Raised by Giants

Raised by Giants

This week, over at The Confabulator Cafe, I write about how I use what I learn from other writers in my own work. Check out “Raised by Giants” at www.confabulatorcafe.com.

 

Spring Resolutions

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.” – Leo Tolstoy, from Anna Karenina

 

An Orchard in Spring - Claude Monet

The cold bite of the north wind gives way to the gentle caress of the south. The perpetual scent of cut grass and oncoming rains warms the senses as a reminder that the true New Year is upon us.

If January is a time for resolutions, Spring is the time when those resolutions are given movement. You snap to, realizing the year is already a quarter way gone, and there is so much work to be done. Work means many different things to many different people.

The grass needs mowed, the trees trimmed, the garage swept. The eves need cleaned, the rainspouts unclogged, the house vented of the stale winter air. The sun motivates movement. It gets you to walk, ride bikes, jog, or play a million games that keep you company like the most faithful of childhood friends.

Winter-sore muscles stretch relaxed like flower petals reaching for the sun. There are so many things to do, things that will not get done on their own. There is work to be done on the house, thorough cleaning that has been put off for way too long, but there are others things as well. These things are more goal than true necessity.

There are stories to be written, a screenplay to be finished, a novel to re-write, a million words I want to write or need to write. Blogs, books, movies, short stories of all sizes. During spring time seems eternal.  Energy is boundless. Anything is possible. Lists of chores that once seemed imposing seem more welcoming and friendly, needing only an attached iPod and a smile.

This Fall, I will hopefully be returning to school, working on a Master’s Degree in Literary Theory. As such, Fall will be work, not only in my day job, but in my spare time.  Then, with November comes NaNoWriMo, and even more writing.

Right now, that all seems so far away, as if it is the life of another person whom I barely know. Spring is here, full of resurrection and life. The reality of Fall’s death is but a distant bleep on time’s radar.

Spring is indeed the time of plans and projects. There are a million things to do. Those New Year’s resolutions have been procrastinated too long. They have become Spring’s resolutions. I am ready to get started. How about you?

 

 

Teaching Turkeys to Fly and New Flash Fiction!

Teaching Turkeys to Fly

Editing is one of the most time-consuming aspects of a writing career. See what I have to say about how I re-write at The Confabulator Cafe.

I also have a new piece of free fiction available. Check out my pages links for “C Is for Cat.”

Fundamentals of Beginning Screenwriting

Screenwriting can seem like an intimidating process. The format seems too technical, even the font is odd. Of course, the format and the font are functional, allowing a known pace relationship between screen and script. In general, one page of a screenplay will equal one minute of screen time.

I’m not going to spend a bunch of time on the format of the screenplay. There are a lot of books out there, and quite frankly, you can get free software from Celtx that will basically format the thing for you. What I want to do is lay out the process I use for screenwriting.

This process was taught to me by Ron Peterson, a screenwriter and story editor, in his bootcamp. It was the first writing workshop I ever attended, and I learned a lot about screenplay structure from his class. All credit goes to him for this process. Since then, though, I have read a lot of screenwriting books, and most processes are similar.

Ron has what he calls a five step process. It is as follows:

1)      Determine your plot points.

2)      Write character biographies.

3)      Write an outline.

4)      Sequence the script.

5)      Write the screenplay.

Your plot points are basically act breaks.  When I am writing them, I will also jot down my premise on the same page. My plot points will be associated with my premise. Your major plot points are the Inciting Incident, Plot Point 1, the Mid-Point, Plot Point 2, and the Climax.

The inciting incident occurs approximately ten minutes into the movie, and is the thing that sets the story in motion.

I think of Plot Point 1 as being the protagonist’s first reaction to that inciting incident.  It happens around twenty minutes into the movie (the end of the first act) and starts him towards his objective.

The Mid-Point is half-way through your script probably around the fifty minute mark, depending on the length of the movie. Something about the way your character is going about his goal will change due to a major event, although not as big as the two Plot Points, this is a big part of your script.

This will lead to Plot Point 2, an incident which sets up the climax and drives the protagonist to the resolution of the conflict. This occurs at around seventy pages in to the script (the end of the second act).

The climax is self-explanatory. The drama comes to a head, the story question is answered, and the loose ends are tied up. This happens around page ninety.

Most scripts are laid out in this way. It sounds like a formula, but it is based on classical dramatic structure, and it works. It’s what the industry expects to see. Most scripts, you can almost turn to that page area and find the plot points without reading anything else.

You could look at this as being restrictive, but it really isn’t. In fact, it is liberating. You have five major incidents already decided. You spend the 20 to 30 pages between each getting from one to another and building your subplots.

That is where the character bios and your outline come in to play. Character bios are just what they sound like. The important thing is that by defining your characters in a more detailed fashion, you find subplots and conflicts that might not be apparent, otherwise.

The outline is not as technical as it sounds. For our purpose, the writer’s purpose of writing a spec script, the outline is just a narrative of what happens. This is not a treatment for presentation.  We are just getting out story thoughts down on paper. This is quick, dirty, stream of consciousness storytelling. Just get it down on the page. Ten to twenty pages, whatever you need. Be as detailed as you want, or as vague as you want. You are developing your idea. There is no need for scene headings or even dialogue unless something specifically good comes to mind that you want to make sure you remember later. Just get the story down.

When you sequence the script, you break down that outline in to individual scenes. You can put them on note cards, or use the note card system in Celtx or Scrivner. The important thing is that we are breaking the narrative, plot, and sub-plots into moveable pieces. From there, you arrange your cards in the way that works the best. You can color code your plot and each sub-plot, and then weave them together in a congruent story.

Now that you have your plot sequenced, all that is left is to write the script. By the time you have done all the prep work, this is pretty simple. Be open to change, as needed. After all, you may get another idea or think of something that works better as you are writing. Either way, the majority of the leg work is over at that point. It is just a matter of getting your story into a presentation format.

All of this may sound intimidating and like it is a lot of work. But once you try it, you will find that writing a screenplay is a very obtainable goal. Try it this April as part of Script Frenzy. By the end of the month, you will be able to call yourself a screenwriter.

Good luck and happy writing.

Site News – Script Frenzy and FREE FLASH FICTION!

Sometimes, when a piece of fiction gets published, the writer retains the rights after the initial publication.

I have decided to make some of that work available on my site, free of charge to my readers. If you look beneath my photo on the right side of your screen, you will see a new page featuring the first story I ever had published, Thousands Died This Morning.

Feel free to check it out. It will be available on this site as a free sample of my writing. Once the initial run of C Is for Cat has completed, I will post it here, as well. In the meantime, check it out at www.confabulatorcafe.com, and support all of the amazing writers featured there.

Also, lower on the right side of the frame, you will find a meter that will track my progress on my upcoming screenplay Close to Home, which I will be writing in April as part of Script Frenzy.

Thank you all. It is easy to keep writing when you get such great support.

 

– Jack

C Is for Cat

C Is for Cat

I have written a new original flash fiction piece for The Confabulator Cafe. The challenge was to write a piece of under 1000 words based on a picture I was assigned. The picture was selected from Flickr using my last name and my birth date.

Please read it at http://www.confabulatorcafe.com/2012/03/c-is-for-cat-flash-fiction/ and thank you all for your support.

Diversify Your Writing Assets

Script Frenzy is coming up next month, giving me an excuse to dust off those screenwriting skills that haven’t seen the light of day for way too long. I’ve noticed that it is not nearly as popular as its NaNoWriMo sibling.

I get it. Writing a book is every writer’s dream. It seems so easy when you think about it. You just write. Scripts use strange formatting. They have strange rules that no one seems to understand. Of course, any writer who has read much writing or dramatic theory knows there are just as many “rules” in writing prose, especially if you plan on formatting a manuscript for submission, but that is a whole different blog topic.

As writers, there is a danger of pigeon-holing yourself into a specific genre or medium. You start out to be a writer and suddenly you only write post-apocalyptic werewolf comedies. There are definite reasons for that. You find a style and a content you are comfortable with, that seems to work best, and you capitalize on it. Maybe you get readers who want to see werewolves making wisecracks in Thunderdome.

But, unless you are making a lot of money as a writer already (in that case, feel free to make a donation), then you should not be limiting yourself. There are many genres of writing, and nearly all of them have paying markets.

How can you say you can’t write poetry if you have never written a poem? Why not find a topic you are interested in and write an article to try to sell as a freelancer? Who says that script formatting is really all that difficult anyway? There is software that practically does it for you, and no shortage of books to tell you exactly what to do, especially for screenplays. Trust me. I have several.

You have ideas. A lot of them. Sometimes, you have ideas that don’t quite seem to work. Try them in a new medium. What may not be a sufficient premise to carry a novel may work as a screenplay. Screenplays are traditionally more in line with the length of a novella. Maybe you only have an image of an idea, not a full-featured premise. This might be enough to generate a poem.

Write prose of every length and genre. Try writing in every medium. You may find you have an innate  talent you didn’t know you had. You may open yourself up to new readers and new ways to sell your writing, if you are trying to do so.

There are a lot of screenplays sold every year. While there are a lot of books being made into movies, someone is writing all of those screenplays, as well, and it is very rarely the writer of the books. The world needs writers who have diverse experience and technical expertise in a variety of mediums.

Participating in Script Frenzy would be a good start. I know you have an idea. Here’s how to make it a reality:

1)      Go to the Script Frenzy website and set up an account, find your region, and join it.

2)      Go to CeltX and get their free screenwriting software if you don’t already have Final Draft or the equivalent. If you use Scrivner for writing prose, it has a script feature.

3)      Read some scripts. There are lots of places online to find them for free. Pick movies you really like and know well. Watch them scene by scene as you read the script. I use SimplyScripts.

4)      If you feel you need some book help, check out Syd Field’s Screenwriter’s Workbook, which will give you a step by step process.  His book Screenplay is wonderful. I also recommend Robert McKee’s Story regardless of whether you ever write a screenplay. I also learned a lot from Lew Hunter’s Screenwriting 431Your local library probably has some of these books.

There is a saying that you could lay a truly good screenplay on a restaurant table in Hollywood and it would get made. What do you have to lose? April could be your shot to try something new.

Also, check back here next week. I will outline the screenwriting process I use. I learned it from Ron Peterson in the first Screenwriting workshop I ever attended and it is a great way to make screenwriting more accessible.

Let’s spread the art of screenwriting to a new group of writers. April is the right time to give it a shot.

Fear, Itself

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”  – H.P. Lovecraft

I recently read an article on Lit Reactor regarding the lack of fear of the old horror tropes in today’s entertainment.  You can find the article here, if you are interested:

http://litreactor.com/columns/beyond-the-zombie-something-ominous-is-missing-from-horror-fiction

I get it.  We live in a world where vampires have rock-hard bedazzled abs and duel with werewolves for dates with emo teenage chicks.  The old cast of characters, while not dead, is no longer frightening.  There is a reason for that.

The world has moved on.  Monsters in horror have always been a reaction to real life fears.  Now, they are action figures, poster children, icons gracing drinking glasses and toddler onesies.

Vampires and werewolves were fears from a superstitious time.  They were scary because people believed they might be real.  Now, while they are cool and can be used for effective entertainment, we don’t find them scary.

We no longer live in the days of folklore.  We are skeptical by nature.  We don’t share the old fears of demons, vampires, werewolves, banshees, vengeful gods, and the like.  As such, we can not be terrified by them.  Sometimes startled using cheap movie devices, but the characters don’t care us.

Jack Joslin is correct, the unknown is what scares us.  The reason some of the old horror still works is that we are scared by what we don’t see.  But that does not mean we don’t have our own monsters.

Our monsters don’t have the decency to be otherworldly nor inhuman.  They don’t give us the opportunity to slay them with silver bullets or wooden stakes.  CNN reminds us every day that our monsters live next door, and we won’t even know they exist until it is too late.

We can still scare our readers, but writers of gothic fiction have to remember that what scares us is not the monsters we have gotten to know so well, but the monsters we don’t want to know, the ones that share the world with us.

Our monsters are our neighbors, the ones who keep their lives locked private behind closed doors, and those who we think we know, but are never quite sure.  They are the ones who abduct our children, not the vampires.  They are the ones who slaughter us in the night, not the werewolves, and they don’t have to wait for a full moon to do it.

The ancient fear of monsters was passed through story-telling and legend.  Today, we have the internet, and the stories of our monsters are spread far and wide in a matter of moments.  Your neighbor may be an amazing person, but he also might be a cannibalistic serial killer.  Jeffery Dahmer’s neighbors thought he was a great guy.  Your priest may be a caring person with whom you can share all your secrets, but he also might be a pedophile.  Is it likely?  Of course not.  We all know that.  But it happens, which is what makes it scary.

I have no answer for what monster should come next.  Godzilla and other giant monsters were born out of fear of nuclear war, zombies from fear of disease.  Our next great monster will be born from our modern fears, and I can’t wait to see what it will be.

By all means, continue writing about zombies, vampires, and werewolves.  These are timeless fun and people still love them.  But you truly want to scare and disturb, lock on to the fears of modern man, and the dangers that we all face every day.

Be sure to check out The Confabulator Cafe on Monday.  I share my thoughts on self-publishing.  www.confabulatorcafe.com

The Aesthetic Tragedy

Every Monday, I contribute to a collaborative blog on writing. The group features a wide-range of writers. We range from the published and professional, to the up and coming. We are from genres including Fantasy, Horror, Non-Fiction, Science Fiction, and even the Mainstream.

Our common thread is that we love to write. The Confabulator Cafe website is about that love affair with writing. Every week is about a different topic. This week is about story structure.

Read my blog for today at www.confabulatorcafe.com, and check out the other posts while you are there. We have something for every type of writer.

Watch for my next posting to JackCampbellJr.com later this week. As always, thanks for reading.

-Jack

On Rejection: They Don’t Know What They Want

“Actors search for rejection.  If they don’t get it, they reject themselves.” – Charlie Chaplin

The writer’s psyche, like that of all artists, is fragile.  When you live in a world of emotions, your own feelings have the volume turned up.  Sometimes, that can cause an emotional crash, of sorts.

Couple that with rejection, which comes frequently in writing, and you have a perfect storm for serious confidence issues.

I know many writers who live in a state of fear that they will some day be shown to be a farce.  Someone will realize they do not have any talent and should never be allowed to write again.  Some of these are published writers, who have already had some success.

I’ll end the anticipation now, for those writers who have been thinking about submitting, and have yet to do so.  You are going to get rejected.  Flat out, unless your name is Stephen King, your work is going to get rejected, and it is going to get rejected often.

James Joyce took Dubliners to 13 different publishers.  The version published was developed from the only copy he managed to save from the burning of the 12th publisher, who had threatened to sue Joyce for the costs he had already accrued.

Harry Potter was rejected by every publishing-related person that read it over the age of eight.  If a CEO’s eight year-old hadn’t endorsed it, it would have been rejected by it’s publisher, as well.

Other books that were rejected early and often:  Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, The Notebook, The Color Purple (which won a Pulitzer Prize), Gone with the Wind, Clan of the Cave Bear, Fight Club, Frankenstein, Lolita, Flowers for Algernon, A Wrinkle in Time…  (note: see a great list at onehundredrejections.com)

Let’s just end the list there.  Chances are, if you can imagine a book, it was rejected.  Some of them were rejected many, many times.  The Great Gatsby’s rejection was coupled by a note that “you would have a decent book if you got rid of that Gatsby character.”

Everyone has been rejected.  Everyone gets rejected.  But we all have to push through it.  Why?  Publishers don’t know what people want to read.  If there is one thing you should take from the list of authors who have been rejected, it is that no one really knows.  A rejection for Dune apparently started with “I may be making the mistake of a decade but…”

What will, no doubt, make the rejection harder is that you will see the successes of friends around you.  People you write with will get acceptances, get advances, get book deals, and still you will receive rejections, a constant flow.

Professional jealousy plays a role in writing, in keeping you working.  If they can do it, you can do it.  We are all writing with the same dictionary full of words, including Kipling, who one publisher said “doesn’t know how to use the English language.”

Keep writing.  Always keep writing.  If you want published, get your work out there and keep it out there.  If it is rejected, send it right back out.

I have a whiteboard in order to keep track of submissions.  I have the date and name of every publication listed along with the story submitted to them.  If I get a rejection, I erase the date and publisher and find a new market to replace it.  If I get a more personal rejection, I tinker with their suggestions and then get it submitted again.  If your work isn’t out there, it isn’t working for you.

Rejection hurts, I won’t lie.  You spend days, weeks, months, or even years pouring yourself into writing that an editor then rejects in a matter of moments, sending you the same form letter he sends everyone else.

But, as much as rejection hurts, acceptance is an amazing feeling, and once you have felt it, you want nothing more than to feel it again.  Trust me, it is worth it.  Even the smallest acceptance makes all the work worthwhile.

The important thing is that you don’t let rejection cause you to reject yourself.  Love writing, believe in your work, and don’t worry about what others are going to say about it.  Don’t let fear of rejection keep you from submitting.