Category: Opinion

Peggy Bechko Lays Down the Law: Write Gripping Tales

"Gripping tails." Get it? Huh? Huh? Oh well, sorry, Peggy
“Gripping tails.” Get it? Huh? Huh? Oh well, sorry, Peggy

by Peggy Bechko

A writer writes, but let’s face it that writer also wants to and needs to sell. So the ideas he or she puts out there have to be good ones. Gripping, engaging, exciting, maybe funny. Every writer I know has more new story ideas tucked away in files on computers than can be counted. And most of them are good ideas. But are they GREAT ideas, because that’s what a writer needs to get that work sold whether a screen script or a novel or an article pitch.

So that leads us to the question. How to take one of those good ideas and make it great, a gripper if a novel, a high concept if a script? One that’ll hook the reader whether editor or script reader or your fans.

I’m going to focus mainly on the screenwriter here since we are on TV Writer, but really the principles apply broadly. The truth of the matter is a new twist on that old, yet good, idea is needed. Something that will make the story more compelling and fill seats in the theater or glue eyes to the novel’s page. The “high concept” in the movie biz. And a ‘high concept’ is: A story the writer can pitch in one good sentence that will allow a film exec or an editor to instantly visualize the story. read article

JOHN OSTRANDER’S WRITING CLASS: OUR CHARACTERS, OUR SELVES

Penny-Dreadfulby John Ostrander

I’ve had a chance recently to catch some, not all, of Showtime’s series, Penny Dreadful, and I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit. It takes the same concept of Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen(combine genre characters from the Victorian Age into a single story) and uses it with mostly horror and supernatural characters and elements, again in Victorian London.

The “real” penny dreadfuls were the pulp fiction of their day, precursors to the pulp magazines and also comics. The TV series was created by John Logan (who, among other things, wrote Skyfalland will be writing the next two James Bond films as well) and is the co-executive producer along with James Bond director Sam Mendes (he also directed The Road to Perdition).

There are also other Bond connections, including Timothy Dalton as the African explorer Sir Malcolm Murray, who is the father of Mina Murray, who just happens to be a character in the novelDracula. Eva Green, who was the “Bond Girl” Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, plays Vanessa Ives, a medium and possibly a witch. Among interest to we pop culture geeks would also be Doctor Who’s companion Billie Piper as a prostitute with a possibly very dark future. read article

Where have all the TV critics gone?

The following query is about recent – and not so recent – events in Canada. But we think it applies here in the U.S. – and just about everywhere else – as well:

Puzzly_watching_TVby Diane Wild

It’s been eight years since Variety published an article about the diminished ranks of television critics in US newspapers, replaced by wire copy or nothing at all. I wrote a reactionwith the Canadian perspective, which at the time I said was even more dismal than our southern cousins.

Guess what? It’s worse now, and worsening. read article

Herbie J Pilato: The Legacy of DARK SHADOWS

Jonathan Frid, who plays Barnabas Collins, left, and David Selby, who plays Quentin Collins, in the Gothic soap opera "Dark Shadows", April 16, 1969. (AP Photo/Bob Wands)
Jonathan Frid, who plays Barnabas Collins, left, and David Selby, who plays Quentin Collins, in the Gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows”, April 16, 1969. (AP Photo/Bob Wands)

Part 2
by Herbie J Pilato

EDITOR’S NOTE: Don’t miss Part 1, conveniently located HERE

THE MAYHEM OF THE MACABRE

1969:  20,000,000 viewers are now obsessed with Quentin, Barnabas and DS in general. The show’s popularity reaches mammoth proportions. Followers from every nook and cranny come out of the woodwork…even the woodwork from the White House. For on October 31st, Halloween 1969, Tricia Nixon gives a Halloween Party for 250 underprivileged children, and Jonathan Frid is invited. read article

Cara Winter on LAST TANGO IN HALIFAX

Last Tango in Halifax

Anglo Files 15
by Cara Winter

Last Tango in Halifax  is a drama written by Sally Wainwright (writer/creator of the remarkably good Happy Valley) starring Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid as widowed Alan and Celia, childhood sweethearts who haven’t clapped eyes on each other for 60 years. Thanks to the ubiquitous (now even for octogenarians) Facebook, they find each other again, meet for coffee, and instantly remember exactly how they felt as kids.

The first few episodes were delightful, and kept the focus on Alan and Celia.  I have been a huge fan of Derek Jacobi since I was a young’n, and watching him in this role is a treat. He is at once an older gentleman, and a child, able to express 60 years worth of longing in a single look.  Jacobi is a genius at his craft, and if you haven’t seen him as anything other than the Archbishop in The King’s Speech… please see him in this.  Anne Reid’s performance is also solid; you don’t feel as though she’s ever forcing a single moment, everything is nuanced, organic, and rich.  And it’s not every day you get to see actors of-a-certain-age in a straight-up love story, either (so kudos to BBC and Wainwright for making Last Tango in the first place!) read article