Lee Goldberg

Honolulu Part One

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We had to get up at 4:45 am to make our  8 am plane, so we were bleery-eyed and tired on the flight. I only managed to write four pages of my MONK book before I gave up and read a few chapters of a Shell Scott novel. The flight was comfortable though — in fact, the coach seat on American Airlines was more comfortable, and the service was far more friendly, than First Class on Continental (but no Academy Award nominees sat next to me. There was a development exec two rows over, though, reading scripts and ignoring her crying baby).

I’ve been to Oahu dozens of times…but I’ve only stepped outside of the Honolulu airport to take the Wiki Wiki shuttle to Inter-island terminal on my way to Kauai, Maui or the Big Island. So this is my first real visit to Oahu.

On our first day, we didn’t get outside of Waikiki, where there are two ABC Markets on every block. It doesn’t matter how upscale or downscale the block is, ABC is there. And if the ABCs are spaced too far apart, there’s a Whalers Market tucked in-between for good measure. The Hawaiians or the hordes of Japanese tourists must have a pathological need for over-priced groceries (we felt like we were visiting a beachside resort in Tokyo). 

Our hotel, the Outrigger on the Beach, is nice, the room is spacious, and you can’t beat the location for walking around Waikiki. In a moment, we’re hopping in the car to head out to my signing at Barnes & Noble, some sight-seeing, and then my first library talk of the week.

More later…

THE F WORD

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Showtime is staging an unusual promotional event, inviting fans of THE L WORD to help a writer on the show pen a spec script for an episode. The press release calls it "the first network-sanctioned collaborative fan event."

During the sponsored, multi-week event,
the show’s millions of fans will be invited to collaborate on an
original script for the show.  Each week, fans will write short scenes
based on an instructive "scene mission" provided by the writer from THE
L WORD.  Each week, fans will vote on their favorite scenes.  At the end of each week,
the winning scene will be added to the script in progress. The process
will repeat each week with a new "scene mission" until the entire
script is complete.

Once the script has been pieced together, the L WORD writer will
perform a final polish to complete it. Contributors of highly rated
scenes and other winners will be featured prominently online during the
event, giving them a taste of online fame. FanLib’s innovative system
enables Showtime to maintain control of THE L WORD brand while
establishing an incomparable consumer generated media community where
fans can interact with each other and with their favorite show.

A couple of people who emailed me about this called it a "breakthrough for fanfic." It’s not. The key phrase in the release is that the program "enables Showtime to maintain control of THE L WORD brand."  In other words, this "fan event" is a licensed tie-in, done with the full participation, consent, and control of the network, studio and writer of the show.

At the conclusion of the event, Showtime and FanLib will publish a free
commemorative eZine (a downloadable digital magazine) featuring the
completed script, plus a number of alternative scenes and editorial
features including profiles of the winning contributors and other
participants. Each fan whose work is included in the eZine will receive
an exclusive gift package from the show and the sponsors of the event.
The eZine will be distributed online to all of the participants and
voters and other members of the show’s online community as a pass-along
memento of the event.

Though the script will not be produced as part of the show’s upcoming
third season which will have wrapped production before the start of the
event, Showtime and the producers of THE L WORD have the option to
produce the finished script in the future.

It will be interesting to see how "event" works out, if the fans embrace the corporate managing of their fanfic, and if the cobbled-together script is the least bit readable. My guess is that the L WORD writer is going to take a pretty heavy pass through the material and that it will probably never be shot.

Do Mystery Novels Suck?

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My brother Tod is going to get in big trouble. In a post today, he explains why he doesn’t ready mysteries any more. Because, in his view, most of them suck.

I used to read a lot of mystery novels but in the last several years
have found myself easily disappointed by the easy conventions I find in
what are acclaimed as the finest in the genre…

…Part of it is a craft issue: I find a lot of mystery novels lazy in
characterization and lazy in drama, relying more often on tricks than
truth…

For instance, Tod recently read the acclaimed new bestseller by a beloved mystery author:

It had plot holes on every page, as if
someone had been fisting it. I solved the mystery in the first ten
pages. The villains were stock. The hero was suitably flawed but easily
redeemed and the ending was so schmaltzy that I literally said aloud,
"Oh, come on!" I then went and looked at the reviews of the book and
was stunned to learn it was the writer’s "best book in years." That the
novel was the "finest mystery of the year." That the writing was
"superb" and evoked "Chandler." That the twists and turns of the plot
kept reviewers "constantly guessing." That the ending packed "an
emotional wallop that will keep fans chatting for months!" Had I read a
different book?

He wonders if critics and readers go easier on mystery novels because they expect less from them than they do from other literary works. He also has a problem with the stagnant character development in some mysteries.

Most mystery novels I’ve read lately feel like just another episode,
the characters stuck in a commercial break until the next book comes
out. That, certainly, was the case with the novel I read…a continuing
series character, widely loved, widely praised, widely selling and so
cliched and trite now that it makes the previous works by the author
now seem something less. It’s a bland book, inoffensive in every way,
except that it made me wonder what mystery reviewers (and readers)
truly consider classic or brilliant anymore.

While I agree with Tod in some ways (look at the lambasting I got for not jumping on the Ken Bruen bandwagon) I think there’s a big difference between a series novel — which is, indeed, intended to be like an episode of a TV series — and a standalone thriller. 

Like TV shows, readers expect a series novel to be the same book as the one they read before in the series — only different. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but we TV writers do it every day. A TV series gives you the same episode week after week, year after year, but with enough differences in the individual stories to make the show seem new and fresh.  Marshall Matt Dillon was essentially the same guy in 1955 when GUNSMOKE premiered as he was when the show was cancelled in 1975…and none of the relationships in his life had really changed. The same is essentially true of most other non-serialized TV series and most series novels.

Stephanie Plum, Nero Wolfe, Phillip Marlowe, Shell Scott, Spenser, Elvis Cole, Kinsey Millhone, Jack Reacher, John Rain, Inspector Rebus… none of these characters have really changed in the course of their respective series. That’s one of the pleasures and comforts of the books…you know exactly what you’re going to get when you open one up.

Can it get dull? Yeah. Can the writers get sloppy and complacent? Sure. Are readers and critics more forgiving of successful series books and the authors who write them? I think so, because the authors and their characters are so beloved. You are pre-disposed to like the book and to cut it a lot of slack (whereas someone coming to the book fresh, without having read the previous titles, might judge it far more harshly and see the cliches the long-tme reader doesn’t).

The problem, perhaps, is that too many new mystery novels these days are reading like pilots for prospective book series rather than as strong, individual novels. You can feel the writer’s burning desire to create a franchise in every paragraph. In some ways, this goes back to the earlier discussion here about creating suspense. Nothing kills a book faster for me than the sense the author is more interested in marketing and promotion than in actually creativing vivid characters and telling a compelling story. He’s looking ahead to the hoped-for series rather than concentrating on writing a fresh, powerful, and provocative book.

Hawaii Lee-O

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The Honolulu Star-Bulletin ran an interview with me today, pegged on the series of library visits I’ll be doing in Hawaii next week.  There are quite a few inaccuracies (eg. I never saw an unreleased HAWAII FIVE-O movie, I saw the unaired revival pilot) and misquotes (eg. I never wrote spec scripts for DIAGNOSIS MURDER), I’m still very pleased with the article.

The Pot of Gold

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I got this email today:

love your blog.  could you give me a rough ballpark range of how much money a show creator makes when the successful show hits 100 episodes and goes into
syndication.   5 mil?  25 mil?  50 mil? is it based on a percentage of what they pay for the rights?

It all depends on how good a deal the creator’s agent managed to strike for his client when they did the pilot.  It also depends on how big a hit the show is and how much it sells for in syndication. What a creator makes could be any of those figures you mention…or much, much more…or much, much less. 

For instance, the creator of  TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT probably didn’t make as much as Larry David did on SEINFELD, though both sitcoms reached 100 episodes and went into syndication, . JAKE AND THE FATMAN ran for five years…but has never been in syndication.  IT TAKES A THIEF ran only three seasons but has been rerunning for decades.

When to Go POD

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I got this email the other day:

Hi. I’ve been enjoying your blog. Can you give me an opinion here? I’ve written a book for a local businessman here in XYZ. He
wants to get 500-1000 copies published to give to customers, relatives, etc. I notice you say NEVER to pay anyone to publish your book. Does that apply
in a case like this, where we’re really not concerned with selling through
bookstores, publicity, etc.–just want the copies?

This is actually the perfect use of print-on-demand self-publishing.  While I think it’s a mistake to use POD to self-publish your novels, going to a company like iUniverse to print your annual reports, classroom materials, family memoirs and other non-fiction work in trade paperback form to give your students, relatives, employees, investors, etc. makes a lot of sense.  It’s also great if you’re a lecturer, motivational speaker, instructor, etc. who wants to sell your work at your seminars.

For instance, if my book SUCCESSFUL TELEVISION WRITING ever falls out of print, I could see making it available on iUniverse through their Author’s Guild/Back-In-Print program (so it would cost me nothing at all). Would I print out 1000 copies and try to sell it/distribute it myself to bookstores? Hell no.  But there’s  no financial downside for me in offering a new edition for anyone who wants to buy it — as I have done with my UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS book.

 

Coming Home

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I spent my last day in NY sitting around the table with the writing staff of MONK, going over each scene in the story, looking for the humor and the heart, the little moments that will add texture to the script. I left with very detailed notes and will start writing the script on Monday.

On the flight back to LA, I sat next to David Strathairn, the star of GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.  He was a very nice guy. He was on his way out for the SAG Awards this weekend. We talked a bit about movies and TV, but mostly we chatted about other things…the sort of stuff you might talk about with any passenger you meet on a flight. I was really struck by what a pleasant, polite, regular guy he was.

I Love L.A.

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I just got back home to LA an hour ago… I’m too tired to post anything of substance. But I’ve scanned through the 87 emails waiting for me and a couple look blog-worthy. I also had an interesting experience on the flight to share.  More tomorrow. Good night, all.

A Jew in the Big Apple

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I’m in NY.  I’m staying at the Hudson Hotel, a supposedly hip spot, judging by all the young, beautiful people in the lobby and bars. I’m sure the bars are great. It’s the rooms that suck. From what I understand, this was a women’s dormitory or something before the Morgans Hotel Group turned it into a hotel. They didn’t put a lot of effort into renovating the dorms into hotel rooms.

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The rooms are smaller than a typical train compartment (the hotel prefers to say they’re "reminiscent of a private cabin on an upscale yacht." More like a fishing trawler). The wobbly steel writing desk, which is about the width of a Time Magazine, and matching steel chair, harder on the ass than a bus bench, appear to have been stripped from a prison cell.  Actually, a prison cell is  more sensibly designed than this room.  No amount of dark woods, mirrors, and pin-point halogens can hide the fact that this room is the size of a Camry.

The room is slightly wider than the low, Queen-size bed that dominates the space. The space can barely accomodate one average-sized person. The bathroom has plexiglass walls, which are covered with a thin, transparent curtain. So if you like privacy while you’re on the toilet, forget about it. If you do sit on the toilet, your knees will hit the wall and you’ll think back fondly on the spacious lavatory on the plane.

There isn’t a single drawer in the room, just an open "closet" in front of the door that isn’t large enough to fit a suitcase and that only has three hangers. There are no ice bucket in the room because there’s no space for one. The tiny TV set is in a narrow cupboard, gets no reception, and makes my laptop screen seem huge. The heater gurgles and whines (even when its off), has two settings (freezing cold and blisteringly hot) and is conveniently located behind the headboard. The walls are so thin, when the guy next door called his wife on the phone, I was able to say hello to her.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is an upscale place.  With luck, this will be my first — and last — night in this hotel.