENCE I CAN (ALMOST) LAUGH ABOUT NOW

Once upon a time I wrote a romantic comedy TV movie that the wonderful producer Stan Margulies wanted to make (he produced the original "Roots' mini-series).

We took it to one network and they said they wanted to do it with a particular actress. The next week, it came out that this actress had a drug problem, and the network backed out.

Stan and I took it to another network. They said they loved it, they wanted only one change: "Someone should be trying to kill the young woman."

What?! 

We pointed out that it's a romantic comedy. "Oh yeah, don't lose that," the network exec said. "Just add the thriller element."

Stan and I had a lunch of pasta and lots of wine. LOTS of wine. We talked ourselves into trying it. I hated every minute of writing that version.

I hated every minute of writing that version.

We took it back to the network exec. He loved it. However, his boss, who made the final decision, didn't, and the network didn't make it.

We'll never know whether the top guy would have gone ahead with the original if we'd been able to get it to him directly, but I learned a lesson. 

IF IT FAILS, LET IT FAIL FOR THE RIGHT REASON

In the sitcom, naturally I want my characters to be plausible within the world I've created, but the series is about the strangeness of everyday life, as reflected in fantasies and events that, while grounded in the greater reality, are not commonplace everyday events.

Giving the characters the kind of emotional reality that might attach to a single parent struggling to make ends meet would be incompatible with the basic idea of the series.

The series may or may not be any good, but if it fails I want it to fail on its own terms. 

It calls to mind a quote that has been attributed to various people, including Luther Price:

"Be what you is, not what you ain't; 'cause if you ain't what you is, you is what you ain't."

I share this in case it's helpful when you get advice about your writing. 

Ask yourself whether the change would make it a better version of what it is, or would it force it to try to be something it ain't.

If it's the latter, forget it, no matter how much wine you've had.

(Come to think of it, this might be a good practice regardless of what the advice is about.)

 

The great children's ebook con trick

I've seen a lot of promotion recently for courses that purport to show you how to make loads of money writing children's books and selling them on Amazon.

One of them shows you have to use clip art or public domain art for the illustrations.

Another suggests you hire people on Fiverr.com to do the illustrations for you for five dollars each. 

Then you put your book on Amazon and wait for the money to roll in.

Prepare for a long wait. 

Children's books represent the arena in which ebooks have made the smallest impact.

Kids like holding books or sitting in their parents' laps while being read to from a traditional book.

Also, if you're very skilled maybe you can put together an attractive book with public domain illustrations or Fiverr art, but it's not easy. 

The biggest question is how you get people to become aware of your book so that somebody buys it. Just putting it on Amazon is like throwing a message in a bottle into the ocean. 

If you want to write a kids' book for fun or maybe as a present for your grandchildren, by all means go ahead. You can easily set it up as a print-on-demand book. Once in a very great while, such a book could take off. 

Just don't count on it, and don't spend a lot of money on a course that pretends success is practically guaranteed. 

Should you avoid these 7 types of characters in your fiction?

I spotted a fun blog post by Hannah Heath, young aspiring author, on 7 cliched characters in YA fiction that she says need to stop:

1. The character that is full of teen angst
2. The girl that's pretty but doesn't recognize it until a boy tells her so
3. Characters involved in love triangles
4. The Chosen One (fantasy novels)
5. The one with horrible parents
6. The "strong' female character who only looks strong because she's surrounded by a bunch of wimpy guys
7. The brooding bad boy

Here's the link to her full post:http://hannahheath-writer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/7-cliche-characters-in-ya-fiction-that.html?showComment=1431281728926#c4811727783150299797

Actually, if you cut these characters out totally you'd wipe out about 75% of teen/YA fiction (and a lot of adult fiction, too), but the point is to write them in an uncliched way.

One thing that turns characters into a stereotype or cliche is if their one dominant trait or characteristic is all we know about them.

As soon as you give the brooding bad boy some other qualities, for instance, he stops being a generic brooding bad boy and starting turning into an individual.

When I was writing sitcoms, the rule was that every character should have one strong characteristic, but that should be complemented by several more that might emerge more gradually.

As an example, in the classic sitcom, "Golden Girls," Blanche was the sexy one, Rose was ditzy, Sophia was feisty, and Dorothy was sensible. However, one reason the series was so successful and lasted so long was that as time went on you got glimpses of other aspects of their characters.

One good strategy, once you've established your character's basic trait, is to find a situation in which they act the opposite way--of course that has to be motivated by the circumstances. Then it's fun, for instance, to see Dorothy being the sexy one, or Rose being feisty.

If teen and Young Adult novels were realistic

A clever young man named John Hansen came up with the Twitter hashtag #VeryRealisticYA. Here are a few contributions that have been posted: 

"Broody bad boy says something sexist to quiet, bookish girl. Girl puts him in his place.They never go out." - Ava Jae

"Nerdy girl is paired in school project with bad boy. She does all the work and they never speak again." - Janine Mimi De Jesus

"Teen accidentally uploads embarrassing video to YouTube. The next school day is normal because it got only two views." - Brooks Benjamin

"Two teens saving the world are not romantically attracted to each other." - Mackenzi Lee

"Girl politely declines to be the face of the revolution because it's junior year and she has too much homework." - John Hansen

"Where are you going, young lady?" / "To help the Outsiders overthrow the Authority." /"Not on a school night, you're not." - Paul Krueger

To which we might add, #RealisticWriters:

"Single mother works every morning for years to write her teen/YA novel, realizes that success is unlikely, stops writing and goes to work as a waitress."

It's a good thing writers aren't realistic!

 

Related articles

The magic of being a writer

Are you telling the best part of the story in your novel or script?

In a Fast Company series of successful authors' tips on writing better stories, Terence Winter (creator, writer, and executive producer of the series, Boardwalk Empire) makes a great point about choosing the most interesting part of a story to tell:

"Every movie you’ve ever seen about Al Capone shows him at the height of his power, and sort of like Al Capone’s Greatest Hits. If you can only spend two hours with Al Capone, you want it to be when he’s at the top of his game.

On Boardwalk Empire, we meet Al Capone when he’s a kid driving a truck. That Al Capone is so much more interesting to me because we get to see him become the guy we know, and we had hours and hours to do it, and really see what formed him and what made this guy tick and that’s so much more a luxury as a storyteller and more satisfying for the audience."

The series Gotham does something similar by looking at the formative years of the man who became Batman, and also by focusing on a character (Inspector Gordon) who has a supporting role in the later story. 

Even in a screenplay or novel I think there's a lot of value in taking the time to brainstorm a number of ways of approaching the story before committing to one. For instance, a kidnapping story could be told with any of these as the viewpoint character:

* the victim

* the loved ones of the victim

* the detective investigating the case

* the kidnapper

* someone who is wrongly accused of the kidnapping

* someone who inadvertently or unwillingly gets involved in the crime

* a psychic (fake or genuine--if there is such a thing--who is asked to help locate the victim

* a previous victim of the kidnapper who realizes she knows something that could help but is reluctant to relive the experience

I'm sure there are more, but you get the idea.

(For writing tips from some of the greatest classical and modern writers, get a copy of my book, Your Creative Writing Masterclass. It's available from your favorite bookseller. You can find out more at www.YourCreativeWritingMasterclass.com)

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Irony, headlines, and the ugly 'below'

IRONY 1:

How's this for irony: Che Guevarra's son is offering motorcycle tours of Cuba in honor of his father's love of motorcycles (as shown in the film, Motorcycle Diaries). The nine-day tour goes for $5,800, flights not included. 

I wonder whether he also offers t-shirts that say, "My father started a revolution and all I got was this lousy capitalistic travel agency that exploits his memory?"

IRONY 2:

The great writer, Maurice Sendak, who happened to write children's books, left his collection of rare books to the Rosenbach Museum and Library. The collection includes several books by Beatrix Potter, but Sendak's executors don't want to give those, calling them "merely children's books." 

That spinning sound you hear...

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Headline I spotted the other day:

"Masked Men Wanted for Home Invasion."

I applied, but the positions had already been filled.

***

Headline I never got past: "Ignore Those Ugly Rumors About Mulch."

***

Tim Ferris wrote a post about the great writer and teacher John McPhee. Ferris hoped that if McPhee saw the post he wouldn't find it wanting. However, the post included the phrase, "the below piece" (as opposed to "the piece below"). Most dictionaries consider that wrong usage, but a couple now accept it.

I don't care whether it's accepted or not, it sounds ugly. I feel on fairly safe ground guessing that McPhee would agree.