In case you’ve missed what’s been happening here at TVWriter™, the most popular blog posts by TVWriter™ visitors last week were:
Month: January 2016
How to Make People Fall in Love With Your Ridiculously Competent Hero
LB’s been blogging here about creating TV series characters that viewers will want to watch and care about. One of his favorite critics – and a hell of a writer – has her own highly perceptive view of the subject:
by Charlie Jane Anders
We all love characters who are good at what they’re doing. Nobody wants to root for someone who screws up constantly or walks into traps we can see a mile away. But at the same time, it can be hard to love someone who’s too perfect. So how do you make us believe in, and love, a major badass?
So I’ve been working for a couple months on this essay about how to make a character competent and believable/relatable. And with this week’s tempest-in-a-stormtrooper-helmet about whether Rey is somehow TOO competent, this issue became suddenly timely. So here are the thoughts that I was already noodling on for the past several weeks.
Film & TV Writing Contests: Are They Worth the Price of Admission?
by Lew Ritter
Every few weeks, my email brings me a breathless announcement for a new or established screenplay competition. It proclaims in bold headlines, ‘Want to Break into Industry?” or “Looking for New Blood.” Can your ticket to fame and fortune be far behind?
There are literally dozens of screenplay competitions out there. Some of the most famous ones are the NICHOL FELLOWSHIP, SCRIPTAPALOOZA, AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL and of course, the contests run by our fearless leader Larry Brody. He runs two contests yearly, the PEOPLE’S PILOT and SPEC SCRIPTACULAR. Other worthy contest are run by various networks or studios.
There are other lesser known contests that deal exclusively with short films, comedy or horror scripts. The fees are reasonable. The fee is usually around sixty dollars per script. (EDITOR’S NOTE: The PEOPLE’S PILOT and SPEC SCRIPTACULAR are $50.) Sometimes, they offer reduced fees for early bird entries.
Cartoon: HITTING A WALL
TVWriter™’s favorite philosopher speaks again…and goes all the way to the wall:
More Grant Snider Brilliance at Incidental Comics
John Ostrander Ponders Heroes and Their Origins
by John Ostrander
As I mentioned in a previous column, I’ve been on a Rex Stout/Nero Wolfe reading/re-reading jag as of late and have been enjoying it greatly. As other commentators have noted, the pleasure in the Nero Wolfe novels is not so much the plots, which have been noted as serviceable, but in the characters, especially the rotund and eccentric genius, Nero Wolfe, and his wise cracking legman and assistant, Archie Goodwin.
(Sidenote: when I first met the late and great comic book writer/editor, Also Archie Goodwin, I meant to ask him about Wolfe but decidedly, I think prudently, that he had probably gotten enough of that in his life. End digression.)
Stout had written 33 novels and 39 short stories on the pair between 1934 and his death in 1975. After his death, his estate authorized further Wolfe and Goodwin adventures by Robert Goldsborough who has written ten books, one of which was Archie Meets Nero Wolfe, a prequel to the Nero Wolfe stories telling the tale of how the two first met.