Writing

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:

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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.

MWA’s Listed of Accepted Publishers

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I got his email today:

My mystery novel XYZ is being published by Publish America. Can I become an active member of the Mystery Writers of America?

I’m afraid not. Publish America is not recognized as a legitimate publisher by the MWA.  You can visit the MWA site for more info. In the meantime, here is the current list of publishers accepted, and not accepted, by the MWA for Active Membership.

(You’ll find the list on the jump)

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No Rewrites, No Editing

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I remember reading an interview with Robert B. Parker somewhere where he said he doesn’t go back and rewrite his work…he just bangs it out and moves on.  Apparently, his books aren’t edited by his publisher, either. Bill Crider posts the evidence.

From Appaloosa,

p. 266: "The room was quiet and
noisy."

p. 238: "Bragg took a tan leather case out of his inside coat pocket. He offered a cigar to Bragg and
me."

The Guy Hanks School of Screenwriting

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The Guy A. Hanks Screenwriting Program, established by Bill Cosby at the USC School of Cinema and Television, is starting it’s 12th year and accepting application this summer. The press release says:

This non USC program has single handedly
brought more successful African-American Writers into the entertainment industry
than any other program of its type.
It is designed to assist writers in completing a television or feature script, while examining African-American  history, culture and images in the media. Participation is free to those
selected. The program is not designed for beginning level writers. They are seeking writers who have taken the initiative to formally study television or feature writing. In an industry that
is extremely competitive, the program has found their greatest success in
assisting those who have a strong writing foundation in television or
screenwriting. Alumni from the program have
excelled in the entertainment industry and have been honored by organizations
including the NAACP. The program’s work has been recognized by the state’s
Governor, Senator and the Los Angeles Mayor’s office.

I’m a 1995 graduate of the Guy Hanks screenwriting program, only then it was called "The Cosby Mysteries" and Guy Hanks was the name of the detective that Cosby played. 

I was a supervising producer on the show and one of the invaluable screenwriting lessons I learned was that scripts don’t matter.  The best television is when actors throw out the script entirely and completely improvise scenes regardless of story continuity (or, in the case of whodunit mystery, the clues) or what what shot before… so that when the show is cut together, nothing makes sense.

MystlogoI only got one piece of screenwriting advice directly from Mr. Cosby. He called one day and said he thought it would be great if  some ninja assassins cartwheeled through the window in the finale, which was  shooting the next day (which also was the final day of production on the episode).  We mentioned it might be odd to see ninjas in the finale since there were no ninjas  in the show at all. As I recall, he said: "There are now."

We wrote the ridiculous finale, but after he read it, he refused show up for the scene at all because he felt we didn’t put our heart into what we wrote. So instead, we get a piece of amazing improvisation: The two villains not only get into a martial arts battle for no reason, they also explain to each other between blows how the murder was committed and how Guy Hanks might have put the clues together (since Guy Hanks isn’t there to tell us himself).  I was surprised they didn’t read each other their rights and arrest themselves. As it turned out, the police show up and slap the handcuffs on them after the fight…and, if I recall, there’s a silent shot of Cosby sitting in the car looking pissed.

A short time after THE COSBY MYSTERIES was cancelled, Cosby went on THE TONIGHT SHOW and blamed the show’s failure on the scripts.

I don’t know if there’s a real Guy Hanks and if the character, and the screenwriting program, are named in his honor. But I like to think that there isn’t, and that it’s Cosby’s way sticking it to the writers on the show one more time… 

I Hate Mysteries

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Well, I do today.  I’m struggling with some clues in my latest MONK novel and it’s hell.  I’ve been in this position hundreds of times (literally) and it never gets any easier.

God, I wish I could write a "mainstream" novel. It must be so nice to just tell a story without having to weave in a puzzling mystery to solve…

I suppose it could be argued that all great novels include a mystery to be solved and clues to the solution along the way… but those are mysteries of character. It’s not easy coming up with those puzzles either.  But in a good whodunit, you need to have the mysteries of character and a murder/crime puzzle as well.

It’s especially difficult if you’re writing a long-runing mystery TV or book series,  because you’re also struggling not to repeat yourself, not to use any of the tricks or clues you’ve used in the past.  So the more successful you are, the harder it becomes.

End of whine. Back to work.

“A Heavily Subsidized Hobby”

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Think of this as a companion piece to the "Day in the Life" post here a few days back. Author Harley Jane Kozak talks today about money,  contracts, and the work-a-day life of  a writer.

I was offered a contract this week. Actually, I was offered two. After a year of writing “on spec” as we say in Hollywood, that was pretty exciting news. It’s not that I made no money this past year; there were  those first two books, and I still get residuals for the acting work I did in my previous life (another six  bucks for that 1986 Highway to Heaven episode) but it’s safe to assume that I spent a lot more than I  took in. Would that I could say the same about calories.

So, when I sold a short story to Ms. Magazine, and was offered a two-book deal from Doubleday on the  same day, I called my husband at work to tell him the good news.

“Great!” he said. “How much?”

I told him.

Silence on the other end of the phone.

I could hear him mentally dividing the book advance by two (two books in two years), then subtract taxes and agent’s fee, then add up babysitting costs, marketing and promotion . . .

“Can you ask for more?” he asks.