A MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING
LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT . . .
FINALLY . . . A Sample of Excellence
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Volume 3,
Issue 12
July 25, 2005
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R e a d i n g W r i t e r
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Welcome to The VERB! Ever heard of a polydactyl cat? We have one. His name is Simon and he has thumbs! Our vet calls him a "Hemingway" cat because, rumor has it, Ernest himself introduced polydactyls to the US down on the Florida Keys. I'm beginning to think our little fellow might be channeling the writer. Whenever I sit at the computer, he without fail leaps on my left shoulder and camps out there, watching me type. It's the funniest thing. Take a look at his mittens here. We've updated our Readers page, and even added several new photos! Check out the beautiful happy people who are reading your writings! Seven more days left in our Query Letter contest. Deadline is midnight (Pacific) Sunday. Also, be sure to check the website for our next fun contest beginning August 1. Here's a hint: CSI. ~~~ FOR
YOUR RESEARCH -
Screenwriting Movie Script Database is exactly that. This site allows you to read scripts online in their proper format. Script Writing Secrets is an e-book website that provides great tips and a discount on their screenplay software, Scriptware. Write A Movie In 21 Days. Join this Yahoo group and write a script following Viki King's book, How To Write A Movie in 21 Days.
When you finish that script, grab some much-needed attention by
entering it in a contest. Finally, your temporary Freedom from Toil is here. Forget about this ungodly heat wave and play a few games of movie Hangman! Now, without further ado ... let the action begin!
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| MARTHA ALDERSON
Wide swaths of banner paper cover most of the walls of my office A visual learner, I like "seeing" my plot and scenes at a glance. Draped from wall to wall hang two horizontal Plot Planners, one for each main character from my current historical novel. Facing from another wall are suspended two vertical Scene Trackers, ceiling to floor, one each for the main characters. Last year, while working on my non-fiction book on plot--BLOCKBUSTER PLOTS Pure & Simple, an entirely different wallpaper configuration covered the walls. A reminder of my theme frames my computer screen: "Speaking up, speaking out and speaking back comes at a cost, but will set you free." A reminder of the five senses: smell, hear, see, touch and taste, dangles from my desk lamp. Reference books of the time period sit in stacks on either side of me like bookends. Hard copies of my project scribbled with critique notes from my readers clutter the surface of my desk. From the daybed behind me comes snoring, my two dogs. Two quotes from the bulletin board guide me: "What you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic to it." - Goethe "Hard work is our outer answer to an inner question. It is our reply to our soul's urgent query: do you value what I am showing you? Shall I show you more?" - Unknown
Martha Alderson, M.A. is the author of BLOCKBUSTER PLOTS Pure & Simple. She is a teacher, plot consultant, speaker and an award-winning writer of historical fiction. She has taught plot and scene development and historical novel writing at the University of California at Santa Cruz Extension, Learning Annex, writers conferences and workshops in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and in Washington State. She writes a plot column for The Bulletin, The Voice of the California Writers Club and has written for Writers Digest Magazine. Martha is available for workshops and plot consultations at martha@blockbusterplots.com. Visit her website for plot tips. |
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SAY WHAT? Commonly Misused Words
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Trouper means a
member of a theatrical troupe; an actor. Trooper means a
state police officer. |
A MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING
 In
1939, Orson Welles, who had just scared the country with his radio
broadcast of The War of the Worlds, was full of himself. RKO Studios in
Hollywood had offered him a contract. The 24-year-old could make any
picture he wanted with total creative control. A perk that is reserved for
the famous, not the greenhorns.
For almost a year, Welles wrestled with his unlimited opportunity. What on earth should he film? He found the answer when he came across a script titled American, written by a battle-hardened Hollywood screenwriter by the name of Herman Mankiewicz. It was the story of a newspaper magnate, loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst. Welles loved the insider info (Mankiewicz knew Hearst well and drew much from his life), and the chance to add his own two cents' worth to the final project. Welles had his movie. He would not only assume the starring role of Charles Foster Kane, he would direct and produce as well. His imaginative storytelling style caught everyone by surprise. All involved soon realized they were witnessing something extraordinary. The filming lasted ten weeks with a budget of less than one million bucks. When the highly guarded subject matter was revealed at previews in February 1941, Hearst went ballistic. In his obsessive campaign against the film, he used his money and power to keep it out of theaters. He warned that no Hearst newspaper would publish either a review or an ad for the film. Gossip columnist and Hearst confidante Louella Parsons, after attending a screening, telephoned executives from every major studio and reportedly said, “Mr. Hearst says if you boys want private lives, I'll give you private lives.” The movie finally opened on May 1, 1941 to brilliant notices. But naturally, the Hearst "boycott" affected its success at the box office. The film closed its first run with a loss of some $150,000. Later that year, the film won nine Oscar nominations for, among other things, groundbreaking techniques in photography, editing and sound. It lost in every category, except one: Best Screenplay. Hearst died in 1951. But the work of fiction he so hated, and fought to kill, lives on. These days, Citizen Kane is considered to be the greatest film ever made.
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Screenwriting
is pure visual writing. If it can't be shown on screen or heard in dialogue--it
can't be on the page.LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT . . .
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SIR
ALFRED
HITCHCOCK
Born: August
13, 1899
"When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?,' I say, 'Your salary.'"
~ Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, England. ~ The son of greengrocers William and Emma, Hitch grew up with an older brother and sister in part of London's East End. ~ When Hitch was five, his dad sent him to the local police station with a note. It asked the sergeant to lock up the mischievous lad for a few agonizing moments. When the policeman opened the cell, he said, "This is what we do to naughty boys." This experience so traumatized Hitch, he feared cops for the rest of his life. ~ Hitch attended the Jesuits' St. Ignatius College, but left at 16 to study engineering and navigation at the University of London. ~ He began his filmmaking career in 1919 illustrating title cards for silent films. There, he learned scripting, editing and art direction, and soon rose to assistant director by 1922. ~ While working on an early film that was never finished, Hitch met Alma Reville, and married her in December of 1926. (Throughout Hitch's career, his wife would hold tremendous influence as his in-house story editor. It was common knowledge that the greatest compliment one could receive from Hitch was that "Alma liked the screenplay very much.") ~ Hitchcock adapted for the screen Charles Bennett's stage play Blackmail. It became England's first "talkie". ~ His directorial debut was The Pleasure Garden in 1925. The next year he tackled The Lodger. It was a huge success and launched his career. He soon became the most successful and highest-paid director in England. ~ When World War II loomed over Europe, however, Hitchcock emigrated to the U.S. His first American film was Rebecca. ~ From there, Hitch entered his most productive period. He made several films that would become minor classics (Dial M for Murder, To Catch a Thief, Strangers on a Train) and four masterpieces (Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho.) ~ In 1955 Hitch became a U.S. citizen. Afterward, he launched Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the TV show that catapulted him to celebrity status. ~ Although Hitch didn't do the actual "writing" of his screenplays, he was involved in every aspect of the craft, supervising and guiding his writers. Some resented the intrusion; others admitted the director inspired them to rise above their own standard. ~ His most popular contribution to the screenplay was the "McGuffin," a diversionary plot device that kept the characters busy, but contributed little or nothing to the real story. Hitch illustrated it thusly: "It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?' And the other answers, 'Oh that's a McGuffin.' The first one asks 'What's a McGuffin?' 'Well' the other man says, 'It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers 'Well, then that's no McGuffin!' So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all." ~ Hitch liked to make cameos in his movies. See them here. ~ Hitchcock wrote, produced and directed films up until 1979. Despite his penchant for murder, mayhem and shock, he and his family led a quiet and unostentatious life, preferring the comforts of home to the world of Hollywood. ~ In the last year of his life, Hitchcock received the American Film Institute's lifetime achievement award and was knighted in England. He died in Los Angeles from liver failure and heart problems. He was cremated.
Read more from
Steven DeRosa's book, |
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Sentences are easygoing elements of communication. They're happy squeezing into a half-inch area or stretching across a page. They're even willing to fill up an entire paragraph, if you possess a Faulkner fetish. All they want, really, is to convey a complete thought. Yet, we writers have so much to say, we sometimes stuff a sentence like we're stuffing a laundry basket. Granted, the sentence can bear the extra load, but in the end, what do we have? Breathless readers.
EXAMPLE:
CLEANED UP:
EXAMPLE: CLEANED UP:
EXAMPLE: CLEANED UP:
Uncertain
of a piece of your writing? |
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Use
a descriptive title tag. It shows up in the search engines, and makes
clear to visitors what they will find on your site.
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How ambitious are you? |
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PREVIOUS SURVEY
Days
- 9%
"Actually, I thought I would be submitting it to you in days, but when I re-read it, ugh! I can't let you see it yet. Back to work." - Rebecca Clayton "Months and months. Try, a year!" - Lisa Hunt "I submitted one yesterday (email), and hope, if nothing gets in the way, to have another one out the door by Friday--four days!" - Hugh Whirley "I have three projects at the moment. One will be ready in a week. One will be ready in, oh, let's say, three months. The third one is so far from its end, I can't even see it. I blame the heat." - Jane McGair "I'm going to shoot an optimist arrow into the sky and say a few months. Maybe that will make me work harder." - Aaron Faust "I plan to complete my novel in another month. I am in the final (hopefully!) editing of a book I have been laboring on for two years. Aunt Lutie's Cafe is a mystery with a touch of romance set in a small East Texas town with characters I have come to love AND hate. Synopses have gone out and come back; some had encouraging comments, some came back with no comments and one had a scathing note attached telling me they didn't take mainstream novels (though both their online guidelines and Writer's Market plainly said they did). So I'm off to my favorite POD publisher--if I keep the promise to myself to make this a final edit/rewrite and let my baby go." - Barbara Deming
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Subject:
CHALKBOARD submission
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GRANDCHILDREN "They operate their world much like a business corporation, where the tooth fairy is their financial partner and a reliable one at that."
Grandchildren live in a fantasy world where monsters roam and where dragons breathe fire. They believe the angels are their appointed guardians and in submitting to that guardianship, they insist that their best interests are primary to any the angels may have with regard to them. They have a dream place, best known in the world as the Christmas Island, where Santa Claus is as real as the cookies on Christmas morn. They operate their world much like a business corporation, where the tooth fairy is their financial partner and a reliable one at that. Grandchildren are in a world of their own, a make-believe place where school is but an idea from their parents and grandparents; where homework is a problem pressed upon them for the pleasure of their elder adults, including their teachers; where the Game Boy and other electronic divine things are a priority to any other chores heaped upon them; where birthday gifts and any other holiday (among them Christmas) presents are a given; where the home is their initial abode of residence before they venture into the bigger world of their tomorrow. Grandchildren live in a world of magic, filled with dreams painted in rainbow hues. They have a healthy insistence that they are capable of shaping their own world into as beautiful as the movie STAR WARS, and/or as ugly as the duckling of the fictional tale. They have the ability to adjust to a fast-changing environment, heightened only by the exercise of their rich imagination in assessing their way out of a difficult situation. They believe there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and they will follow that trail until they find their pot of gold. Grandchildren have two sides to their psyche: the goodness in which they are born with and the badness which they choose to acquire (or are driven to acquire) as they grow into adulthood. At a tender age of youth, they profess to understand the world of the adult, which they solemnly vow to alter upon attaining the age of puberty. They are fearless in their attempt to go where adults before them hesitated to even try, much less take control. But grandchildren are in control of their thinking abilities and their physical behavior. In their endeavor to attain adulthood in as rapidly as the rush of a tsunami wave, they determine that nothing, not even the peril of failure, is a hurdle they cannot overcome. Grandchildren are a breed of exceptional intellect. They are born with an unbelievable logic that defies the highest norm of reasoning upon which their parents designed the world especially for them. Their future is their own, built upon their intense desire to succeed, to be the tops among all the intelligent of their generation. The competition to get to the top is harsh and as bloody as the red corpuscles that flow through their bodies, but they are a resilient lot.
© 2005 Lilia Westmore |
Here's a chance to show off your
writing! |
ARE YOU HIP TO HOLLYWOOD?
Don't wait till you get to Hollywood to learn the language. Start now by taking the quiz below. Which responses seem the most appropriate?
1. "I got a minute--what's your logline?" (a) "I prefer to use
my real name if that's okay."
2. "Do you by chance have a package?" (a) "Sorry. I don't
even know a famous person's maid." 3. "We see him at ten on Friday. How's your pitch?" (a)
"What's a pitch?"
4. "Are you sitting down? Your script has just been optioned by Ron Howard!" (a)
"But I didn't steal it and I can prove it!"
5. "We're intrigued by the topic, but may we first see your treatment?" (a)
"Well ... um, I promise to treat everyone fairly."
6. "No official word yet, but all signs look as though they'll greenlight it." (a) "Pardon
me?"
1. C - A logline is a one or two-sentence summary of your story. It should introduce the main character, his predicament and his goal to resolve it. (Study your local TV listings for examples.) 2. A - A package consists of several attractive production elements that almost guarantees a successful project: a complete script, budget, commitments from stars, or a famous director or producer, a shooting schedule. (The firmer the elements, the shinier the package.) 3. C - A pitch is a writer's 10-minute presentation before film executives. It should be focused on the main characters, the conflict, the resolution and the genre. It should include descriptions of a few compelling scenes to help executives visualize it. (Study movie trailers. Y'know, the little previews that make you say, "Oooh, I want to see that movie!"') 4. B - An option is a contractual agreement between a movie studio/production company/producer and a writer. For a certain amount of money, and a certain amount of time, it places a "hold" on a script. This guarantees no one else can buy it out from under them while they're setting up the project. (If the movie executives fail to get it done within the specified time, at least 18 months, the script is free to go elsewhere.) 5. C - A treatment is a marketing tool. It's designed to convince execs to read the screenplay. It should reveal the writer's take on the story, via tone, pace, characters, subplots, visual imagery and genre. (Generally runs 5 to 20 pages.) 6. C - To greenlight a project is to formally approve the financial aspect of the production. A very good sign. Barring a major catastrophe, the movie will be made! (An executive who has authority to grant greenlight status, and there are very few, is said to have "greenlight power." Kinda like the Incredible Hulk.)
© 2005 Elizabeth Guy |
FINALLY . . . A Sample of Excellence
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ILSA
RICK
ILSA
RICK
ILSA
RICK
ILSA
RICK Ilsa's eyes well up with tears. Rick puts his hand to her chin and raises her face to meet his own.
RICK
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Julius J. Epstein
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© 2005 ReadingWriters. All rights reserved. This ezine is a labor of love, and may not be reproduced without permission. All correspondence should be sent to Elizabeth Guy. |