Writing

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…

When Did You Know?

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When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Joe Konrath poses that question on his blog today. I’ve known almost all my life what I wanted to be.  Not too long ago, my Mom found a paper I wrote in fourth grade where I said I loved writing stories and that I wanted to be a writer.  I posted one of those early stories here on my blog…along with one of my daughter’s  written at the same age.

When I was ten or eleven, I was already pecking novels out on my Mom’s old typewriters. The first one was a futuristic tale about a cop born in an underwater sperm bank. I don’t know why the bank was underwater, or how deposits were made, but I thought it was very cool. I followed that up with a series of books about  gentleman thief Brian Lockwood,  aka "The Perfect Sinner,’ a thinly disguised rip-off of Simon Templar, aka "The Saint." I sold these stories for a dime to my friends and even managed to make a dollar or two. In fact, I think my royalties per book were better then than they are now.

I continued writing novels all through my teenage years.  Some of my other unpublished masterpieces featured hapless detective named Kevin Dangler. I remember my Uncle Burl being quite amused by that one. He even wrote a story about Kevin Dangler one summer when we were fishing at Loon Lake. Only Dangler wasn’t a detective in his tale. He was the lead singer of a rock group called Kevin Dangler & The Scrotums. Being a packrat, I still have most of those novels today in boxes in my garage (some were destroyed in flooding a few years back).

By the time I was 17, I was writing articles for The Contra Costa Times and other Bay Area newspapers and applying to colleges.  I didn’t get a book published, but my detective stories got me into UCLA’s School of Communications. My grades weren’t wonderful, so I knew I had to kick ass on my application essay. I wrote it first person as a hard-boiled detective story in Kevin Dangler’s voice. The committee, at first, had doubts that I actually wrote it myself — until they reviewed articles I’d written for the Times, including one that used the same device as my essay.

I sold my first non-fiction book, UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS, while I was a freshman in college and my first novel, .357 VIGILANTE, shortly thereafter (thanks to Lew Perdue).  And so here I am, at 43, doing exactly what I was doing when I was seven or eight. I haven’t really changed. It’s cool…and kind of weird, too.

Shell Scott

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Ed Gorman posted a nice piece about my friend Richard S. Prather’s Shell Scott books on his blog today.

I loved Prather because he was always fun. I was naive about his right-wing
politics so they never got in my way, I just liked the hilarious situations
chicks always led the willing Shell into. One of my all-time favorite scenes is
Shell in a hot air balloon flying above the nudist camp he’s just escaped from.
His attire consists of his holster and gun.

The Shell Scott books are dated but still as laugh-out-loud funny as they were forty years ago. In his heyday, Richard was one of the best selling authors in the world, with tens of millions of copies of his book in print.

I spoke to Richard a couple of days ago — he’d just signed a contract with Hard Case Crime to reprint one of his early, not-Scott books.  So pretty soon a whole new generation will discover just how good a writer Richard Prather is.

New Years Resolutions for Writers

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Novelist Joe Konrath posts his Professi0nal Writer Resolutions for the new year. They work for me, too.

  • I will keep my website updated
  • I will start a blog
  • I will schedule bookstore signings, and while at the bookstore I’ll meet and
    greet the customers rather than sit dejected in the corner
  • I will send out a newsletter, emphasizing what I have to offer rather than
    what I have for sale, and I won’t send out more than four a year
  • I will learn to speak in public, even if I think I already know how
  • I will make selling my books my responsibility, not my publisher’s
  • I will stay in touch with my fans
  • I will contact local libraries, and tell them I’m available for speaking
    engagements
  • I will attend as many writing conferences as I can afford
  • I will spend a large portion of my advance on self-promotion
  • I will help out other writers
  • I will not get jealous, will never compare myself to my peers, and will
    cleanse my soul of envy
  • I will be accessible, amiable, and enthusiastic
  • I will do one thing every day to self-promote
  • I will always remember where I came from

Of course, not all of these resolutions really apply to Joe. He keeps his site and blog update, can speak well in public, and attends every writing conference held from here to Tehran. He forgot the big resolution though…

Write.

Spec-tacular

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Comedy writer Ken Levine gives some wonderful advice on his must-read blog about writing that perfect sitcom spec:

Don’t view the show from the perspective of a fly. I once read a WINGS spec as
seen by a buzzing fly. I offer this as the first example because I know so many
young writers fall into this same trap.

Don’t put yourself into the show
and make yourself the lead character. I once read a CHEERS where Alan had more
lines than Sam & Diane combined. Alan? Who’s Alan? Alan was one of the
extras. And so he remained.

And just because people tell you you look
like Debra Messing doesn’t mean you should write a WILL & GRACE entitled
“Grace’s Sister”. If I get a script with a photo attached I know I’m in trouble.

Don’t hand write your script, no matter how good your penmanship. Send
your spec in a UCLA blue book and you’ll get an F.

Don’t invent a
format.

Know the characters. I read a spec MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW where
Mary wondered what to get her husband for his birthday. Her “husband”???!

Some other things to avoid, at least in drama specs:  the hero’s evil double, the reappearance of long-lost relatives, or the hero getting amensia, going blind, or getting critically injured. It’s also not a good idea to write a spin-off pilot for one of the secondary characters.