Matt Wallace’s Top 10 Points for Professional Writers

Would-be professionals: take “writer” and put “director / actor / editor,” etc.

Matt Wallace’s Top 10 Points for Professional Writers

The Danger of a Single Story

From TED.com: Chimamanda Adichie discusses the danger of having only one story about a person or place.

The video and my comments after the jump.

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The MacGuffin Exposed

“In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers.”
- Alfred Hitchcock -

If you’ve ever taken a film class, you know what the MacGuffin is.

(I actually got into an argument once with a teacher who insisted the MacGuffin was the most important element in a film.  While it’s important to the characters, it is almost irrelevant to the actual film, or to the audience’s experience.)

TVTropes.com has a great wiki set up about the MacGuffin and the sub-groups they’ve discovered.  It’s a fun read, especially for avid story theorists.

TVTropes.com -> The MacGuffin

(discovered this link courtesy of the lovely archives at JohnAugust.com)

Running a Television Show

Found this blogpost on Twitter, courtesy of Matt F’n Wallace. It’s a piece by Kurt Sutter, a TV showrunner, and it digs into the little-mentioned world of television runners. It’s a world I’m currently fascinated by. Film directors brag about shooting a 2 hour film in 30 days. A television showrunner could be overseeing the production of between 13 and 22 hour-long features, each of which will be turned around in a matter of weeks. In short, these guys know the process, and they know how to multi-task.

Read more here: The Show Must Be Run

Google’s Coming Monopoly on Knowledge

Found this (admittedly somewhat slanted in tone) breakdown of the Google Books lawsuit currently underway:

The Fight Over the Google of All Libraries

It’s worth reading for yourself, as well as following the most recent update here (as of Sept 25).

Key points to consider:

• “Google’s mission is to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’”  It doesn’t say what that will cost, and it begs the question: if one has a monopoly on all the world’s knowledge, do they have a right to charge for it, especially when it can be transferred to anyone else at zero cost?
• Google isn’t known for charging for its services…up to this point.  Right now, thanks to “free,” Google has been able to stake claims in the markets for email software, office document processing, telephony, and a lot more.

Whenever I hear about something Google is doing, I think back to an old Star Trek episode my father used to tell me about (Ep 41: I, Mudd).  A group decides the human race is too dangerous to be free, so they decide to take control of us. When asked how they will do it, they respond thusly:

Makes you realize how open to interpretation a phrase like “Don’t be Evil” can be.

Juggling Real Life and Writing

Mur Lafferty (author of Playing for Keeps and the Heaven series, amongst other celebrated works) posted a terrific article about the problem of juggling “real life” and writing*.

Welcome to Real Life

* replace writing with drawing, composing, editing, dancing; whatever your particular passion is.

John August: Breaking Storytelling Conventions

MakingOf.com has an interview with John August about his screenwriting process.  As always, John August demonstrates his knowledge of the craft by breaking down concepts into relatable terms, and sharing really original insight into the craft — no respun Syd Field here.

Normally I’d embed the video here, but MakingOf.com has some weird Iframe code going on, so I’m just providing the link.

John August on Breaking Storytelling Conventions

And, as a screenwriter, you should already be a regular visitor to JohnAugust.com.

Read More Screenplays (And How)

It’s a commonly-held bit of wisdom that if you want to become a better screenwriter, you need to read a lot of screenplays.

Well, Don Boose over at Simply Scripts.com has made that pursuit a whole lot easier.  Simply Scripts.com has compiled the WGA’s Top 101 Screenplays with links to nearly all of them (some with multiple drafts available).  The list is a comprehensive blend of great writing from the last hundred years: Pulp Fiction stands shoulder-to-shoulder wth North-by-Northwest and Dr. Strangelove.

So get over there and start reading.  There’s no better place to learn than the footsteps of the masters.

Some interesting facts…

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Ira Glass on Creativity

Ira Glass is the host of arguably one of the most popular programs in radio, This American Life.

Over four segments of an interview (presumably for Current.TV), Ira basically lays bare the nature of storytelling, the difficulty of it, and what it takes to make it.

It took me years to figure out what he explains in a few minutes.  It’s something every creative person should hear.  Here are the rest of the segments:

Ira Glass Part Two (Finding a Decent Story: Be Brutal)

Ira Glass Part Three (On Good Taste, And Sucking Major)

Ira Glass Part Four (Two Common Errors of the Beginner)

Wanna Make ‘Fight Club’, but you only have $7.50?

Then fear not! Your dream can be a reality!

Because it turns out, if you only have $7.50 and you want to make ‘Fight Club’, you are actually trying to make a movie called “UKM: Ultimate Killing Machine“, which was on The Movie Channel when I woke up at 6:30 this morning.

I haven’t gotten to see their actual budget breakdown, but I’ve done a basic estimate based on what little bit of the film I caught.

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