Writing

Chick Lit Bit

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NY Times book critic Marilyn Stasio isn’t fond of "chick lit mysteries."

you can’t miss its gaudy manifestations — those slender volumes with cute
titles like ”Dating Dead Men” and ”Killer Heels” and covers in such juicy
colors you don’t know whether to read the flap copy or lick the jacket.

Slim stories. Joke titles. Juicy jacket art. Does a pattern begin to emerge?
For a category of mystery still relatively new to the market, the babe book has
already settled into some fairly narrow grooves. Even if you ignore the
generally deplorable level of the writing (which is surely an unintentional
aspect of the formula), these novels scrupulously observe all the basic
chick-lit conventions: the giddy girls in their glamorous jobs, the shopping
sprees and fashion makeovers, the gossipy friends, the disastrous dates and the
wry comic voice of a heroine so adorable she could be . . . you.

Book critic, blogger and industry observer Sarah Weinman thinks the mystery world will be buzzing over Stasio’s take on the genre. I don’t think so. The one thing these "chick lit" authors share in common is a strong sense of humor. I think they’ll shrug it off.  How about you?

The All-Important Rewrite

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Screenwriting class is in session over at Paul Guyot’s blog, where today he is talking about the importance of rewriting. Lots of aspiring screenwriters don’t give much thought… or effort…to rewriting. They focus all of their attention on having a killer opening. Mistake.

Nobody seems to want to learn to be a great writer anymore. They just want to
learn how to get paid to do it.

But what few seem to grasp is that you
seriously increase your chances of getting paid for it if you’re really good at
it. And one of the best ways to "get good" is to understand rewriting, and know
that when you think you’ve done all you can, you can still do more.

Barbara Seranella is on the mend

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I know a lot of you were worried about my friend author Barbara Seranella, who recently had liver transplant surgery.  I’m pleased to say she’s on the mend. Here’s a note from her:

Hi All, I just went through all my cards from the last two months. Again, I 
am blown away by the love. I’m home in the desert, really digging it. I 
drove my car yesterday. Everyday is a new landmark. I hired a
round-the-clock  caregiver, Ophelia. She made me a sandwich yesterday and
then admitted that it  was the first one she had ever made. Then I learned
she used to build houses  with her Uncle and knew a lot about plumbing.
Yesterday, she fixed the toilet. Today we go after a leaking
faucet.

Turns out I have to get the surgeon’s "permission" to travel. I
really want  to and fully expect to go to Chicago, so I’m working real hard
to blow him away  when I see him next. Again thank you to the million
friends who held me in their thoughts and  prayers these last two months.

IAMTW Spoofed

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When James Lincoln Warren and Paul Guyot learned about the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers (IAMTW), they cooked up this wicked spoof, a website for The Professional Hack Authors Recognition Society (PHARTS).

The Professional Hack Authors RecogniTion Society, or

PHARTS, is an organization for professional hack authors,
i.e., mercenary wordsmiths who don’t care a fig for style, content,
originality, or grammar, but are willing to write anything for money. 
We are of all ages, races, ethnic backgrounds, religious persuasions,
and sexual preferences, comprising even Old PHARTS, New
PHARTS, Red PHARTS, Blue
PHARTS.  Are you
PHARTS material?

In a back-handed kind of way, this amusing  satire underscores why Max Allan Collins and I decided there was a need for a professional organization for media tie-in writers.  We’re not stupid, we  know that tie-ins and novelizations are widely considered as hack work…even though media tie-ins regularly hit the NY Times, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today bestseller lists and handily out-sell original novels by many big-name authors. But media tie-ins rarely get reviewed and never get any respect. Hence, IAMTW.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter Development

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Variety reports that Michael C. Hall of  SIX FEET UNDER has signed to star in Showtime’s pilot for DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER, based on the acclaimed novels by Jeff Lindsay. The SIX FEET UNDER connection doesn’t end there… Michael Cuesta, a regular director on the HBO series, will helm the DEXTER pilot.  Dexter is a Miami PD forensics expert who also happens to be a serial killer.

Cannell Cops Award

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On Sunday, the Southern California chapter of the Mystery Writers of America honored Steve Cannell with the Marlowe Award, celebrating lifetime achievement in the mystery field. Past winners have included William Link, Dennis Lynds, Sue Grafton and Blake Edwards.

It was great fun…and I got a chance to catch up with authors  Nathan Walpow, Bob Levinson, Harley Jane Kozak, Terrill Lee Lankford, and Michael Mallory (to name a few) and to talk shop with fellow TV scribes Tom Sawyer and Paul Levine (who has a new book out and who, incidenally, was instrumental in getting Steve’s first book sold).

Steve  was, as usual, charming and funny and self-deprecating.  It’s amazing to me that a man as successful as he is can come across as such a regular guy. I’ve known him for years (and worked with him on COBRA and HUNTER and hired him as an actor on DIAGNOSIS MURDER) but he has that remarkable ability to make even someone who has just met him feel like his oldest friend.  He’s also quick to share the credit for his success with the writers he’s worked with… and he did it again today…singling out people like Patrick Hasburgh,  Frank Lupo and David Chase.

He told the story today of how he sold his first book, explaining why it was a surprising and humbling experience for him after his unparalleled hot-streak in TV.  After Steve spoke, Harley interviewed him and managed to get him to tell some anecdotes I haven’t heard before (and I thought I’d heard them all!).

Although a lot of nice things were said about Steve and his career during the ceremony, I think Paul Guyot’s letter (which was read by James Lincoln Warren at the podium) summed things up the best:

Read more

Writing You Don’t Need

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Screenwriter John Rogers offers some excellent screenwriting advice on his blog today.

Your scene descriptions and actions — don’t waste time on specifics. Somebody
else is going to visualize the set, someone else is going to design the set,
someone else is going shoot on that set. Don’t write for the storyboard, write
what the TONE of the set is, conveying how it informs the actions, creates the
context for the characters within. Is this limiting? No, it’s freeing. It’s
paradoxically MORE power. You’re creating the world, mood, story — let other
people sweat the window size and wallpaper pattern.

Character intros:
gahhhh. I never, ever want to read a line of character backstory again. The
audience will know this character by what he says and what he does. (in that
sense, in-script backstory is actually cheating) The actor will create whatever
mindspace/backstory for the character they need to work the person up on screen.
Just get the best, snappiest description of who this person is — not how they
dress or how they talk or how their goddam hair’s cut, but who that character
is in the
script-world– and move the fuck on. Again, not saying we’re just typists. Not
saying it has to be bland. The challenge is to create the most telling
impression in the fewest words.

Don’t sit their like so many screenwriters
and try to jam whatever central casting idea of a character you have into the
reader’s head — create the notion necessary for the reader to complete the
image of the script in his head, to personalize it, and move on with the
read.

Great stuff. And there’s more, much more. Check it out.

The Expository Friend

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Over the last two days, I’ve seen the Expository Friend everywhere…in books, TV shows and movies. I’m thinking that, for the sake of good writing, the WGA should put a ban on the Expository Friend into our next contract with the studios and networks.

The Expository Friend is the character who exists only so the hero or heroine can reveal what they are thinking and feeling, what they are conflicted about, and what they intend to do about it.

The Expository Friend also comes in handy for telling the hero things they already know  that we, the audience, do not (the big clue is when the Expository Friend starts any sentence with the words: "As you know" or "As we discussed," or "Remember when we," or "You realize that if you do this you," etc. etc.).

The Expository Friend is usually the frumpy single or married best friend/co-worker/next-door-neighbor/sibling of the romantic lead and is, in every case, a completely pointless character that could be removed from the movie/tv show/book without losing a thing.

Any time you see the Expository Friend, you are looking at tangible evidence that the screenwriter is either incredibly lazy or doesn’t have the talent to reveal character in any other way except, well, to have them step up and tell us directly who they are and what they are feeling.

The Expository Friend violates the basic rule of good screenwriting: Show don’t tell.

Breaking Rocks

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When writing is going well, the words spill out of me faster than I can type. I feel like I am in a losing race to keep up with the scenes playing out in my head.

When writing is going badly, as it has been the last couple of days, I feel like I am trying to chisel granite.

I have an outline, so it’s not like I don’t know where I’m going… I just don’t know how to get there. Every word, every sentence is a struggle, and even when I get them down on paper, it hardly seems worth it, since every single word sucks.  The writing is flat, the dialogue rings false, and the humor is non-existent. But I keep pounding away, waiting for that moment when I will write the line that sings, that unlocks everything, and then suddenly I will be on a roll again. Writing will be easy, the characters alive, and the world they live in filled with color and details. Not only will I go back and fix all the crap I wrote before, but I will steamroll ahead  without a moment’s doubt or uncertainty…

Until I hit that granite again.