Time to Write

Writing Excuses Demolished: "I don't know if my idea is good enough."

Some people never get around to writing because they don't know whether their idea is good enough to succeed in the marketplace.

Welcome to the club!

Every book, poem, short story, and screenplay is a gamble. Even the top publishers are not very good at predicting which books will take off and which will have disappointing sales. The same goes for movie studios, hence the famous William Goldman quote, "Nobody knows anything."

Sometimes writers have a huge success with one project and a huge flop with the next one, or vice-versa. 

All you can do is your best. Write the book or script, do as much as you can to help make people aware that it exists, and move on to the next one while still devoting some time to marketing your previous projects.

Unleash your Creativity by Writing from Within

Drawing from Within: Unleashing Your Creative Potential is a book by Nick Meglin that has a lot of great thoughts about drawing that apply equally to writing: 

"We make the mistake of looking outside ourselves for validation of what is, in fact, an inner experience. We look to others for approval, for them to tell us how good our work is before we can feel good about having done it!"

Of course, we want to sell what we write so eventually others will have to think our work is good, but worrying about that too soon can cripple your creative process.

Meglin adds, "The wonderful paradox is that the work that is sincere, personal, and created for one's own satisfaction is what is most often celebrated by both critics and the public alike."

"People learn to draw through the experience of drawing."

"The goal is not to make a pretty drawing, a neat drawing, a good drawing, etc., but just to draw." A good thing to keep in mind when doing your first draft.

AND IF YOU'RE TOO CRITICAL OF YOURSELF:

"We must focus our energies on identifying that part of ourselves that 'finds fault' with or 'disapproves' of our own work--that voice which tends to be self-deprecating, insecure, and negative. And we must learn how to cognitively reframe these negative voices and turn those destructive energies around."

 

Screenplays: add to characters with subtle symbols

There are lots of ways to make a screenplay character three-dimensional, and one is using symbols. Of course if the symbols are too on the nose they can detract, but here's an example of a subtle one:

Actor Paul Scheer told Fast Company magazine: "My character [in Black Monday] wears a wig in the show, and that was a conscious [choice] because when we first start talking about how he’s wrestling with his sexuality, I wanted that wig to represent the idea that he’s already hiding. On the base level, it’s like he’s not even comfortable being bald in this world."

I don't know how many people watching Black Monday would pick up on that, but a lot of times we register such clues subconsciously. 

Here are some other ways of revealing character:

What kind of clothes do they wear? Are they still wearing the style they wore twenty years ago, or are they desperate to keep up with the latest fashions? Do they care more about the label than the clothes per se? Do they try too hard to be quirky--or to avoid being noticed?

What kind of decorations and furniture do they have at their residence? What kind of painting or photos are in the background? The total absence of any decoration also tells a story. 

What kind of accessories do they choose, such as watches, rings, bracelets, etc.? For example, what does it tell you when a guy wears a Rolex? (It ain't about telling the time.)

I find it helpful to think about such things because they make the character more real to me. The more real the character is to you, the writer, the easier it is to know what they'd say and do in any situation.

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."

 

 

What to write about

"Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you;

figure out what you have to say.

It's the one and only thing

you have to offer."

Barbara Kingfisher

 

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.)

 

 

These qualities made Wonder Woman a Hit

Make sure that the characters are portrayed with heart, humor, hope, heroics, and optimism at the base, DC Entertainment president Geoff Johns told the makers of the new film version of Wonder Woman.

Heart.

Hope.

Heroics.

Optimism.

Sounds like what we need more of in our movies...and our politics....and our lives. 

Let's face it, if we want melancholy, irony, and dystopian themes, we can watch the news.

What research tells us about (fictional) heroes and villains

Why do viewers like TV and movie protagonists who do bad things? For instance, Walter White from Breaking Bad, or Tony Soprano. Recent research at the University of Buffalo sheds some light on the matter and can be useful for anybody writing fiction.

Who the audience meets first plays a role. 

Science Daily reports that heroes were judged to be more heroic when they appeared after a villain and villains were judged to be more villainous when they appeared after a hero.

It's all relative

Lead researcher Matthew Grizzard said, "What's happening here is that we're not making isolated judgments about these characters using some objective standard of morality. We're constantly making comparisons about these characters and the forces they face."

That applies to Walter White, who gradually does worse and worse things--but he's also up against even worse people.

The show's creator, Vince Gilligan, has said he expected the audience to turn on Walter, but most of them stayed loyal to him. A friend of mine who has discussed the show with a lot of people told me that they split into either the Walter camp or the Jesse camp. 

A LITTLE GOOD GOES A LONG WAY (FOR THE BAD GUY)

Another interesting finding is that villains get more credit for any altruistic actions they perform than heroes do. If you want to make our villain character more three-dimensional, having them perform even a minor good act will help you achieve that.

(You'll find lots of useful information about creating great characters in my book, Your Writing Coach, available from Amazon or our 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.)

 

When publishing meets television: a new approach, but is it a good one?

When pitching a movie or a TV series, writers sometimes characterize their project as "X" meets "Y"--as in, "Romeo and Juliet" meets "Lord of the Flies."

There's a new approach to books that might be described as "TV writing" meets "publishing."

New publisher Serial Box produces ebooks in 13 to 15 weekly episodes. The first one and the series bible is created by one writer, who is the equivalent of the Show Runner in TV. The team works out the complete storyline, then writers compose chapters, alternating so the assembly line keeps rolling.

Each episode takes about an hour to read and costs $1.99, or you can subscribe and pay $1.59 each, or buy an access pass for all the episodes for about $20. You get both text and audio versions.

The first publication is a dystopian YA novel with a premise that sounds pretty familiar: 23 teens wake up after the Apocalypse and have to figure out what happened--while also being hunted by machines. 

Wired.com quotes co-founder Molly Barton as saying that one of the ideas behind this format is that friends will find it easier to discuss the books because they will be reading them at the same time.

I can't say that as an author I'm very excited by this development; television necessarily is a collaborative medium, but in novels I value the author's individual voice. Of course, there have been book series before that were written by various authors under one pen name, and it didn't kill literature.

Even so, it'll be interesting to find out whether readers go for this format.

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Authors, this could be a way to get paid to write your book

How has an author recently raised over $1 million to fund the publishing of a book that tells the stories of 100 inspiring real-life women?

The answer is Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site.

Better known for raising money for tech gadgets, Kickstarter has become a powerful presence in funding self-publishing and independent publishing in the US and the UK.

MANY BOOKS, BIG MONEY

As reported in an article by Richard Lea in The Guardian, in 2015 there were 1,973 successfully-funded publishing pitches, plus another 994 for comic ands and graphic novels. 

That added up to $32.5 million. To date in 2016 another $20 million has been raised for such projects.

There are other crowdfunding sites that raise money for publishing books, but they are dwarfed by Kickstarter. 

HOW IT WORKS

The people doing the pitch set a goal sum and a time limit within which they hope to raise it; if they fail, those who did pledge money are not charged and the project doesn't get any money. On some other sites, if a project raises only part of the goal, the people doing the pitch get that amount.

Kickstarter takes a 5% fee, and payment processing charges. If funding doesn't reach the goal, there are no fees.

THE SECRETS OF KICKSTARTER SUCCESS

Some successful projects have an author who already has a following he or she can tap. Without that, you have to work much harder.

It's vital that the pitch video is compelling and that the goodies on offer are attractive to the target audience. 

There is usually a range of rewards tied to various levels of pledges, from a thank you postcard if you pledge a very small amount, to one or more copies of the publication, to signed copies, to bonus posters, to having a character named after you, to spending a day with the author. 

Even when those elements are in place, the author or publisher has to drive people to the Kickstarter site. This requires a lot of marketing, usually via social media.

The Kickstarter site says, "The majority of initial funding usually comes from the fans and friends of each project. If they like it, they'll spread the word to their friends, and so on."

THE BENEFITS (BEYOND THE MONEY)

Of course, not every pitch gets funded. One of the benefits of using the site is that it gives you a good indication of whether there will be enough demand for your book. In many cases the books haven't been written yet when their Kickstarter campaign starts. If there is a lacklustre response, the author may decide not to go ahead with the project. 

For the projects that succeed, it's a great way to guarantee a good number of readers who, if they like the book, may help spread the word. Rebel Girls, the book about inspirational women, will start its life with 20,000 readers in place, from 71 countries. 

WANT TO CHECK IT OUT?

If you have a book that you think might be suitable for crowdfunding, check out this page on the Kickstarter site: https://www.kickstarter.com/learn?ref=nav.

For a more general overview, take a look at their FAQ page.

 

A simple question to help you understand what your characters would do next

When you're stuck for what a character in your novel or screenplay would do next, there's a simple question that can help you decide.

As novelist Lili Wright ("Dancing With the Tiger") points out in an interview in The National Book Review, how you phrase the question is important. She credits it to screenwriting guru Robert McKee:

"Don't think, What would I do?

Or, what would the character do?

But: If I were him or her, what would I do?"

It's when you put yourself into the character's shoes and interpret the situation from his or her perspective that you're most likely to hit upon the most logical and true next action.

For instance, if you (the writer) came across somebody fell into some bushes and obviously is in need of help, probably you'd go to their aid. But what about your character's reaction to such a situation?

Let's assume your character has a good reason to want to stay out of the spotlight.

If you ask yourself simply, "What would the character do?" you might conclude that she hurries on, hoping someone else will come along and help the injured person.

However, if you imagine yourself to be the character and create that image of the injured person in your imagination, you might find that simply leaving the injured person and doing nothing else makes you feel too guilty.

As this character, what else could you do? For instance, maybe you'd hurry on but, keeping your head down, say to the next person you encounter, "I think there's somebody over there who's injured," hoping that person would choose to look and help. 

Vividly imagining any situation from the perspective of your character allows you to tune in to their emotion as well as the logic of how they'd react, and that will make it more authentic.

A thought about ideas (and bad first drafts)

“All good ideas start out as bad ideas, that’s why it takes so long.”

• Stephen Spielberg

To which I would add: if you think your first draft is really, really, really good...oh oh.

When a scene in your novel or screenplay isn't working, try this

Sometimes a scene in a screenplay or novel just sits there, not doing what it's supposed to. It's an experience I've had more than once, and here are three things that I've found helpful.

iMAGINE CUTTING THE SCENE

If you cut this scene, would it affect the progression of the story? If not, it should go.

If you cut this scene, what essential elements would be missing?

Is there a different way to cover those essential elements? One option might be to incorporate them into different scenes.

CHANGE YOUR POV

Usually you're writing the scene implicitly or explicitly from the point of view of one of the characters. Take a few minutes to step into the shoes of each of the other characters in the scene. For each one, ask yourself:

• what do they want in this scene?
  
  
• how does that relate to what they want in general in the story?
  
  
• is their behavior in this scene consistent with the above two?
  
  
• what else might they do in this scene to try to get what they want? How would that change the scene?

Often changing viewpoints gives you new ideas that bring the scene alive.

INTRODUCE AN ADDITIONAL ELEMENT

What would make this scene more dramatic? Brainstorm whether you could add:

• a new emotion (justified by something that happens in the scene, of course)
  
  
• a new action (again, justified)
  
  
• another character whose presence would cause some kind of tension or conflict (make sure they have their own reason to be in the scene)

Give one or more of these a try when you feel stuck, I hope you find them helpful.

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