The scariest bedroom this minion has been in since he was 9 years old (and that was my own):
Sleep disturbances from outside and within.
Month: April 2016
How to Write a Bestseller like Stephen King
If there’s one surefire way to get a writer to read an article on writing it’s to quote Stephen King, a writer of whom you may have heard. (Or not…but only if you don’t hail from this planet.) Here’s the latest gold mining expedition into Sr. King’s Volcano of Wisdom:
by Aditya Bhushan Dwivedi
Most of us often dream of authoring a great book. While some of us lie in the realm of fiction and want to pen down bestsellers, others look forward to write books that can establish themselves as an authority on a subject. Very few are able to actually finish and achieve our dreams. Stephen King is one of the best-selling writers of all time, and his books have sold over 350 million copies. His autobiography –On writing – is considered a gospel among writers. In his autobiography, Stephen King lists 20 rules that help us write better and more expressively. So read and follow them. But remember to use these rules as a guideline instead of a religion.
First write for yourself, and then worry about the audience.“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”
John Ostrander: Through the Years
by John Ostrander
I recently was talking to my friend and frequent (and upcoming) collaborator, Jan Duursema, about just the technological changes I’ve seen in comics over the course of my career. It must be getting close to thirty years since I began all this.
When I first started, I wrote my plots and scripts on a manual typewriter with a carbon copy for me. For you boys and girls who don’t know what a carbon was, it was a black inked piece of paper that you placed between the first and second pieces of paper. As the typewriter key struck the first page, the force of it would penetrate the carbon and leave an identical letter on the second page. If you hit it hard enough. In theory.
When I began, I wrote out my plots and scripts in longhand on yellow legal sized pads of paper from which I would then transcribe to the typewriter. It was easier to make corrections on the yellow pad than on the typed page. There, if you even made a spelling mistake, you had to haul out the Wite-Out (sic) or Liquid Paper. These were small round bottles of white paint with a cap with a small brush in it and it was a pain to use. If you didn’t seal it up properly, the liquid would dry out and become unusable. Some inkers who use it to this day either for corrections or to create effects.
The Cult of Jason Katims
Attention FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and PARENTHOOD fans – this one’s for you. (The rest of you Philistines are welcome to read it too. Never say TVWriter™ isn’t big-hearted, y’hear?)
by Mike Sager
Jason Katims is best known for making grown men cry.
Lunching at a trendy spot in Brentwood, California, Katims laughs at this. “It’s not like I’m sitting up in bed in the morning thinking, I’m gonna make somebody cry,” he says, his longish graying hair grazing the top of his collar, his accent still carrying a trace of his lefty Jewish Brooklyn roots. Despite his two decades as a successful writer and executive producer of a string of emotionally fraught and critically acclaimed TV series—including My So-Called Life, Friday Night Lights, Parenthood,and Roswell—the fifty-five-year-old Katims has the unassuming air of a guy who survived many lean years of workshops and showcases, as well as a day job slinging copy for a graphic designer.
A TV Writer Teaches Us About “NOOOO!!!”
And believe us when we say that understanding the No word and all its ramifications – and dealing with it appropriately – can make all the difference in anybody’s TV (or film) writing career:
by David S. Simon
I am in a war of words and I’m fighting it all by myself, day by day, battle by battle, against an insidious enemy that isn’t anywhere but is everywhere I look.
Judging by that opening paragraph it looks like I’m also in the riddle business and in some ways I am.
In this case the riddle is my life that seems to be born out of an incredibly evasive, complex code that requires an Alan Turing to break.