The Writing Process

My Job is to Write

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Writer-producer Diane Ademu-John pointed me to this excellent blog post by author John Scalzi on dealing with strangers who want screenwriters and novelists to read their  work, listen to their pitches, etc. He says, in part:

Dear currently unpublished/newbie writers who spend their time bitching about how published/established writers are mean because they won’t read your work/introduce you to their agent/give your manuscript to their editor/get you a job on their television show/whatever other thing it is you want them to do for you:
A few things you should know.

1. The job of a writer is to write. So, I’m looking at one of my book contracts. It says that I need to write a certain type of book (science fiction) of a certain length (100,000 words) by a certain time (er… Hmmm). In return, I get paid a certain amount of money. So that’s the gig.

Here’s what’s not in the contract:

1. That I critique the novels of other people; 

2. That I offer any advice to people on how to get published; 

3. That I arrange introductions to my agent, editor or publisher; 

4. That I do any damn thing, in fact, other than write the book I’ve agreed to write.

The job of a writer is to write.

To which you may say, “Yes, but –” To which I say, you’ve gone one word too far in that sentence.

The rest of the piece is just as brilliant. He's basically saying the same things that Josh Olsen did, only without the anger and profanity that turned off a lot of people.

Farscaping with Carleton

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Eastlake-03 There's a great interview with my buddy Carleton Eastlake over at The Write Blog, talking about his experiences writing & producing shows like BURNING ZONE, SEAQUEST, FARSCAPE, and OUTER LIMITS. He says, in part:

I think good science fiction and fantasy, because they break some or many of the rules of the real world, require that the rules of the imagined world be interesting and consistently applied. So much more attention needs to be paid to the mythology.
At the same time, there’s more room, if done in a credible way, to keep things fresh by evolving those rules, making new discoveries…here come The Borg with all sorts of new moral and psychological issues – and very different spacecraft!

On the other hand, it’s a little harder to keep the dramatic, psychological side of a science-fiction show compelling. It’s easier to ignore those concerns or be distracted from them. But if the show is consistent about its rules, then the character side of the show can absolutely work. Crichton and Aeryn on Farscape were very much in love and very much troubled by the moral conflict between running away and having a life, or staying and fighting to save their societies.

It’s also important in a science fiction show that the plot issue of the day be motivated by the implications of the world the show is set in. Attempts to do actual medical or criminal or legal procedural shows in a science fiction setting are very, very hard to pull off – the science fiction side undermines the credibility of the procedural issue, and the procedural issue rarely delivers on the magic and wonder of the setting.

Me on Me

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The second part of Lori Ham's interview with me is now up on her No Name Cafe site. Here's an excerpt:

Café: What do you like best and which is harder — writing novels or TV? 

Lee: They are entirely different experiences. Television is very much a group effort and what you are writing is a blueprint that lots of other people are going to use as the basis for their creative work, whether it’s the actor, the director, the production designer. And when you write a script it’s not locked in stone. It’s going to change. It’s going to change because everybody has notes. It’s going to change because production concerns force rewrites. It’s going to change because of actors and directors. 

A book is entirely my own and unaffected by production concerns or actors. I’m the actors, the director, the production designer […] It’s not a blueprint. It is the finished product and it won’t change much once I am done with it. It’s not a group effort — I plot it myself and I write it by myself. It’s entirely in my head and I live it for months. Creatively speaking, there’s a big difference between writing prose and writing a script. In a book, you are seducing the reader. You are bringing them into your imagination and holding them there for as long as they’re reading the book. You construct everything. You construct the sets, the wardrobe, the world. You’re God. You can even read a character’s thoughts. 

Work Work Work

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If you're a regular reader of this blog, you've probably noticed that I haven't been posting as much lately. That's because I've been hard at work writing an action movie, an international co-production that is presently scheduled to be shot before the end of the year in Europe and China. 

For the last few weeks,  I've been toiling on various drafts of the detailed beat sheet but, if everything goes according to plan, I will start writing the screenplay in the next week or so. That will give me about four weeks to write the script which for me, coming from years in episodic TV and armed with a ridiculously detailed beat sheet, feels like plenty of time (we'll see if I feel the same way once I'm in the thick of it). 

While I await the official greenlight, I will go back to writing MR. MONK IS CLEANED OUT, my next Monk novel, which I had to mostly set aside while I concentrated on the film. This morning I re-read and edited what I've written so far, so I'm ready to plunge back in. I've also got the galleys for MR. MONK IN TROUBLE arriving tomorrow that need to be proofed in the next two weeks. 

It's nice to be busy! 

In the midst of all this, my Kindle arrived last night and I've only just started to play around with it, but I'm beginning to see already why it has become so popular. I'm looking forward to reading a novel on it to really get a feel for it. That probably won't happen until I hop a plane on August 12 for Owensboro, Kentucky to be a guest at the International Mystery Writers Festival.

“Before I was a TV writer, I was a street poet…”

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Screenwriter, novelist, and teacher William Rabkin reveals the method to his madness, and gives some good career advice to aspiring screenwriters, in an interview at Write On today. Here's an excerpt:

How important is diversification for a writer?

I’m a big advocate of diversification. Right now, all our markets are shrinking—not a great problem if you’re, say, the showrunner of Desperate Housewives. But for the rest of us, we’re watching TV staffs shrinking, original screenplay sales diving, publishing in serious trouble. We can’t know where the next opportunity is going to come from—so it’s best to make yourself available for as many opportunities as possible.

How can a writer best get his or her work noticed?

Write really well. Oh, and if you can show up in a sex tape with a celebrity, that would help, too.

A TV Truism

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Canadian TV writer Denis McGrath posted on his blog a simple TV truism that is nonetheless often taken for granted in this business:

The process of making a Friday Night Lights, or The Wire, or The Shield, is exactly the same process that results in Being Erica. It’s just as much work to conceive of, break story for, and execute a little confection like Ugly Betty or Reaper or Cupid as it is to make The West Wing.

No matter what the show is, whether it’s winning Emmys or going unnoticed, it still boils down to a showrunner and a bunch of writers in a room, breaking stories that can be told in four acts and shot in X number of days for X amount of money.

Seven Weeks

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UK-based Writer/producer Stephen Gallagher takes you step-by-step through the seven weeks between the initial conception of an ELEVENTH HOUR episode idea and the start of filming. His experience is typical of American episodic television production…and very, very different from the way things are done in the UK…where the same process can take months, if not longer.

Here’s the nub of it. It looks fast and scary. But for the writer, the actual amount of work in turning out an hour-long script for American TV barely differs from that involved in creating script for a UK hour. The difference is that the US system edits out the soul-destroying longueurs between stages, while your script sits on someone’s desk or some executive disappears on holiday. It’s the same act of writing, but you get to do it in real time; and because of that, you don’t run the risk of anyone – you included – falling out of love with what you’re doing.

Bend

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Writer/producer Lisa Klink, elaborating on Bill Rabkin's great essay on crafting spec scripts, passes along some important advice to aspiring TV writers. Yes, creativity is important. Yes, writing skill is important. Yes, people skills are important. But all of that won't move you forward in the television business unless you possess the most important talent of all: flexibility.

Which isn’t the same as spinelessness. You have to be willing to fight for the key elements which make your script work. You also have to be willing to change or even throw out elements you love if they’re not really crucial. Or affordable. Want to make yourself indispensable to a showrunner? Be the writer who can take any mess of an idea, stupid studio notes or ridiculous budget restrictions and still crank out a gem of a script.

Breaking In

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Screenwriter, producer, teacher, novelist and bon vivant William Rabkin has written an excellent article on Storylink about what a newbie writer has to do to break into television. You've still got to write an episodic spec script, but…

Your spec can’t simply be a good episode. It’s got to be bold, audacious, and big. It has to go places no one has ever thought of going before and do things no one has imagined doing. And it’s got to do it on the first page. Hell, on the first half page, because your reader may not bother going further than that. You’ve got to grab your readers right away and force them to keep reading.

In short, you need a gimmick.

No, typing your script in 3-D and including polarized glasses isn’t going to do it. What I mean by a gimmick is a transformative approach to storytelling that allows you to retell the series’ underlying narrative in a way that makes it seem new again. It’s a stylistic or structural element that shows that your vision is so intriguingly different that showrunners will fight to bring it to their series.

“Take Me To Your Leader, Lee Goldberg”

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One of the biggest, most persistent, and bone-headed cliches in TV & movie science fiction is the alien and/or robot who enunciates every syllable when he speaks, doesn’t use contractions, and calls everyone by their full name. Where did these aliens learn English? From watching movies about space aliens coming to earth? They can master travel at light speed, but can’t figure out how to say “don’t” instead of “do not?” Or why doesn’t someone, as William Rabkin laments, ever tell them:  

“In English, we have a last name that we share with our family and a first name that uniquely identifies us. And if you want to pass unrecognized as an alien, it’s important that you learn this distinction.” 

So why does this ridiculous conceit continue in movie after movie? Pure laziness […]it’s such a hideous cliche by now that you’d think even the aliens would have figured it out…

Apparently, the new WITCH MOUNTAIN remake is the latest offender to perpetuate this hoary cliche…

Of course, the cliche that comes next is the alien asking “what is this thing humans call love?” If I recall, the bad remake of DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL pulled that one, too.