Over the last couple of weeks I’ve stepped up my participation on some blogs and online forums, along with updating this blog a bit more regularly. I’ve also started going through my links updating them and adding other sites. It’s difficult for me because I find it so easy to delve into a project and rarely come up for air. I mean, after doing the things that life demands like being a father, passable husband, etc, it’s difficult to find the time to work on projects. Visiting blogs and forums seems like a colossal waste of precious time.
I’m beginning to rethink that. There is so much to learn and every connection made is a potential opportunity. Face it, we’re social animals and we crave to associate with like-minded people. It’s simply a matter of balance.
Anyway, as a result of crawling out of the sand, as minimal as it is, I’ve had several unsolicited Face Book friend requests and a couple of emails from like-minded people. I think that’s a good thing.
Ok, I’ve popped my head out, taken a deep breath, and now I’m plunging back in.
If you’re a writer, or aspire to be one, you should be visiting Joe Konrath’s blog on a regular basis. Also, I recommend downloading his ebook, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing (same name as his blog). Hell, it’s only $2.99. Basically, it’s material from his excellent blog.
One thing that strikes me as I’ve been perusing A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing is how much Mr. Konrath has evolved in his thinking regarding self publishing. Early on, he was ambivalent at best when it came to self publishing, but now he’s a huge proponent. Rightly so I believe. I suggest you visit this post and see what I mean:
Two hundred and seventy-six thousand, one hundred and eleven.
That’s how many self-pubbed books I’ve sold.
About 245k of these on Kindle.
20k on Smashwords,
5k on Createspace,
The rest divvied up among Nook, OverDrive, and my website.
In March, I earned over $68,000. But I know that number can go up. Other authors have earned more. A lot more.
It’s been fascinating to watch how this has all developed over the last two years.
Keep in mind that Mr. Konrath is a dead tree published author through Hyperion. He’s finding it considerably more advantageous to self Epublish rather than going the traditional route. He’s not alone. New York Times best selling author Barry Eisler turned down a $500,000 dead tree deal opting instead to go the self Epublishing route. Yeah, it’s old news at this point, but worth repeating. He and Joe discuss it here. If you haven’t read it yet, I suggest grabbing a beer (or beverage of your choice) and taking the time to read it. It’s a long one, maybe you’d better grab a couple of beers. For me it was about a six pack read, but ... I digress.
One thing that I’ve noticed while visiting several forums and blog comment sections regarding this subject is the hostility from many. Its almost as if some are putting up a battering wall in a last ditch--although hopeless--effort to stave off the inevitable shifting of the old paradigm.
What will that shift be? Hell, I don’t know for certain. I’m simply an unpublished nobody with an opinion and we all know that there is no such thing as a humble opinion. One change that I’m pretty certain of, though, is that the gatekeepers for talent will no longer be agents and corporate publishers. That job will shift to you and me; the public. The reasons are many, I’m not going to rehash them because they’ve already been discussed on Mr. Konrath’s blog in his posts and in his comment sections. Go read it. I’m certain that most reasonable people will be persuaded.
One of my regular stops on the big, wide world of the world wide web is American Pop Lit. It’s an interesting place to visit and I highly recommend it. Since the latter part of March, King Wenclas has been holding what he calls the All-Time American Writer Tournament. Yes, it’s mighty lofty, but, trust me, the King knows his American Literature so it’s in good hands.
Throughout the various entries and brackets there is a plethora of writers mentioned. Everyone from Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, London, Hemingway, Stein, Oats, Steinbeck; you name it. Hell, even Ayn Rand is bracketed. Stephen King is mentioned, too, and quickly dismissed:
There are no major figures, with the possible exception of Stephen King, who’s a terrible writer. is too limited to have the artistic and intellectual ambition of a Rand or Sontag, has no personality, and breaks no new artistic ground.
I would disagree with every point regarding Stephen King. I’m not a huge King fan simply because I’m not in to his go to genre, but I’ve read enough of his novels and short stories to know that he is indeed a very talented writer and is far from “limited” in the artistic and intellectual department. I’ve always wondered at the animosity towards King from many in the writing community, but that is a whole other topic.
No, what stuck out to me while reading through the various posts of the All-Time American Writer Tournament was that, as far as I can tell, there is not a single mention of Jim Harrison.
Ebooks overtake paperbacks and hard covers? If you thought that was a foregone conclusion, we suggest you check this out. Ebooks topped in sales in February. Sounds surprising for sure, but ebook sales have touched $90.3 million during the month, recording a 202 percent increase compared with the same month previous year.
This is a particularly entertaining post of Konrath’s
Part of Mr. Konrath’s paradigm includes what he feels is an optimal price point for self publishers being at between .99 and 2.99 per title. He’s really big on the .99 price point regarding Amazon and he has some very sound reasoning to his argument. I suggest perusing his blog to understand his P.O.V.
Advocates for 99-cent e-books claim the low teaser price helps them gain new readers. But opponents worry that if readers come to expect the 99-cent price, it will no longer be effective as bait. Then what? they ask. Will authors start doing penny promotions in order to get their books noticed?
“Ask anybody who sells anything for a living: no business wins in a price war,” Cronin warns. “And that’s what we’re looking at right now.”
Or put another way, if authors don’t value their work, will readers?
To be honest, I embrace Konrath’s argument much more readily than the above. Again, I suggest perusing his blog and listen to his sound reasoning.
I have a WAMP server setup on my laptop for web development purposes. In the past I’ve always downloaded and installed each component (Apache, PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin) separately, sifting through line after line of configuration code to get everything to work together properly how I want it. Inevitably, there is always some kind of hang up; some permission snafu with Windows 7, something left commented. I’d be lucky to get through it in a couple of hours. All in all, it is a major pain in the ass.
It’s such a pain that I’ve been putting off doing a much needed hard drive format and OS reinstall.
I don’t really have much of a reason to post this other than an attempt to counter the idiotic recipes for farmers cheese out there on the internet. For example, in this vid, the person dirties 6 dishes, uses a shit load of salt, vinegar, and what not. She stirs this, squeezes that, sprinkles this; whole milk only pasteurized once, etc.
Most of the recipes for farmers cheese are similar.
To hell with that.
My wife, who is from Ukraine, makes farmers cheese all the time. We consume vast quantities of the stuff. It’s tasty and nutritious. It’s so simple that you don’t need a video to demonstrate it.
1) Take a gallon jug of whatever milk you like (we use 2%) and remove about 1/2 cup of milk. Pasteurized once, twice? A million times? Who gives a shit. We get ours from Costco.
2) Put about 2 TBS of sour cream inside of the jug.
3) Set the jug on the counter and leave it there for a couple of days.
4) Place the jug inside of a pot of water (enough water to reach at least half way up the jug) and bring the water to a boil. Let it boil for about 20 minutes.
5) Carefully slosh the contents around to mix it a little bit. It’s hot so be careful.
6) Pour the contents into a cheesecloth lined colander and let it sit for a couple of hours.
7) Enjoy your farmers cheese. Store it inside of an air tight container in the fridge.
The only dish that gets dirtied is the colander. No stirring, sprinkling, twisting.
I received a comment from Unk informing me that the douche bag that stole his domain and is holding it hostage lives in The Netherlands. Unk refuses to acquiesce (dude from The Netherlands can stick it up his ass) and now has a new web home here.
I just finished with the fourth rewrite of something I’ve been working on for some time. It was a good pass through this time, and I believe it will make a big difference. To be honest, I’m beginning to get sick of this story, though. I love the story, don’t get me wrong, but after so long, I’m starting to get really, really, really sick of it.
So, while the going is good, I’m going to go through a final polish; followup on some notes, and call it good. For now anyway.
Part of the reason, beyond becoming sick of this story--did I mention that I’m getting sick of this story?--is that I’m itching to move on to something new that I’ve been stewing over for the past year or so. It’s something that I’m excited about but refuse to let myself move to it until I finish the current project. I’ve limited myself to quickly scribbling down notes, scene outlines, and bits of dialog.
I can see that beer at the end of this long walk ...
After a long hiatus I returned to find that the Unknown Screenwriter was nowhere to be found. It’s a shame because his website was one of the most useful and entertaining. I’ve been trying to find out what the hell happened to the site, but had no luck. Then today I stumbled upon this.
It appears to be a case of letting a domain lapse and a domain broker jumping all over it and holding it hostage. On the one hand it blows. On the other hand it’s good that, apparently, the Unknown Screenwriter will be back in one form or another.
I am actually undergoing negotiations right now to get the domain back… LOL. The domain broker is definitely holding the domain hostage. He wants xxxx Euros for it which as of today, comes out to $xxxx USD and for that amount of money, he can shove it up his ass. I can do it all over again if need be… In fact it might be fun.
I’m really curious as to what country in Europe the hostage holder lives.
1. INTRODUCE YOUR CHARACTER BY SHOWING THEIR WORLD & GRAND PASSION
The thing you do when introducing your character is to show their world and show them doing the thing they love most. Show their grand passion / defining trait. The one thing that’s the centre of their whole universe.
Reading through all of Michael Arndt’s thoughts one realizes that it is much easier said than done. The thing that is interesting to me, however, is that I think that many writers of great scripts probably achieve a close facsimile without even realizing it. Think about it, pick up any good script and read the first act. I bet that it very closely achieves most of the six points if not all of them. Hell, to all of you “non professionals” out there (me included), pick up one of your scripts that you feel is sub par. It’s probably one of your very earliest attempts. Chances are that it fails on at least four or five of the points. Now, pick up one that you think to yourself, “Man, this isn’t half bad”. I bet in that first act you can see where you’ve hit at least three or four of the points and you weren’t even aware of it. Sure, the hits may have been glancing, but at least contact was made.
I don’t know what the point is that I’m trying to make. I don’t think I’m making a point so much as making an observation. That observation being that it is as important to be able to identify why something works as it is to identify why it doesn’t work. I mean, it’s kind of two doors into the same room, right?
I’ve been working on this project for almost three years, now. Before I actually typed FADE IN: I had been thinking about it for at least five or six years prior. That’s a total of nearly a decade with this thing bouncing around in my cranium. After I completed the first draft—which was really nothing more than a glorified working outline—I set it aside.
After a couple of weeks I read through it and hated it. I still like the idea and I’m still sold on the story. The protagonist, antagonist, and all of the supporting characters are interesting. In my mind I have what I believe to be a very compelling story taking place within a valid world, and interesting people populate that world. The problem is that what is on the page does not accurately portray what I see in my mind’s eye. The flaws are glaring. I suppose being able to recognize that there are indeed flaws should be thought of as a bonus. But actually pinpointing the flaws is what has proven to be difficult. It’s impossible to fix the flaws unless they are adequately identified. It is one thing to read over a draft and have the ability to be able to recognize that it’s flawed, but quite another to actually identify the actual mechanics that cause it to be flawed.
So I took the script and forced myself to identify the areas that did not feel right; that’s the easy part. Then I really thought long and hard. Many of the problems are simple transition issues; getting from point A to point B in a seamless manner that does not distract one from the story. Ok, that seems helpful. But what exactly does one do to address it? Then, last night to be specific, I had the proverbial EUREKA! moment. In this one instance the path out was putting a certain character to better use. Said character is minor in the sense that he only shows up in one scene, but the consequences of his presence are major. His small moment in the sun is a major event in the story. But he was bordering on being a simple story advancement mechanism.
I needed this character to do more, to want more. In his brief moment in the story he certainly wants something. That “want” helps to propel the story for the main protagonist. But it was a “want” of convenience; a device. So, I elevated his “want” to a “need” and, therefore, the actions he is willing to employ to satisfy that “need” were then plausibly utilized in addressing what I felt was a major flaw earlier in the story. Consequently, this adjustment addressed issues throughout the remaining second act. In fact it was hugely important in improving THE pivotal moment in the transition from second act into the third act. I can’t even begin to tell you how important this one small adjustment is. It also added credibility to the actions of the main antagonist. It created a sort of nexus, if you will, between the protagonist and the antagonist that adds credibility to the advancement of their conflict.
EUREKA!
Now, for those of you who are pros, or at least have real experience, you’re probably rolling your eyes and murmuring, “duh”. But for me it’s a beer-worthy moment.
I didn’t know Dino De Laurentiis, but I miss him already. The movies need pirate captains and Dino definitely was one of those, a wheeling, dealing and scheming operator who never exactly acquired first-class taste but made a lot of interesting things happen.
Several weeks ago John August put forth the notion of creating a playlist as a tool for writing.
Before you start writing any screenplay, make a playlist of music that feels like the movie. It’s a fundamental part of my process.
I’ve done this from the beginning. For Go, I had a mix tape with Christmas songs and rave beats. 1 For Big Fish, I burned a CD. In the age of iTunes, it’s vastly easier. Think of movies that resemble your movie, then click through their soundtracks, previewing tracks before adding them to a custom playlist.
Most of these songs would never be in your final movie. Rather, you are assembling music that reminds you of the feeling you’re trying to create. More crucially, you want music that reminds you why you’re writing this script.
A good playlist helps you get started. A great playlist helps you finish.
It is interesting. Amazingly, I’ve never done this. For me, listening to music--or anything--makes it near impossible to write. I think I’m too ADD. I find myself drifting into the music; letting it envelop me to the point that I can’t do anything else. It probably has something to do with spending nearly twenty years of my life deeply ensconced in the music business.
I can, however, listen to some music, let my mind paint a picture, and then use that as inspiration.
Yeah, I generally dislike remakes and, yes, this is a remake. But I’m looking forward to this film in a big way. Much of the reason is because of the original story but the biggest reason is that this isn’t just any remake. This is a remake in the hands of Ethan and Joel Coen. Plus, with Jeff Bridges playing the role of Marshal Reuben J. Cogburn, well hell, this has the makings for a film that I’m looking forward to, remake or not.
