Writing

Why I Love Main Title Sequences

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Main Titles create an emotional link between the viewer and the show. But for a writer, they are so much more. Here is an excerpt from SUCCESSFUL TELEVISION WRITING, the book I wrote with William Rabkin. The excerpt will be followed an example, along with text from the book.

Main titles are created to introduce the audience to the show they are about to see. But for the writer, there is much more information to be gleaned.  It is a chance to read the mind of the executive producer.  How does he perceive the show?  How does he perceive the characters? 

How does he perceives the tone?  What kinds of stories does he want to tell? Most main title sequences will answer all those questions and more.

There are basically three different kinds of main title sequences:  Format sequences, that actually tell you in narration and in writing what the show is about; Mood sequences that convey the type of feeling and tone they are going for; and Character sequences, which delineate who the characters are and how they interact.  Many main titles are combinations of these three sequences. 

Since TV changes so fast, we’ve chosen some examples from some established series you probably know very well and, if not, can easily find in reruns…

The rest comes after the jump…

Read more

Cross-collateralizing Royalties

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There’s a fascinating and informative discussion going on (as usual) at Joe Konrath’s blog. Today my friend is talking about basketing or "cross-collateralization" deals, which he had on his first three books.

My royalty statements confirm this. As of my statement of June 2006, both Whiskey Sour and Bloody Mary have earned out their advances. They did this on the paperback releases.

Unfortunately,
I won’t see any royalties until next year, because of basketing.
Basketing is a form of joint accounting. When books are basketed in a
contract, the publisher doesn’t pay out royalties until all of the
books have earned out. So the earnings from Whiskey and Bloody are
paying the advance for Rusty Nail. Which is fine. By next year, I should be in a royalty situation. This is a good thing.

Author PJ Parrish left a comment, noting in part:

This cross-collateral accounting is, I am told, simply an easy way for
a publisher to withhold money due to a writer while spreading its risk
over several books.

For example, you might have two books with
$10,000 advances, but if one does great and the second poorly, you
still won’t see any royalty money until the entire $20,000 advance
earns out. Why shouldn’t each book stand on its own merits? Why should
an author be penalized for the success of one and not another when so
many factors that go into that success are out of the author’s hands?
I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it and I don’t think any author should.

I’m with her on this.  My DIAGNOSIS MURDER books are cross-collateralized and so are my MONKS.
It’s standard in multiple book tie-in deals and not something I had the
leverage to exclude from my contract. I wish I could.  It benefits the
publisher and screws the writer. Which brings me to nit-picking one of
Joe’s comments:

I’ve said, from the very beginning of my career, that my goal is to make money for my publisher.  For my first two books, I’m doing just that. It will be interesting to see where it takes me."

My
goal is to make money for me. Obviously, that means making money for
my publisher, too. But enriching my publisher and enriching myself
should go hand-in-hand. That doesn’t happen in cross-collateralization
deals or when you spend your advances…and then some…on promotion.
It might pay-off in the long run, but if you want to make a living as a
writer, it’s a delicate balance.  Joe made another comment that I don’t entirely agree with:

Royalties are like found money. You’re earning on work you did years
ago. Your publisher also likes royalties. They no longer have to spend
marketing dollars on your backlist, but it keeps generating income.
Earning out an advance is a good indicator that the book made a profit,
and the longer it stays in print, the more profitable it becomes.

I disagree with his first line but I agree with everything else. Royalties are not found money, it’s money you’ve earned, it’s how you make a living. And in cross-collateralization deals, the publisher is keeping your money from you.

Royalties are where the real money for an author is over the long run. Yes, you have to promote your books to sell enough to generate royalties, but again…it’s a balance. 

If you’re making a living as
a writer, advances and royalties (or script fees and residuals in TV)
are how you pay the bills. If you spend your advance on promotion, and
your royalties are caught up in cross collaterization, you are
succeeding in making money for the publisher…and screwing yourself.

I
am not saying this is the case with Joe, and I certainly think
self-promotion is important (just look at me at what I do), but I think it’s a mistake for newbie
writers to necessarily follow Joe’s example unless they have a
lucrative day job.

Write On

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Successful_television_writing
The Writer’s Room has reviewed our book SUCCESSFUL TELEVISION WRITING which is, of course, all about TV writer’s rooms.

After promising myself
not to buy any more books on scriptwriting, I succumbed to this
purchase while browsing in an Los Angeles bookstore with a bewildering
array of film books. And I can truly say, it’s worth every dime. This
is one for those who are serious about writing. Full of practical
advice and exercises, the book is an insightful account of the
realities of being a writer for hire. It’s sort of a TV equivalent to
“Adventures in the Screen Trade”, William Goldman’s infamous book.

At the back of the
book are a series of appendices which would be worth the cover alone.
Goldberg and Rabkin include a detailed “beat sheet” for an episode of
Martial Law which demonstrates just how well an American show is
structured with tense cliffhangers at the end of every act. There are
also character outlines, the details of which could be helpful in
writing your own treatments. It’s very useful to see just how
well-thought out each character is and how much depth to go into in
order to “sell” an idea.

Considering how long the book has been in print, it’s always a pleasant surprise to stumble on a review (while relentlessly googling your own name in a pitiful attempt to avoid writing) and to discover that people still find our book relevant and helpful.

Bouchercon 4

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This isn’t really about Bouchercon, since I skipped Sunday’s program and headed out of Madison at 9 am. In a first for me, I only bought one book at Bouchercon and two in the city (vintage paperbacks by Harry Whittington and Charles Willeford for only $5.50 each!). I was quite pleased with my restraint. 

I drove into Milwaukee early, about six hours before my connecting flight to Chicago, so I would have a chance to explore the city. I roamed around mostly on foot and was charmed by the architecture of all the old buildings downtown. I even stumbled on a used bookstore and found some Richard Wheeler and George Gilman westerns I didn’t already have. Even so, I didn’t go crazy and didn’t spend more than $3-a-book.  Such restraint.

But then I went out to the Milwaukee airport, where I made a monumental discovery…The Best Airport Bookstore ever.  The place is called Renaissance Books…and it’s a used bookstore…in the airport.  And best of all, it’s full of vintage paperbacks at super-cheap prices.  I went wild.  I bought books by Harry Whittington/Whit Harrison, E.L. Doctorow (WELCOME TO HARD TIMES), Peter Rabe, Bart Spicer, Albert Conroy, Vin Packer, Stephen Marlowe, Frederick Manfred, and an IT TAKES A THIEF tie-in by Gil Brewer….at the airport! And only one of the titles, the Doctorow book, was over $7. I could have spent hours there if not for the flight I had to catch to Chicago.

So much for my book-buying restraint at Bouchercon.

Bouchercon 3

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This was my last day at Bouchercon… I started the day working on MONK #4, then headed over to the convention hotel for lunch with Steve Hamilton. On the way, I stopped at the street faire to buy some Madison-goodies for my daughter Madison, visited the amazing Capitol building, and chatted with Laura Lippman, Jeff Abbott, Heidi Mack, Lee Child, and John Himes in the hotel lobby. After lunch, I spent some time with Theresa Schwegel, Twist Phelan, Jerrilyn Farmer, and Elaine Viets, among others, before heading back to my hotel to get ready for the dinner party my publisher threw for their authors.  The dinner party was great, I got to meet Jonathan King for the first time (and hear his hilarious story about the pedophile with his name in the UK) and eavesdrop on a conversation between an editor and an author about the "hot cowboy sex" in an upcoming novel. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Bouchercon Report 2

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I didn’t spend a lot of time at the convention today. My morning was eaten up with phone calls on some TV work I’m doing (more on that another day) and work on MONK #4. I met with my publishers Kristen Weber & Ellen Edwards of Penguin/Putnam, author Donald Bain, and his lovely wife Renee for a long lunch, then spent two hours at convention, chatting with Max Allan Collins, J.A. Konrath, Bill Crider (official Bouchercon videographer with his $125 Point-and-Shoot), Thomas Cook, Margaret Maron, Sean Doolittle, Rochelle Krich, Cynthia Chow (voted the hottest librarian in the U.S.), Lita Weissman (the SoCal Borders CRM extraordinaire) Mark Billingham (who professed his undying love of DIAGNOSIS MURDER), Jon Jordan (CRIMESPREE editor and natty dresser), and a bunch of other folks. I bought the anthology THESE GUNS FOR HIRE, signed by many of the contributors, and then it was time to head back  to the glamorous Doubletree to make some calls and get dressed up for the Shamus Awards. I sat at what turned out to be the loser table…where fellow nominees PJ Parrish (Kris Montee), Joel Goldman, Harry Hunsicker and I all lost in our respective Shamus categories (I got whipped, as expected, by Michael Connelly’s excellent THE LINCOLN LAWYER). The ceremony included a  funny, but far-too-lengthy roast of Private Eye Writers of America founder Robert Randisi (who has written over 300 GUNSMITH novels, among many other books).  The comments by Dominick Abel and Jon Lutz were, by far, the highlights of the roast and of the evening’s festivities.  Now I am back in my room, working  on MONK #4, while the couple in the room next door have loud, moaning, headboard-pounding sex. They must be a very religious couple, since  they keep calling out to God.

Bouchercon Report

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Greetings from Madison, WI. My trip here was interesting. On the flight from  LA  to Chicago, the woman next to me fell asleep, put her head on my shoulder, and snuggled my arm for an hour. I was afraid to move for fear she’d wake up and be mortified. She eventually moved aside and rested against the window.  I’m sure she had no idea what she’d done. But still, it was  weird.

I had a great time on my panel today with Steve Cannell, Robert Ward, Raymond Benson and Donald Bain. The panelists provided lots of laughs, some good anecdotes, and even some sage writing advice.  I spent time chatting with Ken Bruen, Reed Coleman, Jim Winter, Jim Born, Robin Burcell, Lee Lofland, Declan Hughes, Lee Child, Allan Guthrie, Gary Phillips, Bob Levinson, Zoe Sharp, Stephen Booth, Patricia Smiley, Parnell Hall, Duane S (can’t spell his name so why try?), and many, many others before retiring to my hotel room to work on MONK #4, which is due so soon I am getting stomach cramps just thinking about it.

Tomorrow, I have lunch with my publisher and then it’s the Shamus Awards dinner.

Killer Year Authors Are Adopted

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The International Thriller Writers, of which I am a proud member, have adopted the Killer Year, a group of  15 first-time authors with new mysteries & thrillers coming out in 2007.  What does this mean? A lot:

We’re also getting one of our stars to review each of the debuts and we’ll be
publishing them in the ITW Thriller Reader’s Newsletter.  And an ITW author has
volunteered to mentor each of the fifteen members of the Class of 2007 through
their baptism by fire into the publishing world.

Lee Child, Jeff
Deaver, Tess Gerritsen, Gayle Lynds, David Morrell, Jim Rollins, Anne Frasier,
Douglas Clegg, Duane Swierczynski, Cornelia Read, Harley Jane Kozak, Allison
Brennan, Ken Bruen and Joe R. Lansdale have all signed on. (Each
Killer Year author requested their mentors, that’s why we didn’t put out a
general call.)

In addition, ITW will sponsor a Killer Year breakfast at
ThrillerFest ’07 where each of the debut novelists will be presented by his or
her mentor to readers, reviewers and the press.

Isn’t that terrific? I hope the ITW can find deserving authors every year for similar "star" treatment. The ITW is doing some amazingly creative and beneficial stuff for their members  — this is just one of many examples. 

Off to Madison

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Tomorrow I’m heading off to Madison, WI and Bouchercon 2006, the world mystery convention, where I will be moderating a panel with Stephen J. Cannell, Robert Ward, Donald Bain and Raymond Benson. That’s also where I’ll find out if I’ve won the Shamus  for THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE… though I think there’s little chance of that up against the likes of Connelly, Crais and Mosley. I’ll be gone until Monday, but I’ll try to send in a few reports from the convention floor.