Good morning! Welcome to another week of TV (and other) writing and production tips at TVWriter™.
We had a short week here because of a server failure, but that’s been fixed, so here are the most popular blog posts and resource pages during our somewhat abridged last 7 days.
One of our fave TV writers-illustrators-screenwriters-vloggers, Stephanie Bourbon, explains why great storytelling should be your focus from the time you sit down to write to…you know, that time when somebody yanks you out of your chair and forces you to stop.
Have you ever picked up a book that has been on the bestseller list for months and months and the author is all over the publishing news because all the movie deals coming in and how rich they are—and then the writing is bad, like really bad, and you think—WTF???
Nathan Bransford, TVWriter™’s favorite publishing know-it-all, has an important lesson about characterization for all of us who spend our days writing fiction of any kind.
Nearly everyone who has written a novel has had the experience of writing an unruly character who suddenly takes the story in a different direction than you anticipated. Even the best outline can quickly go up in smoke.
We’re always happy to bring you articles by TVWriter™ Contributing Editor Emeritus Herbie J Pilato, but now we’re even happier to present the latest article (that we’ve seen) about him.
“I love classic TV,” says Herbie J. Pilato. His passion for television history is unmistakable. In writing his book, Mary: The Mary Tyler Moore Story, he approached the life and legacy of an icon with deep respect, compassion and attentiveness. When he discusses the book, there’s such a genuine understanding of the significance fans and admirers would attribute to the task of creating the record of a life story as stunning as Mary’s.
Herbie is a historian above everything, therefore he spares no effort when it comes to chronicling the details of Mary’s life and work, his knowledge coming through clearly as he tells us about the development and trajectory of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. He’s an ardent supporter of Mary who is keenly insightful as to her desires, her insecurities, her hopes and disappointments, and when he speaks about these things one gets the sense that he’s extraordinarily well-suited to be her surrogate and her voice.
TVWriter™’s all-time favorite artist/philosopher, Grant Snider, shows us how to do something every writer who ever set pen to paper (or done the latest equivalent of same) has learned is absolutely essential to the writing life.
See more of Grant Snider’s extraordinary perception of human creativity at Incidental Comics, HERE