Writing

What Happens When the Mystery is a Mystery to the People Writing the Mystery

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The Fox show REUNION was supposed to be murder mystery that spanned decades in a single season.  But the show was cancelled in November, leaving the show’s handful of fans wondering whodunit. The problem is, the writers of the show didn’t know whodunit either. Zap2it reports:

When FOX lowered the boom on
"Reunion" in late November, the show’s creator says there was no way to
resolve the show short of a full season because of how "intricately
plotted" it was.  It was so intricately plotted, in fact, that the question of who committed the murder at the show’s center was still up in the air.

That, at least, is the word from FOX Entertainment president Peter Ligouri, who on Tuesday (Jan. 17) addressed the show’s early demise with reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour.

"’Reunion’ was particularly cumbersome in terms of trying to provide an ending for
the audience," Ligouri says of the show, in which each episode represented a year in the life of six friends, one of whom ends up dead. "How [creator Jon Harmon Feldman] was laying out the show to gap those additional 14, 15, 16 years was an incredibly complex path. There were a number of options, and he didn’t make a definitive! decision on which option he was going to go with as to who the killer was, and there was just no way to accelerate that time."

Feldman himself hinted at that in a statement following the show’s cancellation, saying that solving
the mystery of who killed Samantha (Alexa Davalos) was "partially reliant on characters we haven’t yet met — and events we haven’t seen."

Ligouri says the network and the show’s team talked about several ways to go with the killer’s identity, but "the best guess was at that particular time that it was going to be Sam’s daughter," whom she gave up for adoption early in the series. The why of the murder remains a mystery.

Especially to the show’s writers, which may be why the series didn’t work. If the show’s writers didn’t even know whodunit or why, then what were they writing about? If the clues led nowhere, how did they expect the story to actually payoff in the end? Is it any surprise viewers didn’t get hooked by the mystery since it, um, actually didn’t exist?

(Thanks to Bill Rabkin for the heads-up!)

Market Widens for Tie-ins

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Two interesting Publisher’s Weekly articles about the tie-in business — "Where
the Fans Are:  New formats broaden the base for tie-ins" and "Breaking Out of the Box:  Original novels
based on popular TV series are finding a ready market" — are now up on
the IAMTW site. The articles
are from 2003, but are still relevant today.

"DVD has changed the landscape because fans can go back for what they missed,"
concurred Hope Innelli, v-p and editorial director of HarperEntertainment.
"Tie-in books, therefore, have to serve a different purpose."

Many of
these books keep fans happy by shedding more light on the characters, filling in
plot gaps or turning back the clock. For example, the lightning pace and
Washington insider backdrop of the Fox series 24 left a lot of unanswered
questions at the end of last year’s premiere season. "We created a backstory in
conjunction with the writers that explains how key characters got there in the
first place and reveals why the revenge plot unfolded. That’s just not on the
show," said Innelli.

Original novels can also exist in entirely
different time frames, taking the audience to places the shows can’t go…

…To some extent, the mushrooming of prime-time shows that run concurrently with
syndicated reruns, along with the rise of DVD series collections, have already
conditioned viewers to operate in parallel timeframes. Law & Order, for
example, regularly shuffles its cast, though everyone shows up on cable reruns.
"Readers are savvy enough to recognize that the books have their own
continuity," said Clancy.

Read more

Mad Max

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Ed Gorman posted an appreciation of novelist Max Allan Collins, co-founder of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, on his blog today:

I wouldn’t be blogging today if it weren’t for Max Allan Collins.
Twenty five years ago, I made a cold call to him to tell him how much I
enjoyed his novels…

… Naturally,
we talked about writing and why I, who’d sold a lot of short stories to
magazines of varying repute, hadn’t ever written a novel. I told him l
I’d started about a hundred of the damned things but that I always got
stuck at some point and started backtracking and then just gave up. He
gave me the single most useful piece of writing advice I’ve ever ever
received. Don’t look back. Finish the first draft straight through and
then go back and do whatever needs to be done in the revisions.

Ed also talks about advice he’s gleaned from other writers… all of it worth taking to heart.

Grey’s Blog

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The writers of GREY’S ANATOMY have their own blog. The latest post from Krista Vernoff tells the story behind her "Christmas" episode:

So
here’s a funny thing: we were never going to do a “Holiday episode” of
Grey’s Anatomy. Shonda, in particular, (though many of us agree) is not
a big fan of Santa Claus in the E.R. and elves in the operating room
and the kinds of things you most often see on medical show holiday
episodes. So, the mandate was: we can have a tree, we can acknowledge
the holiday, but we’re not doing a “holiday episode.” And then Harry and Gab walked into the writer’s room and pitched this: “A cranky, angry little boy needs a heart transplant because his heart is TWO SIZES TWO SMALL.”

Come on. That’s brilliant. The Grinch boy? How do you not make a holiday episode now? So that’s how this episode was born.

She goes into much more detail, but I especially enjoyed this observation:

I don’t know why I’m telling you all this… Maybe because I’m so often asked “How do you guys come up with this stuff?” The
answer is, we come up with it in a largely convoluted, fabulously
meandering, highly collaborative way where bad ideas lead to good ones
and good ideas lead to other ones and nothing is set in stone until
about a week before you see it on TV. Which is why I love working in TV.

This new trend towards blogs (eg CSI:MIAMI, SCRUBS) and podcasts (eg LOST and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) from  the writers room of TV shows isn’t just great PR and fun for the fans — it’s an incredible opportunity for aspiring writers, offering an inside look at how TV series episodes are conceived, written and produced.

A Slan Dunk

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Novelist and IAMTW member Kevin J. Anderson has been asked by Lydia Van Vogt, widow of author A.E. Van Vogt, to  complete the manuscript
for SLAN HUNTER, the sequel to SLAN.  A. E. Van Vogt
began the book in 1984, but was unable to complete it due to Alzheimers disease. Anderson received 100 pages of draft manuscript and outline.  Tor will publish the completed
book, with David Hartwell as editor.

When It All Comes Together

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I came up with my story for Bob Randisi’s new anthology at the oddest time and the oddest place. I was getting a haircut, tuning out the incessant yammering of the lady cutting my hair, when all the pieces that had been swirling around in my head finally clicked together — my experience in traffic school the other day, a newspaper article I clipped six months ago, a scene from a story I never wrote, a bit I saw on Court TV some time back, and my curiosity about the life of  a guy I see on public access TV. Suddenly, in about two minutes, I had my story. Today I am off with a notepad and a digital camera to do some "location sc0uting" for the story, I’ll do some googling for some facts I need,  and then I’ll start writing it. I want to get it done before I start writing the third MONK book next week.

UPDATE: I got back around noon, copied my photos to my hard-drive, then spent an hour or so on Google, looking up facts on different subjects. I also emailed an "expert" in a particular field for some additional background info. I’ve just finished up a one-page, bullet-point outline for myself — not that I’ll necessarily stick to it, but so I have a road-map in case I have to set the story aside for some reason over the next few days to work on something else.

Now it’s time to procrastinate — which is why I’m updating this post — and then start writing.

Looking for the Short Cut

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Screenwriter Paul Guyot offers some great advice for aspiring writers for the new year:

A huge problem I see with people wanting to write for a living – more
screenwriters than prose for some reason – is that they are so
completely focused on getting an agent, or getting their script to a
producer or studio, or dreaming of that one spec sale that will solve
all their troubles, that they don’t spend any energy on becoming a good
writer.

…Try something new this year. Just for 6 months. Forget completely
about trying to get your scripts or books to agents or producers, or
trying to enter contests, or suck up to the rich producer/editor at the
party, or meet the "right" people.

And just concentrate on your writing. Making it better. I promise
you, on my granny’s grave, that your writing can be improved upon. That
script that you think you can’t do any more with – it can be better.
That manuscript you’ve tweak four or five times and think is your best
work ever – it can be better.

He gave this advice, and a whole lot more, in response to a question from a reader of his excellent blog. That reader didn’t take the advice very well and, basically, told him to go fuck himself, essentially underscoring the point Paul was trying to make. The reader thinks he’s owed a career simply because he can type stories in screenplay format — he hasn’t grasped the concept that being able to write actually counts, too.

But this attitude isn’t limited to screenwriters — you see it a lot with aspiring novelists who, rather than hone their craft, send their half-baked manuscripts and checks to iUniverse, lulu, and the like and expect this will lead to being a bestselling author. Too many aspiring writers these days are looking for short-cuts to success, a way to avoid all the hard work and rejection,  and there simply aren’t any.

Speculating

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I’ve been a television writer for about 20 years now.  In that time, I haven’t written many scripts on spec.  Bill Rabkin and I wrote a spec episode of  "Spenser: For Hire" as a writing sample to get our first TV job (on "Spenser For Hire," oddly enough).  Since then, we’ve written a spec pilot and a couple of spec features, all of which went nowhere… so we never had much incentive to do more non-paying work.

But a few years back, I wrote a spec script on my own based on my then-unpublished novel THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE. I did it more out of frustration with the book biz than anything else. The script didn’t sell (at least not yet) but it led to a very lucrative gig writing the so-far-unproduced Dame Edna movie, so it paid off for me. Even so, the big payday didn’t motivate me to spec something else. I’ve stayed away from writing spec scripts, using whatever free time I have to write my books…maybe because it’s paying contract work as opposed to speculation.

But lately I’ve begun to rethink that strategy, especially since scripts are potentially a lot more lucrative than books (so is working at Burger King, but that’s another topic). Bill and I have a spec pilot we’re going to start writing after the holidays and I’ve begun re-reading some of my novels  with an eye towards reworking them as spec features.

I recently adapted my book  MY GUN HAS BULLETS into a script. I had a lot of fun doing it and was surprised how easily it lent itself to the screenplay format.  Of course I had to change a lot of things and streamline the plot, but I think it worked. Well, at least I hope it did. I’ve e-mailed the script to a couple of trusted friends in the biz who haven’t read the book to get their opinions.  Meanwhile,  I’ve started adapting THE WALK into a screenplay.  This one isn’t going as smoothly as MY GUN HAS BULLETS did, but I figure the exercise can’t hurt.

I don’t know why I’ve always been more comfortable writing books on spec than scripts. I guess I feel like scripts are something somebody should be paying me to write (as opposed to books, which you hardly get paid for even when you sell them). That makes no sense, of course.  I blame that twisted thinking on all my years working in episodic television, where you get paid for every script you write and there’s very little spec work that ever sells. But the attitude towards specs in TV is changing now in the wake of the success Marc Cherry had with his spec DESEPERATE HOUSEWIVES pilot.  NBC recently went public asking for spec pilots, though I don’t know if they actually picked up any of them.

I guess I just need to get into the spec frame of mind. I’m not quite there yet, because I’m sort of  cheating by adapting my books instead of coming up with original film ideas.  But I suppose baby steps still count as steps…