Lee Goldberg

Bibles II

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I got a response from the guy I talked about in the previous post.

Excellent Mr. Lee! Excellent!
 
That was the reponse I was looking for the first time. Thank you for your
passionate and highly intelligent response.
 
I definitely want to talk to you again when the time comes—I hate
dispassionate writers and you are not one of them! Kudos! You earned a shot when
the time comes.
 
Take Care! -ZB

Can someone translate this for me? It appears to be in English, but I can’t understand what the hell he’s talking about. And why does he keep calling me Mr. Lee??

Bibles

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I had this email exchange yesterday.  First, I received this note (all I’ve done is replace the names with XYZ):

How are you Mr. Lee?

WGA writer XYZ and myself are looking for a great series bible to use as a study example. He will teach with it, I will use it as a template for my own work. I am a writer turned producer and preparing a bible for a new series and our exhaustive searches via books and Net have still proven fruitless. We need to get our hands on a comprehensive bible, preferranbly one that was used  successfully to obtain network approval/and or private funding, if at all  possible. As writer with many series credits, I thought perhaps you might care to assist, if it’s within your means? Also, if you’re interested, down the line (if we get greenlighted) we will need some good writers like yourself to pitch in—I’ll let you know when we get that far.

I love it when inexperienced writers ask me a basic question about how TV works…and then as an incentive, they offer me the tantalizing possibility that if things work out for them, they might give me a job. Wow.

I replied that I had the bibles, aka "Writers Guidelines," for DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MARTIAL LAW in my book SUCCESSFUL TELEVISION WRITING and that they were also available to download for free on my website.  This is how he replied, under the subject heading "Series Bibles**** Wrong Type"

FYI–The bibles on your Web site are "writer’s guidelines" and are not entire bibles that  can be used for network submissions of a new series, etc. by a producer (which is what we need).

Here’s how I responded:

Thanks for clearing up my confusion… I guess I’ve been doing it wrong all these years.

As someone who has been a professional TV writer for fifteen years, written many network pilots, and produced dozens of TV series, let me tell you what you need.
What you need is an idea… and then you pitch that idea to a network, which will then hire you to write a pilot script. If they decide to shoot your pilot, and if your pilot is picked up as a series, the network may ask you for a  bible, also known as "writers guidelines," examples of which are in my book. In
the case of a soap opera, they may ask you for a more detailed  document explaining the
relationships between the characters and the general direction of the storylines they are involved in. A bible is not what you use to sell a series. In fact, I  have been on MANY series, and I know of many series, that have never had a bible. The most important thing is the idea… the most important document is the pilot script.

Let me go back and comment on a few things in your first email that I let slip by… you mentioned that your "WGA writer" partner is going to use whatever TV series bible you find as a teaching tool. If you don’t know what a bible looks like, or how to write one, how can you possibly teach the craft of writing one to others?

You also mention that you’re a writer-turned producer and that you  need a bible to "successfully to obtain network approval/and or private funding, if at all
possible,"  which suggests to me that you are unfamiliar with the business behind American network television. Most networks  now are producing their own series…or in co-production with major studios… you don’t have to get "private funding." A TV series isn’t a independant feature film, which appears to be the model you are working from.

I suggest that before you start thinking about "bibles" you do some more research into how the TV business works.

Adult Material

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I received this email today from a DIAGNOSIS MURDER Fan.

I’ve heard some rumors of you (in you Diagnosis Murder Books )making Steve to be less than Mark , is any of this true? I also heard a rumor of ADULT MATERIAL in your third book , is that true ?

For those of you unfamiliar with DIAGNOSIS MURDER,  Steve is a homicide detective and the  son of deductive genius Dr. Mark Sloan. Conveniently, Steve is portrayed by Barry Van Dyke, who is the real life son of TV legend Dick Van Dyke, who played Dr. Mark Sloan. In the pilot episode, Mark Sloan was a widower with no children, but when DIAGNOSIS MURDER went to series, that changed (it changed again when, later in the series’ run, Dick Van Dyke’s daughter wanted to do a guest appearance as Mark Sloan’s daughter, so suddenly he had another child that was never heard of, mentioned, or seen before. You gotta love TV).

Dick Van Dyke’s photo is on the cover of the DIAGNOSIS MURDER books.
There are some fans who believe Barry’s photo should be on there, too. There are some fans who believe the books focus too heavily on Dr. Mark Sloan to the detriment of Steve Sloan. My feeling in the books, as it was when we produced the series, is that Dr. Mark Sloan is the star and everyone else is a supporting character.  Dr. Mark Sloan is the brilliant detective who solves the crimes… that was true in the series and now in the books.  If that makes Steve "less than Mark," I suppose the answer to the fan’s first question is yes…as it was in the TV show, too.

As for adult material, the books are no racier than the TV
series was. There’s no sex, profanity, or graphic violence. However, like the TV series, there is implied sex and implied violence…but the details are left to the reader’s imagination.   

Book’em Dano

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I went to the dentist today, and while he was drilling and scraping my teeth, I was plugged into my iPod, listening to TV themes (an admission that proves, in case anybody wondered, that I am a geek).  I’ve decided that "Hawaii 5-0" is the best instrumental TV theme in TV history… better than "Peter Gunn," "Miami Vice," "Star Trek," or even "Mission Impossible."

My Sisters’ Book

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Here’s a sneak peek at the cover of VISUAL CHRONICLES, the new book by my sisters, Linda Woods and Karen Dinino (click on the image for a larger picture). The cover is missing a few things… like their names… but they are very happy with it. VischroncoverxThe book comes out,  and the great sibling book tour begins, in February ’06…

Seeing the Strings

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I’ve been catching up on my sister-in-law Wendy’s fascinating ruminations on writing. She raised a point in one of her thoughtful postings that’s stuck with me all day. In this age of rampant blogging, where personal contact with your favorite author is only a mouse-click away, are we destroying the illusion behind our fiction? Are our readers getting to know us too well?

Wendy describes what it was like becoming a regular reader of an author’s blog… and then reading the author’s subsequent novels:

Through her blog, I found her to be charming, witty, and insightful. I returned again the next day. And the next. I lurked until eventually, I left a comment. She responded, she laughed out loud, she said we were kindred sprits.

Why hadn’t I done this before? It was nothing of what I feared. Her site became a daily stop for me. I found the voice of her blog to be separate and distinct from her author voice. I loved reading both.

Things, as they are apt to do, started to change.

In a recent release her heroine broke character with a rant that sounded a lot like the author’s ever increasing web rants. I thought I saw a flash of nylon fishing line. In her following release, the subtext I had previously loved was missing from her dialog. Well, I knew she rushed, too much to write with a deadline on screaming approach. Now, I’m certain—I saw the puppeteer’s hand.

I often wonder as I write this blog, and as I enjoy the blogs of other writers,  if there’s a danger that the people reading our books, or watching our TV shows, will find it increasingly difficult to suspend their disbelief, to become lost in the fictional worlds we create…. that our personalities will overwhelm our work and our audience  will, instead, only be hearing and seeing the writer behind the words. 

You tell me.

The Whole Family is Blogging

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My lovely and talented sister-in-law Wendy Duren is blogging about what she’s doing, what she’s reading, and what she’s writing.  While she mostly talks about novels, she mentions that she found inspiration the other night in a  scene in an episode of LOST.

It
accomplished everything dialog should: it revealed character, revealed
the characters’ emotional states, communicated information, moved the
story along, and, my favorite, was chucked full of subtext. And, it did all that very quickly. It was to the point, without side trips, without the mental meanderings that often trip up dialog in romances. I love stumbling across things like this. I feel inspired and motivated to write. My creative well has been filled at a time when I didn’t notice the level was low. All that and eye candy too. Wow.

It’s not often you find novelists conceding that TV writing is writing… and that spoken dialogue can inspire you the same way the written word can.

Talent On Loan from God

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While I was away, I received this email (I’ve replaced the names/titles with XYZ, but otherwise the letter is unedited in any way):

Hello Lee, my name is XYZ, and my book, XYZ  was published thru publish america. Lee, Iam a first
timer and I sure would appreciate it if you could tell me what your professional
opinion of P.A. is. I have heard alot of pros and cons about this Co. Iam about
to send my second book for publication, and I DO NOT want to send it to any
shabby publisher. Lee, I have been writing since I was a child, and I consider
myself a excellent storyteller, and I am NO braggart whatsoever, people that
have read my works all tell me GREAT thing’s about my book, XYZ  and my
next book, titled;  XYZ2. Lee Iam a Christian author and
now my book is on the Spread The Word web site. Please help me so I can be on
the right track with this AWESOME gift of storytelling my FATHER GOD has given
me.
My professional opinion of PublishAmerica is that it’s a scam, a con, a swindle, and a fraud. Otherwise, it’s a fine imprint.

It must be nice knowing that you are an excellent story-teller with an awesome gift.  I decided this weekend that I am a fraud with no talent whatsoever… but I think that’s just proves I’m thinking like a professional writer.

A Writer’s Life

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This weekend was a good example of what life is like for a professional writer:

  • I wrote an article about writing DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE WAKING NIGHTMARE for MJ Rose’s excellent Backstory blog.
  • I traveled to San Francisco to speak at a writers conference.
  • I  proofed the copyedited manuscript for my fifth DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel, which has to arrive in NY no later than Feb. 23.
  • I proofed the galleys for my novel THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE, which have to arrive on my editor’s desk no later than Feb. 23.
  • I revised the manuscript for my sixth DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel, which is due March 1, but that I need to finish by Feb 22, so I can stick it in the FedEx packet with the copyedited manuscript for DM #5… because I am leaving on Wednesday to attend & speak at Left Coast Crime in El Paso.
  • I drove back to L.A. from S.F…and thought about the plot for my seventh DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel.  I made  some notes when I stopped for lunch.
  • I posted some articles on my blog.
  • I wrote some notes for a network pitch meeting that’s set for Tuesday.

And this was a light weekend… I didn’t have to write a script or write a chapter in a book.