Stumbled across iFeatures 15:00 yesterday, completely by accident. By 16:00 had made contact with two separate directors (previously unknown to me) who were both considering an iFeatures entry and were looking for writers.
Got a synopsis of one of my spec features into the hands of one of the directors by 01:30 this morning. Aiming to get an outline of another feature to the other director by close of play today.
That’s a good kind of busy.
Oh noes! I have been rumbled! Look at this comment that appeared on my A Bout with About page:
YAWN!
Funny how people think that anyone is actually interested in their life stories, they seem to think that peopel will awe at their written life stories or opinions. Bloggers also tend to consider themselves “intellectuals” who have these brilliant ideas and an ability to contribute something.
Sorry to break this to you, but no one cares. Your not making a difference, your just wasting time.
Do you honeslty think that your serving some higher cause… or any cause for that matter?
Get that? No one cares! Oh woe is me.
Er, except maybe…well, check out the title of my blog. Yep. There you go. Bingo.
Actually, chief, I’m serving the exact same cause that I suspect you are. Self-promotion. I don’t labour under the false illusion that anyone gives more than a dancing cow turd about my blog. Hence the non-ironic name.
As for me tending to consider myself an intellectual…well, that’s not really on the cards. I mean, I can spell and add up numbers and stuff but I don’t have any letters after my name, and you got to have letters if you want to be one of them intellectuals.
Anyway, it’s been fab but I really must go and waste more time not making a difference to anything.
Pip-pip!
Alan’s diary has just gone up on the 0110 website. Were you the woman in the beret?
A milestone. I just got paid for writing something.
I promised myself some time ago that I would not refer to myself as a writer until I got paid for writing. That was my line in the sand.
Well, I’ve crossed it. It’s official. I’m a writer.
Piers diary entry today in the annals of 0110 is possibly the oddest yet. But not for the reasons you’d expect.
Michelle has just added her diary entry to the 0110 scribes diaries.
I just know that some elements of that are going to come back and haunt me in the small hours of tomorrow morning.
As a special tribute to C4’s 3D week (all next week, depth perception fans) here is a special 3D blog post from yours truly.
You’ll need my special FREE 3D GLASSES to appreciate it to the max. Whaddya mean you don’t have any? They’re right in your hands. Follow these simple steps and you too can be in 3D heaven.
1. Form an ‘O’ with the thumb and index finger of each hand
2. Place the middle finger of each hand on your jawline
3. Bend your face down to meet the inside of the thumb-and-index finger ‘O’s
4. Look up again, keeping the ‘O’s against your eyes.
Yay! You’re now seeing in 3D! Better still, you look like a Spitfire pilot! Now run around the room making machine gun noises.
I do this every day. It’s good for the soul.
Oh dear. I’ve been putting this off. Look, Dead Poets Society is a very nice film. Very inspirational. Very Robin Williams. Very Carpe Diem.
But the script is just so dull! It’s just a big pile of disjointed dialogue, a series of vignettes vaguely unified by one or two faint story threads.
I think the problem is that I just never cared that much about the characters. I’ve been wondering why that is, because they portray some pretty fundmental behaviours: heroic inspiration, railing against authority, thwarted love, treachery and betrayal and – ultimately – self-slaughter.
But my question throughout was always why? Why are you behaving like this? We’re given few clues. There are one or two big signposts: the stern father, the nice-but-unavailable girl. But subtlety? No. None of that.
I finally worked out why. What we’ve got here is a case of implicit characterisation. We’re meant to know and understand these young people and this teacher because, hey, that was us back at High School. Remember those New England autumns? Remember those pacts we made at graduation? Remember our authoritarian fathers who demanded that we become lawyers?
No. Sorry. I’m English. I mean, I get what you’re saying here, but it’s not my experience. That’s not where I’m from. I’m understanding it second hand. I appreciate it, but I don’t grok it. Get where I’m coming from?
So is it lazy scriptwriting to rely on the audience’s collective experience to illuminate the story? No, it’s not. In fact, it’s very smart indeed. Great storytellers tap into the psyche of the audience. They know what scares you. They know what inspires you. They know what disgusts you. They know what makes your heart melt. And all they have to do is hint at it and point the way. You make the journey at their behest.
So Dead Poets Society is a classic example of a story that surfs on the collective memory of the United States of America. It probably inspired a whole generation of Americans.
It just doesn’t inspire me. Sorry.
Here’s an ongoing challenge. Pick it up and have a go whenever you want.
Write a script in one day.
The Rules
* Any medium: stage, screen, radio, telly, web
* Any genre
* Any duration
* The script must have a beginning, middle and end
* Don’t hassle over the formatting and spelling, just make it readable
* One draft only, no rewrites
* The thing must be readable and performable within 24 hours
The Guidance
* Be happy
* Be brave
* Trust your gut instincts
* Let the story lead you
Writing like this is a bit like dowsing, I suppose. Just wander around waiting for the hazel twig to twitch, see what you find. It might be nothing at all. It might be nonsense. It might be a gem.
Just like you don’t have to have an objective when you go out for a stroll in the countryside, you don’t have to have a reason to write a script. The journey is the destination.
Now my side of the bargain: you write it, I’ll read it. I’ll give a summary script report for every script sent to me, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the story, potential areas for development and an overall assessment. This offer is good for as long as this blog post remains visible within my blog.
Disclaimer: I’m not a professional script reader; I read scripts in order to improve as a writer. But I have had excellent responses from people whom I have read scripts for.
Course, if you don’t want me to read it then fine. Keep it to yourself. Your call.
Whatever you do, have fun with the process.
If you want to Tweet this blog post, here’s the short url for it: http://is.gd/4QKgx. Cut and paste, baby. Cut and paste.
As I just tweeted, I’m taking a Twitter Mini-break. No more twaddle till Friday. Got things to do, people to see, scripts to read, nonsense to write.
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laurence’s twitter twaddle